Economy 10 & Smart Meters

stillnotanexpertyet

Not sure if this is the best thread, but before agreeing to have a smart meter installed, we told Octopus we had an Economy 10 meter (that Eon installed 'eons ago') to check we wouldn't be penalised when the new meter went in. We sent photos and, over the phone, they agreed it was an E10 meter.

After the smart meter was installed, we discovered we are now on E7, which is annoying.

We were wondering if anyone has had this experience with Octopus and if they managed to resolve it?

QrizB

Welcome to the forum.

We were wondering if anyone has had this experience with Octopus and if they managed to resolve it?

Octopus don't offer an Economy 10 tariff. I suspect they had been treating you as an E7 customer (to your benefit; E10 usually has a more expensive off-peak tariff than E7). If you want to return to E10, you'll have to switch to a supplier that offers it - and there aren't many (if any) left.

Alternatively, would one of Octopus's various smart tariffs suit you? Or one of the smart tariffs from the various other suppliers?

Phones4Chris

@stillnotanexpertyet You haven't mentioned whether your previous E10 tariff is because you have older storage heaters and of course E7 won't have any afternoon boost or similar that you had on E10.

Was the Smart meter installed a 5 terminal one? ie has a separate switched output for the storage heaters (and maybe water heating)? The storage heaters etc need to be controlled by the ALCS (auxiliary load control switch) that's the 5th terminal output.

If so, and if your smart meter comms are reliable then you should consider switching to the Octopus Snug Tariff. You get a one hour afternoon boost (with the whole house on the off-peak rate during it, as well as the overnight off-peak) and it should work out cheaper than E7 Variable. (That's might not be the case if you get on an E7 Fixed tariff at the right rate).

https://octopus.energy/smart/snug-octopus/

Although the page does say that the tariff is currently unavailable due to energy price volatility but I'd still ring up and ask.

Scot_39

You are not the first to poster to have this problem - Ive seen others with my supplier EOn replacing a legacy E10 or even a smart E10 - with a meter upgrade and it being set for E7.

But unlike EOn - AFAIK Octopus never formally offered E10 - but did allow - in early days - some to switch to their E7 rates - but retain the old ALCS 10 hours off peak. So you might have been lucky like that in past. Going back 10 yrs ago - some of the others did so - others though massaged the off peak reading - and only allowed essentially 70% of say at off peak (which isn't really how storage heater consumption works - but I guess a simple 7 vs 10 hrs)

Some E10 customers at EDF were also told last year they were ending support for E10 in June - but not sure that happened. So you could try ringing them - they at least loaded their day unit - not their off peak rate - for the E10 vs E7 premium - important for a high off peak user.

Of the others - AFAIK - only Ovo might give you a quote for E10 online - and be prepared to reprogram it's settings - that would be both tariff and ALCS tables - to E10 timings - if you have meter ALCS / 5 port restricted metering driving them.

Ovo started to quote me late last year - more expensive than EOn Next here in EM though - I suspect as they now have many ex RTS customers on smart E10 meters (old SSE pseudo E10 and THTC iirc) - and see there is still a real market - in 10,000s if not 100,000s for it.

If your NSH rely on meter ALCS restricted feed (power only on 10 hours a day to charge) - your a bit limited right now without wiring modifications fitting your own timer / contactors etc to drive from meter live to converet to below TOU (especially now Snug Octopus unavailable for new sign-ups - but it might come back before next winter).

If your NSH are wired to 24/7 live mains only - and have seperate timers for charge control - then one of the many conventional TOU or even the new market tracking smart TOU tariff - with charge times set to match their off-peak rate periods - might be even cheaper than E7 - if you can avoid heavy use in their peak window (typicaly 4-7pm) - e.g Octopus cosy etc. And get you more hours than overnight only E7 - and if older lossier heaters like mine - the all important afternoon / evening boost back

Scot_39

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82006625#Comment_82006625

That would be nice if they made an exception - assuming "stillnotanexpertyet" happy with its T&Cs - and just the 1 hr afternoon boost - given they are otherwise disadvantaging the customer with the meter upgrade.

