Economy Seven electricity tariff

[Radar]

A couple of mates were trying to wind me up down the pub the other day about doing washing at night being a waste of time. Their line was that only specific items such as storage heaters and hot water boilers were actually charged at the economy rate when used during the night. This didn't seem right to me, but I was too knackered to argue the toss at the time.

Pissed bloke down the pub shite really winds me up, so when I remembered all this the following day I rang the LEB to check.

Economy Seven is based on the principle that each equipped house has two meters, one for normal and one for economy rate. A timer flicks the house supply between the two meters, so that for seven house a day between 22:00 and 08:00, the whole house is powered through and charged by the economy meter. The rest of the time the normal meter is in use. The actual economy period is fixed for your house at installation, I suppose this lets the electricity company spread their economy seven load across the whole off-peak period.

As your whole house draws on the economy meter during your own economy period, all your electrical appliances run at economy rate (including washing machines)

Now I don't propose you cook your Sunday roast at 2am , but running a hot wash is expensive and running it at night cuts the electrical costs by nearly two thirds (3.5p v an average unit cost of 11p,average because the normal rate is a hybrid of two unit costs, a fixed 247 units at 14.57p then the remainder at 8.74p)

Make sure your smoke alarm works and is audible from your bedroom before you set down this route, but with the addition of a few LCD plug/socket timers you can save yourself a bit of cash over time !

And finally, congratulations to anyone who made it this far and is still awake (or made it this far at all )

 

[northernhord]

I think you end up saving about 7.5p over a two millenium period after youv'e done all the resetting and other pissing about, I could be very wrong though.

 

[geminisnake]

I refuse to have storage heaters in the house, they are CRAP!

 

[lighterthief]

Is there not a charge for having the Economy 7 meter installed in the first place?

 

[toggle]

I refuse to have storage heaters in the house, they are CRAP!

it is entirely better to live in a house where all the interior walls are made out of the stuff that is in storage heaters.

 

[AnnaKarpik]

When we bought our house it had storage heaters - and a economy seven meter. We changed to oil fired central heating (which might prove to be a disaster as we can't really afford the oil) BUT also use a timer switch for the washing and tumble drier. A big educational drive to reduce the number of washes by asking around the family to make a full load and always running the thing off-peak was begun. We are too pollen sensitve, as a family, to enjoy the prospect of outdoor dried clothing so that is done by machine too.

Results for last year; I got a £120.00 refund and a reduction in monthly payments of £10.00. Easily covers the cost of timers.

 

[moonsi til]

I have lived in a house that had storage heaters and assumed I had economy 7, but there was only 1 meter ? and a very very expensive bill.

 

[Portia]

i'm about to move into a new house. how do i find out if it has economy seven? it's been empty for a while.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

i'm about to move into a new house. how do i find out if it has economy seven? it's been empty for a while.

you may have to switches in your boiler cupboard, one for normal usage and one that allows it to switch over to E7

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

ok from my old BGT days

here's how it works

dependant on the region or area you live in depends on whether you have one block of 7 hours of cheap rate night time electricty or two blocks one of 2 hours and one of 5 hours.

the night time eleccy is funnily enough used by anything that uses eleccy at that time, regardless.

so yes technically you are saving money by doing your eleccy at night.

It stands to reason really you don't have speacil meters for your other applences or other sockets connected to another meter do you?

here's the rub and it's a biggie...

althought it's around a penny a unit for the night rate it's around 15 to 18 p a unit the rest of the time. This of course is fine if the majority of your consumption of eleccy is for storage heaters emmersion heaters and the like, but most places these days have gas water heaters and gas central heating meaning that instead of paying around 5p per unit all the time.

financially speaking unless you do have storage heaters or some enormous eleccy usuage which would utterly cain you at night time then there is no benifit to having E7 at all. none. it's far more expensive.

here's the nice bit if you have an e7 meter in your house and you don't use e7 the billing company can now just change the tariff to a standard rate (5p per min) tariff with out having to change the meter nothing changes except your bills should reduce....

for christ sake do not do this if you have storage heaters or anything which uses a mamoath amount of eleccy at night tho as you will end up paying more, guarrenteed...

so your mates were chatting shite but had the general gist of the idea correct....

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

i'm about to move into a new house. how do i find out if it has economy seven? it's been empty for a while.

the quickest way is to look at the meter...

if it has two sets of meter readings called day and night/rate 1 and rate 2/ peak and off peak/ hi and low (depending on the area hey there were around 120 or so different meter types from 14 different compaines it's not like it was one unified system or anything ....) then you have e7 in the house (although it doesn't mean you are being billed at e7 rates - see above for why) if you only have one set of meter readings visable then you have a standard rate meter (no E7)

finally if you have two meters in the house then it could be a number of things it could be an old E11 (like e7 but 11 hours not 7 and the day rate is around 25 p a unit:EEK or a subdeduct meter used to charge other people from your meter meaning the bill will be in your name and you have to go collect moneies form other users after the bill turns up....

any meter which needs to be change will be chargeable however E11 and subdecut meters should be upgraded free of charge tho in the later case doig so will of course cut some one else off.... all other meter changes are considered cosmetic and are chargeable (around £100 if memory serves...)

