I currently rent a place with storage heaters which run off economy 7 and they are rubbish – i’m trying to buy the place in which case I would take great delight in putting gas central heating in!
The cost is actually about the same as gas central heating for me, but the real problem is that they heat up overnight from 11.30pm to 6.30am, so at about 4am the house is roasting hot. From 6.30am onwards it’s cooling down… So the morning is ok, my cat Alice gets to spend the day in a warm-ish house, and by the time I get in from work at 6pm it’s prety cold and continues to get colder until 11.30pm again!
I rely on a real fire for heat in the evenings to be honest!
The other thing is hot water – if it’s all electric, then the tank of water heats up again during the economy 7 hours. It does stay pretty hot all day, but whatever hot water you use is topped up in the tank with cold water – hence making it colder. So nice hot showers in the morning are fine, as are hot baths at night if you have not used any other hot water. Doing both is a problem 😉 I can use a ‘boost’ to heat the tank again but this is expensive.
As you can tell, I have devoted a great deal of time and effort to understanding this utterly rubbish system in an attempt to work with it. My conclusion is that if you work all day, you can’t.
If you like the house, buy it, rip out all the electric rubbish and put nice cerntral heating and a boiler in!