Scot_39

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82006361#Comment_82006361

Just a silly question - are you talking E7 rates (what some have managed), E7 tariff switch times and E7 ALCS - restricted power feed - times (night only solid block 7 hrs iirc Octopus "standard")

Other supplies have been known not to set all 3 properly.

stillnotanexpertyet

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82006625#Comment_82006625

I have no idea why we had an E10 meter. There was an old "mechanical/analogue" in the house when we moved in last century which Eon later replaced with a digital E10 when the clock in the original failed. I suppose the house did have an electric heater in the hot water tank but the hot water mainly came from the gas boiler so I have no idea. 🤷

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82008637#Comment_82008637

It was merely the times. It just meant it was easy to kick off the dishwasher to be ready for the morning and to program a timer for a PHEV. It took us by surprise when the bills suddenly jumped.

To be honest, we only got the smart meter as we were planning to get solar panel and 🤞 that's coming soon and will make the whole thing irrelevant at least until Winter.

PZ19

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82008459#Comment_82008459

yep, EDF ended E10, installed smart meter, took ages to get it working correctly as you may recall, went through ombudsman, got £150 comp, and now on E7 tariff called Standard Variable heating. Obviously price going up next month but current rates are 23.749p peak, sc 51.738p, off peak 13.154p without vat that I may add. The off peak now only applies to the water and storage heat, whereas previous meter set up gave me off peak on all usage overnight.

Phones4Chris

Interesting! Are you saying that EDF have programmed your smart meter so that during the E7 times, the Day Rate register (usuallly R1) continues to increase for any household usage, and the Off-peak register (usually R2) only increases when there is storage heater and hot water demand in the E7 hours?

Do you have a link to the EDF Tariff Information Label for details?

Scot_39

Pretty sure from past discussions in their posts PZ19 has a 2 element meter - an Aclara SGM-1422 iirc - it measures live port 4 and restricted port 5 energy independently - so arguably in theory.

They might therefore be billing on a R1 (no R2 on primary) and a R4 (off peak only restricted (no R3 peak on restricted - which at one stage IIRC appeared to also be registering non zero use). I say that as iirc all 4 registers were incrementing at one point.

Scrap the above para - just found another @PZ19 post from today - where they add all 4 registers - but not sure how tou 2 and only water / heat - so is that primary R1 and secondary R1 (R3 ?) and primary R2 off peak and secondary R2 (r4?) - so then acts like normal E7 these days - everything regardless of circuit by time (so peak / off peak applies to whole house - just delimited by time not circuits)

But then the rates don't really stack up

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82024101#Comment_82024101

If you look at EDF E7 rates here - Vs the PZ19 rate as

"23.749p peak, sc 51.738p, off peak 13.154p without vat"

With vat would be 24.936 peak , SC 54.325, off peak 13.812

Which doesnt seem to match any of the SR or E7 tables in DM903 exactly - but you can clearly see the PZ19 peak rates are far closer to normal SR - than the more like c30p E7 day rate premium.

https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/2026-03/DM1903-STANDARD-VARIABLE-DEEMED-AND-WELCOME-APR26-RATES.pdf

The closest I can see is the Eastern region DD - but the SC doesnt quite match

SC Srate PC2SC peak offpeak

53.947p 24.936p 54.177p 30.204p 13.812p mismatch / match

Although 53.947/1.05=51.378 - so maybe a typo on those last 2 digits in those PZ19 figures..

So looks like around 5.2p cheaper on day rate on primary than would normally pay on E7 - which for anyone not using a very high off peak % - a pretty decent saving (in summer for instance even on E10 - let alone E7 - my day use is around 50% of total).

There were a few RTS / old twin meters that did similar - and some were lucky to get upgrades that maintained - effectively an E7 off peak rate - without a daytime E7 peak premium to balance penalty.

The posts ending in cDecember last year iirc still had EDF trying to sort out the way to read and bill the secondary (restricted port only) measurement.