We have an electricity meter has both day and night settings.

We have a spur from our fuse box to a single fuse that supplies a storage heater in our cellar. This charges during the night setting. The circuit is not live during the day.

In theory should all of our electricity supplied after 0100(?) be at the economy seven rate?

I ask as we need to run an oil filled radiator for a few hours in the night to keep our little mans bedroom warm and it would be good to know what rate it would be running on!

think about that statement for a minute.

how will the person coming to read your meter know what was and wasnt recieved after 1.00?

Are you on an economy 7 tarif? It’s that which determine whether your electricity is cheaper at night or not….

I believe so yes

The night storage heaters and hot water boilers are generally on a separate circuit which is only switched on when the night rate is activated, although any electrical appliance on an ordinary circuit during this period also runs at the lower rate of billing, such as a dishwasher or washing machine set to start using a timing device

There used to be two meters – one gets turned on by radio switch after 1pm. But isn’t this all defucnt now?

yes we are apparently on an economy seven rate.

Our meter records two rates day/night.

The feed for the storage heater is only live in the night leading me to think …. well I don’t know what.

trickydisco – Member

I believe so yes

The night storage heaters and hot water boilers are generally on a separate circuit which is only switched on when the night rate is activated, although any electrical appliance on an ordinary circuit during this period also runs at the lower rate of billing, such as a dishwasher or washing machine set to start using a timing device

This makes sense.

There is definitely a distinction between the two circuits.

Our’s is on two circuits, bizzarely there is a difference between the ‘night’ rate and the heating rate, it’s only a fraction of a pence but still different.

Yes, if its only activated at night it will run on the night rate automatically allowing you to leave it switched on all the time and then it will only come on during the cheap rate. All your electric used in this period will be on the lower (night) rate. It might be worth taking a look at your usage as Im slowly finding that economy7 isnt actually that efficient or useful for me anymore. You can use a non-eco7 tarrif, some suppliers charge for a new meter, but it works out in a year or so in savings.

think about that statement for a minute.

how will the person coming to read your meter know what was and wasnt recieved after 1.00?

OH’s staying in a new build flat at the minute. The meter there has two readouts, for day and night.

We have a storage heater and are on economy 7 with edf. All appliances are used on times to use the night rate

We were on economy 7 for years, we still have the same meter and time clock.
The meter has two readouts High and Low, during the night the time clock switches the meter over to the Low readout.
When we were on economy 7 we used to have things like the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer on timers to make use of the cheap rate but we couldn’t use enough cheap rate electricity to overcome the premium on the High rate (the wife and kids didn’t appreciate being woken up at 3 in the morning to have a shower 🙂 ).

think about that statement for a minute.
how will the person coming to read your meter know what was and wasnt recieved after 1.00?

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You’ve never seen one of these obviously ?

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From what I remember, your ‘cheap rate’ will also come on for an hour or two mid-afternoon as a top up for the storage heaters. My parents still have it as their water and heating is all electric. The tumble dryer/washing machine and dishwasher are all on timers as well so they turn on during the night, although they are connected to the normal sockets.

Can see Economy7 becoming very popular again as electric cars get more common, as it will presumably be the biggest electricity consumer in an average household if it is used regularly.

Resistive electrical heating is a pretty poor way of heating, you only get out what you put in.

I think in the future as we shift to more electrical power at the domestic level, we’ll see other technologies like heatpumps linked to PV and Solar thermal coming in. COPs for some heat pumps in the market are heading towards 4 at the moment (best).

It makes alot of sense for a 1kw PV array to power an inverter driven heatpump and potentially get 2.5 -3.5kw of heat for free, excluding the solar thermal input.

Of course, us Brits will have to sort our shoddy insulation in our housing stock first.

Not sure about new ones, but our storage heaters are connected via the economy 7 meter. Power is only available during the economy 7 period and this is decided by the clock on the meter. But our meters clock is way out (it stops during power cuts), consequently the heaters ‘charge’ at odd times.