Hello please can someone enlighten my concern. During day time we usually used electricity just more than 1 pound sometimes less, but during midnight when we wakes up around and before using electricity again we had been charged already by 2 pounds including the standing charge ( 2 pounds plus just in the middle of the night? ) is that really normal ? During night only boiler for heating water plus refrigeration are on standby. Thanks
Best answer by Firedog
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That sounds like your hot water heater coming on to top up the tank. Are you on a day/night tariff like Economy 7? Have a look at the Plan page of your online account to see. While you’re there, look at the Usage pages for each day; do you see a spike in usage after midnight?
Electric water heaters are often rated at 3 kW, so even if it’s only on for half an hour, it could use 1.5 kWh in the hour after it switches on.
We are just using only electric at home with 2 meter rate and it’s our first time to encounter this. So are they any solution or it’s just normal rate for us? I mean 2 pounds while we are sleep including standing charge?
Also we are on pay as you go .
If you have a two-rate meter, it’s possible that it’s set to switch things like heating and hot water on during the night. You might have to stay awake to see what happens after midnight; water heaters often have a pilot light to indicate that they’re switched on. They can also be noisy, so you can hear if the water is heating up.
Depending on the size of the hot water tank and the amount of hot water you use each day, it may not be necessary to have it heating up every night, if that is what is happening. A 3 kW water heater running for three hours overnight would use 9 kWh, which could easily cost £1.50 at current night rates. Add on a 55p standing charge and you’re already spending more than £2 during the night.
This is only speculation on my part; we’d have to know a lot more about your set-up to be able to say what’s happening with any certainty. It might help for a start to have a clear photo of your meter showing its display screen and the wires attached to it.
Actually this is what we have at home and we dont know how to operate and set up the timer 😊 the lower wire is switch on and the upper one is off
OK. That’s not what I asked for (“a clear photo of your meter”), but it helps a lot.
You can see that there are two heating elements, one at the bottom and the other near the top. The bottom one will be controlled by the meter, so it should come on at or soon after midnight and stay on until the thermostat switches it off. By this time, all the water in the tank will be hot, because what is heated rises to the top.
The upper element will only heat the top part of the tank. It’s usually used as a top-up if you run out of hot water during the day. It will be fed from the same circuit as the rest of your electrical equipment, so the electricity it uses will be charged at the daytime rate if it’s on during the day.
As I said, it depends on how much hot water you normally use during the day whether it’s necessary to heat up the whole tank every night. Do you ever find the water cooling down when you run a bath, for example? The tank isn’t very big (60 or 70l), so just about enough for one bath.
The timer switch only works when there’s power to it, so if you turn off the switch on the wall below it, the clock will stop and the timer’s not much use. The triangle on the dial should point to the current time - in your picture, it’s pointing to about 22:45. You can adjust it by gripping the dial and turning it gently clockwise as shown by the curved arrows.
The on/off times are governed by the ‘jockeys’ on the dial. Push a jockey in (towards the wall) for on and push it out for off. Use a pencil point or similar to manipulate the jockeys.
The rocker switch has three settings: On, Off and Timer. When it’s on, it will be using electricity and heating up the water in the top of the tank, and the red pilot light will tell you when this is happening.
If you use all or most of the hot water every day, you may have the best arrangement, because the bottom element will switch on at night to heat up the tank at night rate, and switch off again when the thermostat tells it to. You could then turn the upper element on when necessary if you’ve used all the hot water and need a bit more for a shower or to do the washing up, for example. This will be at the expensive high rate, so remember to switch it off again. You’d have to experiment to find out how long it needs to be on to heat enough water for the immediate requirement.
Heating is expensive, so it’s worth while learning how best to control it.
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