NSH circuit effect of non standard tarrifs?

mnbvcxz

Somewhat daydreaming for a friend.

The older Economy 7 wiring, a separate fuse box/consumer unit with your night storage heaters on it that only becomes live during economy 7 periods. Currently run off a second tail from a smart meter that turns it live during the economy 7 periods.

However there are now an increasing amount of non standard off peak tariffs that are similar to Economy 7 but not officially economy 7. 

Does anyone have experience of what happens to your setup if you switch to one of them?

Perhaps both circuits become live all the time and you now have to add your own timers to the heaters? Perhaps the economy 7 circuit becomes dead and has to be rewired? Perhaps you can manually program your own smart meter to turn on the offpeak circuit for the new times? 

I just don't know. Any ideas? Thanks.

QrizB

It all depends on the supplier and the tariff.

I know that if you switch to an Octopus smart tariff, they can keep your E7 ALCS switching times but they don't update dynamically, eg. if you're on Agile and your E7 times are 0000-0700 they will continue as 0000-0700 even if those aren't the cheapest seven hours.

Octopus Snug is "Economy 6+1" and it seems they can switch the E7 ALCS twice, once from 0030-0630 and once in the afternoon (although the exact time may vary).

I'd expect eg. OVO's "Economy 9" to work the same way with three ALCS activations, but I've not checked.

mnbvcxz said:

Perhaps both circuits become live all the time and you now have to add your own timers to the heaters? Perhaps the economy 7 circuit becomes dead and has to be rewired? Perhaps you can manually program your own smart meter to turn on the offpeak circuit for the new times?

You can't program your own smart meter, but it's a relatively simple job for an electrician to add a manual time switch to activate the E7 circuits. You'll then be responsible for keeping that time switch synchronised with your cheap rate period(s).

mnbvcxz

Thankyou QrisB, i hadn't thought you might end up stuck with the economy 7 times but charged on different times... All complicated. Hmm. Thankyou for the thoughts though.