First of all, please bare with me as I’m relaying this info second hand so may not have every bit of it exactly right.

My step daughter had her storage heaters replaced yesterday under some sort of grant scheme. Whilst doing the work the electricians also took out the old mechanical Economy 7 timer because apparently the new heaters have individual timers on them. My understanding is that the timer should be switching all her electricity to E7, not just switching the storage heaters on and off.

To confuse matters further, she has an E7 tariff but has been getting massive electricity bills so it looks like she may have been paying the premium rate for using the washing machine, etc, overnight when the E7 should have been in place.

So…
Will her E7 still work with this clock taken out?

Is it possible to hook up a mechanical E7 clock to only work with storage heaters and everything else run on the premium tariff?

Should the fitters have taken the clock out?

She doesn’t currently have a smart meter, so has the traditional meter with Normal & Low readings on it (her house is full electric, no gas, but in true STW style she does have a log burner) and her current provider (E-On) say they don’t do a dual tariff smart meter, which sounds a little odd to me as they do E7 but may be the case. As she has this twin reading meter, isn’t the clock they’ve removed supposed to switch the current between the two readings on the meter?

Apologies but I have no understanding how this should all work and am hoping there is someone here who can explain it all to me so I can tell her.

Any help is really appreciated,
Thanks.

Edit – I should say that unfortunately I can’t go & look myself as she’s >80 miles away and I can’t get there at the moment, but will try to get any more info if anyone needs it.

I can only say that when we had storage heaters our leccy bill was ridiculous. I think it was almost £500/month in winter. And that was heating them overnight with Economy 7

As ever it depends. Our system is set up so that only the night storage heaters are on the off peak meter, this also switches them on and off, but ours is switched by a radio switch. It will depend on how here system was wired up as to if all electric on off peak went though the economy 7 meter but it doesn’t sound like it. If the switch has been removed then she will definitely be paying fullrate for all electric.

On your daughter’s systemIf the new heater have their own timers and the economy 7 timer has been removed then all her electric will be at full rate unless she has smart meter with a variable tariff. What has now is just electric heating.

Edited

Had E7 30 odd years ago – noticed that the bills were increasing over the course of time. Meter clock time was running out of sync with real time. After many phone calls finally got LEB to investigate – cue massive refund and apologies. Quite a few friends had the same grief.

I can only say that when we had storage heaters our leccy bill was ridiculous. I think it was almost £500/month in winter. And that was heating them overnight with Economy 7

THTC here instead – but same £240+ a month averaged bill over the year. And we were not even warm.

How well insulated is her house?

Cheers folks, you’ve pretty much confirmed my initial thoughts.

I’ll hav a chat with her about the tariff, see if something can be done there.

Don’t know about the timers but I quickly gave up on trying to use electricity overnight and switched to a flat rate. I was having to run the heating for 4 hours a night to have them still be warm for the evening when I wanted it. I get on much better turning them on for an hour when it starts to get chilly and they’ll hold heat for a few hours.

Also having the washing machine running overnight would be awful in a 1 bedroom flat.

How well insulated is her house?

That’s a whole other kettle of cold, damp, fish. Could do with improving, and that’s being looked into.

I think she may need to look into switching provider too as I don’t think her current one is necessarily giving her the best VFM, and getting a smart meter fitted so at least it’ll be a bit easier to understand what’s happening.