Changing from Economy 7

[Corazones]

Hello all,
My one and only elderly night storage heater has finally given up the ghost and spares for it are no longer available. However, there is so much being consumed during the day - 7KW shower, cooker hob and oven, bedroom and hall convector heaters, iron, hairdryer and much more - that it seems wrong to be paying a high daytime premium for these just because of one night storage heater in a small (10.5m2) well-insulated room.
So I've decided to change to a standard meter, which SSE will do for free. And I can buy a LOT-20 compliant Dimplex Monterey MPFE range heater for a fraction the cost of a night storage replacement.
Before I go ahead, I would like to know whether it is feasible (for a registered installer) to connect the existing cable and MCB to the new heater? What do others feel about my suggestion? I am of course aware that this heater cannot be used with an automatically-switched circuit, as warned by the makers - not that I'd want to do that anyway.
Many thanks, Alec.

 

[AndyPRK]

you likely have an automatic switched circuit now? that is on at night.
so you need an electrican to move this cable (at the consumer unit) to a 24 hr supply.

Do you have 2 fuse boxes ?

 

[JohnW2]

My one and only elderly night storage heater has finally given up the ghost and spares for it are no longer available. However, there is so much being consumed during the day - 7KW shower, cooker hob and oven, bedroom and hall convector heaters, iron, hairdryer and much more - that it seems wrong to be paying a high daytime premium for these just because of one night storage heater in a small (10.5m2) well-insulated room.

Traditionally that would have been a very valid consideration. Traditionally, the high day-time electricity cost was such that, in the absence of night storage heaters, it was for most people financially disadvantageous to have E7.

However, as I've reported here a number of times, one now has to look around more carefully. Whether intentionally or the result of a mistake on their part, the E7 deal I got (fixed for 2 years) when I swapped to ESB earlier this year has even the daytime rate lower (albeit only very slightly lower) than their non-E7 rate, which means that having E7 is a no-brainer - with this E7 rate, even if I used NO electricity at cheap rate, my bills would be no higher (in fact, slightly lower) than without E7.

Having subsequently looked and asked around, ESB are not the only company with tariffs like mine, so I suggest that you look around carefully!!

Kind Regards, John

 

[Corazones]

Thanks, John, that is very helpful and well worth investigating.

However, another consideration is that a LOT20 night storage heater is over £400 dearer than a LOT20 non-storage type of the same make. Surely it would take a long time to recover that extra initial outlay? and I get the impression (perhaps mistaken) that there is a greater choice of standard fixed-term deals.

Have any other members made the meter change and found it beneficial?

Kind regards, Alec.

 

[JohnW2]

Thanks, John, that is very helpful and well worth investigating. However, another consideration is that a LOT20 night storage heater is over £400 dearer than a LOT20 non-storage type of the same make. Surely it would take a long time to recover that extra initial outlay? and I get the impression (perhaps mistaken) that there is a greater choice of standard fixed-term deals.

Much of that is true, but I think it would be worth you at least going through the exercise of doing the sums, since E7 savings can be appreciable (albeit less than they used to be (see below) - as you will see, even without storage hetaers, I'm currently saving £200-£250 pa by having E7.

Have any other members made the meter change and found it beneficial?

Fortunately, since all the tariffs are published, provided that one can make some sort of estimate of one's day and night usage, one can do the sums for oneself, and thereby determine whether E7 would be beneficial for one's particular situation.

See the graph below, which shows my experience over the past 2½ years, albeit our position (as regards electricity usage) is probably pretty unusual. I do not have any storage heaters, but I do use electricity for (night-time) water heating (which amounts for nearly half of our electricity usage - so maybe comparable with one storage heater), and we run many of our 'utility room appliances' at cheap rate. We had had E7 with E.ON for years, and until April 2018, the benefit of E7 had remained roughly unchanged for us, resulting in a saving of £250-£300 p.a. (in comparison with a standard single-rate tariff). In April 2018 they changed their E7 tariff such as to dramatically reduce the advantage of E7, with our saving falling to little over £100 pa. Since we changed to ESB in April of this year (2019), we've been enjoying a saving of £200-£250 pa. To put these savings into perspective, our total bill, with E7, is just a little over £1,000 (and a night-time usage of 45% or so of the total) - so, for us, the saving is currently 20% or so.

Kind Regards, John

 

[Corazones]

John, that's really kind of you to reply in such detail, and it goes a long way towards convincing me that replacing the old night storage with a modern version of the same thing is the way to go. The flat is actually rented out and so capital expenditure is more of a problem to me than running costs, but it did have night storage before and it's fairer on the tenant to keep it that way if there's a real saving in his running costs, as your figures show.

The only remaining question is regarding the size required, as - when the night storage heater was running - it always seemed grossly too beefy for a tiny room. The floor area is only 13.5m2 and yet the original Dimplex XL5N heater was, I believe, around 3.5kW. I ran an online check to find the recommendation for a conventional heater under those circumstances - south of the country, excellent insulation, double glazing, thick carpet etc - and it came out at just over 1kW. Do you know of a similar online calculator for night storage heaters?

Thanks again for your invaluable help,
Alec.

 

[JohnW2]

John, that's really kind of you to reply in such detail, and it goes a long way towards convincing me that replacing the old night storage with a modern version of the same thing is the way to go. The flat is actually rented out and so capital expenditure is more of a problem to me than running costs, but it did have night storage before and it's fairer on the tenant to keep it that way if there's a real saving in his running costs, as your figures show.

You're welcome. The decision is obviously yours but, if you decide to stay with a storage heater and E7, you need to look very carefully at available tariffs and your choice of supplier. As I said, changes in E.ON's E7 tariff in April 2018 resulted my my 'E7 saving' falling to about £100 - and, had I not changed to ESB in April 2019, the saving (relative to E.ON's best available single-rate tariff) would then have fallen to even less than that (not to mention the fact that the actual cost, of any tariff from E.ON, would also have increased considerably)

The only remaining question is regarding the size required, as - when the night storage heater was running - it always seemed grossly too beefy for a tiny room. The floor area is only 13.5m2 and yet the original Dimplex XL5N heater was, I believe, around 3.5kW. I ran an online check to find the recommendation for a conventional heater under those circumstances - south of the country, excellent insulation, double glazing, thick carpet etc - and it came out at just over 1kW. Do you know of a similar online calculator for night storage heaters?

I can't really help you much there (although others probably can), beyond saying that, as I understand it, 3 - 3.5kW is probably fairly typical for a one-room storage heater. You need to understand that the calculation of heating requirement such as you've done relates to real-time heating (i.e. heating throughout the period the room needs to be heated), whereas with a storage heater, an entire "days' worth" of heat has to be stored during the 7 cheap hours - one would therefore probably expect, for a given room, the power of storage heater required to be considerably greater than would be required for a 'real-time' daytime conventional heater.

I would have thought that if you asked Mr Google, you would be able to find on-line calculators for storage heaters.

Kind Regards, John