I am trying to understand how the heating circuit at my daughter's place works (without going to look)
She claims:
"When I checked what each of the meters was for this is what npower said:
I can confirm that the day rate on your meter is billed between 7.30 am and
12.30 pm. The night rate is billed between 12.30 pm, and 7.30am. The heat boost, which is register 3 on your meter, is billed between 8.00 am and 10.00am. The heat units on register 4, are billed between 2.pm and 7.00pm, and the heat units on register 5, are billed between 8pm and 10.00pm."
I m confused as to what switches the heaters on - there are 3 heater outlet points.
Do you think she will have the ability to control the time that the circuit is live so she can reduce the higher tariff boost times? The reply from N-Power seems to imply a complex metering arrangement.
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:46:58 +0100 someone who may be "John" wrote this:-
Get her to send a picture of the meter, or the make and model.
However, it sounds like the meter has a time clock built in with terminals for 24 hour and off-peak circuits. For whatever reasons the units used at the different off-peak times are recorded in different registers and to get a total figure for these it is necessary to add up these registers. The off-peak units may or may not all be at the same rate.
There will be either a contactor (big relay) which will be controlled by a pilot wire from the meter, or a separate timeclock or programmer for the heating.
A tariff with so many bands would probably be intended for something like the Dimplex Duoheat system which has storage heaters combined with daytime top-up
Sounds complicated? Put timers on things that use electrcity .... wash clothes at 2.00 AM etc. Not in any way a direct answer but just for info/comparison. Here Eastern Canada we have an all electric house since 1970. There are no cheap/lower rate periods. All electrcity is/has been billed at the one rate. There are recommendations to use 'Programmable Thermostats'. And 'savings' are claimed. One can to some extent do the same thing manually especially since we have individual thermostats for each room/area. Electric heating is very convenient, very quiet, very cheap for maintenance (less that $100 in 40 years) no oil tanks, no chimneys or vents, sans oil deliveries etc. Gas is not available here and 90% plus electricity (some time to be 100%) is hydro generated. Just about every month of year is a heating month of some sort.
Here[1] they send a signal down the line from the power station (200Hz I think the engineer once said) to control a set of honking great relays and switch individual circuits (we've got the dryer on one circuit, the hot water heater on another, and the electric baseboards on a third; there's an option for electric underfloor heating too, but we don't have that).
Things go on and off according to power station load (the station shuts things off at peak demand periods so they don't have to buy in from adjacent stations) - for the heaters, the thermostats are there to control how much they're on when they're receiving power. The metering's all done by a separate meter, slaved off the primary one (so the primary shows total use, the slave shows cheap-rate use, and they figure out charges accordingly)
Sounds like your daughter might have a similar setup...
[1] here being the US, but the situation sounds very similar.
Standard E7 times (Day & Night). Typically 12p Day and 5p Night inc VAT.
Sounds like E10, but too many hours :-)
Could be an unusual hybrid...
If the heaters are Storage-Heater AND Panel-Heater... Overnight (12:30-7:30)
- bulk charge of storage heaters
- eg, 5p/kWhr with multiple heaters taking 75kWhr Boost rate at reg3-4-5
- panel heaters operate
- eg, 7p/kWhr with multiple panel heaters taking just 5kWhr for each of the periods
If the heaters are Storage-Heater only... Overnight (12:30-7:30)
- bulk charge of storage heaters
- eg, 5p/kWhr with multiple heaters taking 75kWhr Boost rate at reg3-4-5
- recharge of storage heaters
- eg, 7p/kWhr with multiple heaters taking 15kWhr for each of the periods
There may be radio control or timer control of the boost period. Whether boost occurs may be via a switch on the heater or thermostat.
DNO timeswitch does not have a dial, it is a 6"x6"x6" black box containing a radio receiver & contactor.
It sounds unusual, typically you have E7 or E10 - not a hybrid. I take it this is an electric storage heater and not electric wet central heating?
You really need to know what type of heaters they are a) night storage only or b) night storage with daytime panel heater, how the boost heat is controlled re a thermostat somewhere, local to heater thermostat, timer, boost button, wall mounted occupancy PIR frost/background/ comfort stat (Dimplex PX9700) and so on. You also need to get a picture of the meter cupboard if possible.
What IS important is that heating is on a discount rate. I say that because some flats/houses had electric storage heaters or water thermal store fitted without an E7 or E10 rate. Some had no wet thermal store and just ran a 9kW electric boiler on peak rate, on demand, which resulted in some eye-watering bills.
If the place is well insulated electric isn't so bad - 5p/unit at 100% efficiency compared to 3.5p/unit for gas plus maintenance of =A3100/yr plus replacement depreciation of =A3350/yr. If the place is not well insulated (CWI, Loft, ideally new build >2006) then things can be ridiculous.
Running a 24kWhr storage heater (largest 3.3kW unit) for 120 days at
100% charge costs =A3140. Realise you are unlikely to require 100% charge for Nov+Dec+Jan+Feb, typically 30% less.
Just as a baseline on "what you can expect" re running costs. How warm you are depends on how well insulated and how well oversized / correctly-sized / undersized the heaters are.
Standard E7 times (Day & Night). Typically 12p Day and 5p Night inc VAT.
Sounds like E10, but too many hours :-)
Could be an unusual hybrid...
If the heaters are Storage-Heater AND Panel-Heater... Overnight (12:30-7:30)
- bulk charge of storage heaters
- eg, 5p/kWhr with multiple heaters taking 75kWhr Boost rate at reg3-4-5
- panel heaters operate
- eg, 7p/kWhr with multiple panel heaters taking just 5kWhr for each of the periods
If the heaters are Storage-Heater only... Overnight (12:30-7:30)
- bulk charge of storage heaters
- eg, 5p/kWhr with multiple heaters taking 75kWhr Boost rate at reg3-4-5
- recharge of storage heaters
- eg, 7p/kWhr with multiple heaters taking 15kWhr for each of the periods
There may be radio control or timer control of the boost period. Whether boost occurs may be via a switch on the heater or thermostat.
DNO timeswitch does not have a dial, it is a 6"x6"x6" black box containing a radio receiver & contactor.
It sounds unusual, typically you have E7 or E10 - not a hybrid. I take it this is an electric storage heater and not electric wet central heating?
You really need to know what type of heaters they are a) night storage only or b) night storage with daytime panel heater, how the boost heat is controlled re a thermostat somewhere, local to heater thermostat, timer, boost button, wall mounted occupancy PIR frost/background/ comfort stat (Dimplex PX9700) and so on. You also need to get a picture of the meter cupboard if possible.
What IS important is that heating is on a discount rate. I say that because some flats/houses had electric storage heaters or water thermal store fitted without an E7 or E10 rate. Some had no wet thermal store and just ran a 9kW electric boiler on peak rate, on demand, which resulted in some eye-watering bills.
If the place is well insulated electric isn't so bad - 5p/unit at 100% efficiency compared to 3.5p/unit for gas plus maintenance of £100/yr plus replacement depreciation of £350/yr. If the place is not well insulated (CWI, Loft, ideally new build >2006) then things can be ridiculous.
Running a 24kWhr storage heater (largest 3.3kW unit) for 120 days at
100% charge costs £140. Realise you are unlikely to require 100% charge for Nov+Dec+Jan+Feb, typically 30% less.
Just as a baseline on "what you can expect" re running costs. How warm you are depends on how well insulated and how well oversized / correctly-sized / undersized the heaters are.
The house has 3 storage heaters (lounge is a 3.4Kw job Heatstore HSXAF24N) and two bedroom non storage heaters.
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