Economy 7 - need to connect whole house Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[blondin43]

Just moved to flat with night storage heaters and economy 7 tarriff,
Being highly nocturnal, expected benefit of low tarriff for whole house, as well as heaters, in the very late hours.
Tests show that flat is wired so that everything but the heaters stays on high tarriff always. Big disappointment and different from what most other people seem to have.

How can I change this? Presumably it could be done without messing with the meterbox (external), by installing a big relay at the consumer unit, so rest-of-house is switched to low-tarriff feed when it comes live. Is this practical, or is there a better solution ?

[ericmark]

I will admit I am not too sure on this as gas is available in this area. But early systems had white meter which switched on at set time and no switching was required by the customers set-up. But it was found often a boost was required so the latter system had a duel tariff meter but up to the customer to have timers which he could then over ride. But then it started to expand even further with boost time included in low tariff at set time.
All these systems had differing duel tariffs and each supply company offered different splits and tariffs.
To swap between to meters would be relatively easy with a large star/delta contractor but it would come under Part P and it may be a lot simpler to get supply company to change system.
This may involve adding timers to each radiator and may be not cost effective but since charges change with each supplier you would need to make enquiries as it will change area to area.

[pole307]

[quote="blondin43"]Just moved to flat with night storage heaters and economy 7 tarriff,
Being highly nocturnal, expected benefit of low tarriff for whole house, as well as heaters, in the very late hours.
Tests show that flat is wired so that everything but the heaters stays on high tarriff always. Big disappointment and different from what most other people seem to have.

How can I change this? Presumably it could be done without messing with the meterbox (external), by installing a big relay at the consumer unit, so rest-of-house is switched to low-tarriff feed when it comes live. Is this practical, or is there a better solution ?[/quote]

I live and learn, I was convinced that E7 meters were in fact pretty dumb devices, whereby at specific times one meter number would increase, but outside these hours the other would. I.e no change to the customer side of the meter(s).

What tests did you do to increase your night usage to prove that all circuits other than your storage heaters were on the day meter?

[roccovellhung]

Hard to see what you have in your property to advise

I stayed somewhere a few years ago with economy 7 - the main feed was split to 2 seperate meters which fed different consumer units (the economy consumer unit also had a time switch installed)

Anyway the economy consumer unit had all the heaters and the main one had everything else - in my case it would've just been a case of removing the wiring from one CU to the other