Should decent off-peak electricity rates be available to everyone, not just EV owners?

MWT

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81980705#Comment_81980705

Hard to be definitive about this as tariffs like Octopus Go have used two registers or HH readings at various times in the past…

Ildhund

@WiserMiser Thanks - point taken. There's a pretty well documented start date for Economy 7 - October 1978. White Meter seems to have been introduced several years earlier:

Extract from https://gnu.eecs.kth.se/nt/elecpow/history/electricity_supply_in_the_uk__a_chronology_ocrnopic.pdf

It's not clear what 'off-peak tariffs' were being referred to here, but if there were any, they were clearly ToU tariffs that pre-dated White Meter.

@Reed_Richards Yes, I know what the difference is between register-based tariffs and half-hourly-data-based ones. I'm only being pedantic about the use of the designation ToU; I can't see how you can claim that Economy 7 isn't a Time of Use tariff even though it has prices which change with the time of use … As @Scot_39 points out, his own Economy 10 tariff also varies prices with time of use, as do Economy 9 and several other offerings which don't depend on smart meters and half-hourly usage data for billing. I'd say it was inaccurate to state categorically that "Time of Use tariffs rely on half hourly data reported by smart electricity meters."

I wonder what abbreviation they'll come up with for Type of Use tariffs, like those for charging EVs [almost back on topic again!], topping up batteries and - in use in Scotland for more than 40 years - space- and water-heating.

[Even further off-topic: in 1969, I was living in student digs in Scotland, shivering in the winter when the gas fire's appetite for shillings overtook the BoS account's ability to satisfy it. No cheap electric heating then …]