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

I have lived in a house that had storage heaters and assumed I had economy 7, but there was only 1 meter ? and a very very expensive bill.

it's more likley it wasn't set up to take advantage of the 7 cheap hours, although there are technically 2 meter for e7 they are housed insite of one meter case if you had two sets of meter readings then it was an e7.

Word of warning e7 meters have a physical timeswitch which knocks it from cheap to not and back again these being physical wear out if they fail then it is considered by regulatory law (in favour of the compainies i'm afraid) that although an allowevnce can be made for the difference you will still have to pay the bill as you should have noticed the meter stopped working ...

this can lead to wacking great bills or you thinking that your bils are rather cheap where as in fact they are going all off the night rate....

Timeswitches went all the time when i worked for bgt so i wouldn't imagne the mechanisms have gotten any better with age....

 

[Portia]

thanks for answering so quickly everyone

 

[Radar]

Word of warning e7 meters have a physical timeswitch which knocks it from cheap to not and back again these being physical wear out if they fail then it is considered by regulatory law (in favour of the compainies i'm afraid) that although an allowevnce can be made for the difference you will still have to pay the bill as you should have noticed the meter stopped working ...

Interesting, that's the second time I've heard about past industry regulations being skewed in favour of the (at the time, soon to be) privatised utilities. God forbid the bastards weren't extracting enough value for their shareholders

I wonder, would the "You should have noticed" line of reasoning would work in practise if you didn't have access to your own meter (like in many multi-occupancy buildings) ??

Storage heaters are grand in small places (Mine's a 1 bed flat with excellent insulation so I run the heaters low in the winter and off in the summer), but I'd prefer central heating or open fire + back boiler plus a few rads in a house if I had the space.

I already have e7 installed and use that tarrif, so using it for hot washes at night has to save money (I already heat the hot water tank at night too, but that makes no difference for doing a wash as my machine is H+C but on a Y piece off the cold feed ) I really can't be arsed at working out the actual saving, but a finger in the air figure is 25p a wash with a new A rated machine, with older ones you'd save more as you'd be using more leccy.

BTW Garf (or anyone else), do you know any thing about the "fixed price til 2008" electrcity tarrif the LEB are pushing at the moment ?? Is it worth changing over or what ?? Bulk oil prices are going apeshit, it's bound to have a knock-on effect sooner or later

 

[Radar]

you may have to switches in your boiler cupboard, one for normal usage and one that allows it to switch over to E7

I've had my boiler electrics apart recently when I installed a timer. What I found was a dual element boiler, with the sink element potentially live 24/7 and the bath element only potentially live during the e7 period.

Each element had its own switch outside the airing cupboard, so you could leave the bath element switched on permanently, and it would only heat up and draw power during the nighttime economy period.

Another sign I found in my place was an e7 or off-peak marked fuse/circuit breaker for the circuit thats only live during your e7 period.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Interesting, that's the second time I've heard about past industry regulations being skewed in favour of the (at the time, soon to be) privatised utilities. God forbid the bastards weren't extracting enough value for their shareholders

welcome to capitalism

I wonder, would the "You should have noticed" line of reasoning would work in practise if you didn't have access to your own meter (like in many multi-occupancy buildings) ??

techically you don't have a right of access to your electricity meter and if you have access to the gas meter emergancy shut off value (the big handle) then you don't have a legal access to your gas meter as they remain the property of the transporter (gas) or distributor (eleccy) more over regardless of where the meter is situated they have a right of access to your home at anytime regardless of whether you are in at the time, indeed they can change your locks and then leave keys at a nominated (by them) police station, where upon you have to provide prove of habitation in order to retrive them ... (rights of entry act 1958 i think...)

regardless of the rantyness above...

you do not have a legal access to your meter and it is your responsibilty to check and verify your bills are accurate... (see how this has been set up!!)

BTW Garf (or anyone else), do you know any thing about the "fixed price til 2008" electrcity tarrif the LEB are pushing at the moment ?? Is it worth changing over or what ?? Bulk oil prices are going apeshit, it's bound to have a knock-on effect sooner or later

well on paper they look good but in reality it's a lottery, as they are asking you for more than the current rate and the likely hood is that they will not hit those prices by that time so it's a bit like a dead cert at the horses....