New Heating System

It's not fossil fuel heating but it is inefficient compared to a heat pump. With a storage heater you get the same amount of heat out as you put in with electricity. 

With a heat pump you can get three or four times as much heat out for the same amount of electricity. It's complicated but moving heat from the outside to the inside (sounds impossible but it's true) is easier that generating the heat directly. So it's basically a third or a quarter of the price in electricity for the same amount of heat. I'll restrain my inner physicist and stop there.

Peter

Ah, I was thinking of the electric shower and your new electric water heater. No it’s absolutely not a requirement to be with OVO to use this forum. I’m with Octopus as they have a smart tariff which I use as we have an electric car. We also have solar and battery, and a heat pump, which was a big improvement on the previous heating which was gas powered warm air. 

The imminent demise of Economy 7 has been mentioned on occasion ever since I first became personally involved ten years ago. The source you quote here is one of two I found, interestingly both from commercial enterprises keen to consult with and advise housing providers at vast expense on how to proceed when the properties they own no longer have any affordable heating option. I haven’t yet found any authoritative basis for the pronouncement, but I’d expect there to be one, from the energy suppliers’ and networks’ industry bodies if no-one else. ‘By 2030’ is only three years away, so well within medium-term budgeting scopes. 

Where can I direct my landlady to find official notification that steps will have to be taken within a year or two to ensure my house remains both inhabitable and affordable? 

​@juliamc Octopus is where i am going too they do have an Economy 7 tarrif Snug Octopud i believe its called but not in use at 6he moment due to the war. So have suggested a variable tarriff.

You're right ​@Firedog in that there appears to be no official line on terminating E7 and not from any Ofgem source where you would expect it to be originating from. I suspect that it is the situation that you are in along with millions of others that there is no equivalent tariff that you could move to without being penalised.

I suspect, however, suppliers will eventually say they are not prepared to take on new customers for E7 and if you want to switch then you have to choose another tariff. The other thing that may happen is that they will continue to push the night and day rate closer together until there is no significant difference as they have been doing for years if not a decade and that may be the way they effectively abolish it.

Peter 

Does anyone know if Octopus Snug needs the same kind of meter setup that OVO Economy 7 needs?

On their FAQs:  “Will any SMETS2 meter work with Octopus Snug?”

the answer is: “Unfortunately not, as part of your onboarding journey we'll need to run some additional checks. If you're already with Octopus Energy, click 'Start my switch' above and we'll run these checks for you.

Due to the variety of electricity meters in the UK we can't guarantee compatibility. If your meter has 4 or 5 terminals (that's wires coming out the bottom) it's more likely to be compatible than those with 6 or 7 terminals. Your meter will also need to be set up with a compatible ALCS calendar.”

The good thing ​@Viv1966 is that you have plenty of time to sort this out, as you’ll be getting lots of solar and not so much need for heating over the summer !

Generally Octopus use the half hour slots to calculate the different rates. It will just depend on if they can reliably read the Kaifa meter and its half hour totals (the one shown in the earlier picture is a 4 terminal version)

Oh my goodness i didn't know this would be so complicated!  I have spoken to Octopus and they seem quite happy for us to be with them on this tarriff. Should i tell them which meter i have before i join up? 

Quite. I think a major consideration is the traditional E7 arrangement where peak and offpeak usage is recorded on separate meter registers. Most suppliers are now moving away from this model and embracing Time of Use (ToU) plans based on smart meters’ half-hourly (Hh) usage data. OVO are real dinosaurs in this respect, but I hope that they’re just making sure the billing system works properly before inflicting smart ToU plans on their customers. We’ve already seen one supplier who hoped to rely exclusively on Hh billing fail spectacularly, and there may well have to be changes to the standard licence conditions to cope with new arrangements. 

You don't need to. They will get all the information they need from your current supplier. 

Peter

Hello again ​@Viv1966 👋

There is a bit of Catch 22 situation here, I’m afraid. BP quoted Octopus’ FAQs:

So you have to switch before they will check whether your meter’s compatible, but you won’t want to switch if it’s not. Yes, you should tell them exactly which meter you have - a 4-wire KAIFA MA120.

They mention the requirement for a ‘compatible ALCS calendar’, whatever that means. If there is an extra switch inside the meter to send on/off signals (that’s what ALCS means) to an external contactor, then there will be an ALCS calendar which the supplier has to configure. This has to be done remotely - a visiting engineer can’t do it. The calendar contains details of on and off times for every day of the year; for most domestic customers, the times will be the same for every day. Sadly, we don’t know whether your meter has an ALCS or not - as I said earlier, it’s ‘optional’. 

As ​@juliamc remarked, you have time to get this sorted out before the next heating season begins, so it would be best not to rush.

You asked too about the ‘Solar Box’. As I understand it, this isn’t a device - it’s literally just a cardboard box with some bits and pieces in it that would be needed to set up your heaters to take advantage of the solar panels. It seems silly to install these special heaters otherwise, so I’d suggest you contact whoever arranged the installation to say you’re missing these extra bits and they should have been installed at the same time as the heaters themselves.