Off-peak energy discounts

[Robin]

which programme and (roughly) when?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well if YOU don't, THEY will.

Load shedding is coming to a phase near you...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Fucking ArtStudents™

Burn them for fuel.

[N_Cook]

How many electronic clocks would the average householder have to reset? plus some kit drops into factory reset . Of course how many people on low incomes will be moving onto "smart" meters after the news yesterday. Well it was news to me , that along with read and WRITE function on them so they can write whatever their shareholders demand, in effect, they can remotely switch you to prepayment mode at the click of a switch at their end .

[Tim+]

No, just reporters getting it wrong.

Tim

[Max Demian]

The difference is that you eat, shower and wash your clothes when the energy company says you can.

[RJH]

There's a fair bit of small print with Eon. You have to set readings to 30 minutes (mine weren't, by default), and opt in to some marketing option. Then, they have to deem you suitable. Not holding my breath . . .

[Chris Hogg]

Ah yes, you did say the BBC.

It amazes me, a gap filler between programmes that the beeb has started running, claiming how carefully they check and verify their reports. That claim is in itself clear evidence that they don't!

[Rod Speed]

Max Demian <max [e-mail] wrote

No, when the energy company says they will charge you less when you do that stuff when energy is cheaper.

The big difference with Economy 7 is that it is no longer just a fixed time in the middle of the night.

[Martin Brown]

The "scheme" such as it is has not been communicated well.

The rules are totally opaque and only a handful of suppliers have actually signed up to them. My supplier SSE hasn't but I am loathe to move until my fixed price contract is up.

Even if everyone with a smart meter signed up and played exactly by the rules it would only result in 3M homes out of ~20M being on the deal.

Savings depend on how many people do their washing or tumble dry at peak use times of day. I know that we do not so would be paid to do nothing.

Not much you can do about cooking supper when you get home (although slow cookers are available stew every day quickly gets a bit boring).

[Martin Brown]

The rules of the new scheme are far from clear and adoption of it pretty haphazard with very few big suppliers signed up.

You will like this one then:

[The Natural Philosopher]

IIRC ALL of mine carry on for at leasts a few hours - presumably the clocks are battery or capacitor backed. I suspect the water softening recycle timing would be lost. So what?

That's only railway locomotives

Guess why I refused to have one.

[N_Cook]

You've only got to look at post office Horizon software structure that deliberately did not allow daily hard copy for each counter operation but did allow remote access by head-office fraudsters to manipulate "records" on individual counter units without the operator knowing. Where such systems are ,in place , the corrupt will use them to their advantage, its simple human nature.

[Andy Burns]

And all those alarms with f***ed batteries constantly going off?

[farter]

They don't just do stew.

[Max Demian]

I don't want the energy company to have such influence on my life. I decide when I cook, eat or use the washing machine, without involving anyone else.

You know where you are with that. When I lived in a place with Economy 7 I only used off-peak for the storage heater and whole tank immersion heater. I didn't run the washing machine at night. I expect the noise would be annoying.

[Tim+]

You can do all that. Of course you could save money, and maybe even get a “refund” by reducing your consumption when the cost to the grid is very high but no one is cutting your power off. What is becoming hard to ignore is the reality that power costs are increasingly volatile and that variable time of day tariffs are here to stay. Still, you can still use power whenever you want, for a price.

Economy 7 generally offered only a fairly small discount proportionally. My off peak is less than a fifth of my peak rate. I can put up with a washing machine running at night for that size of discount. Besides, most modern machines are way quieter than older ones.

Still, good luck with your “ostrich approach” to coping with your power bills.

Tim

[Chris Green]

Huh? My economy 7 is around half price overnight and always has been.

Currently day is 40.703p/kwh and night is - 19.922p/kwh.

[Tim+]

Mine 38 vs 7.1 (plus VAT). Only 4 hours though, but it does make for a strong incentive to load shift.

Tim

[Rod Speed]

Then you get to wear the higher energy costs.

Then you get to wear the higher energy costs.

I can't even hear mine when I am sitting at the computer and the bedroom is twice as far away from the washing machine as that.

At one time I used to be able to hear the dishwasher when in bed but could sleep thru that fine, but can't hear it anymore with the much quieter Bosch.