THTC / Separate Radio Teleswitch and Meter- Can I get a smart meter?

I seem to have hit a nerve with some of the volunteers so will comment no further on this (after this post) apart from to say that I still firmly believe people will lose out. I have given examples of where this may be the case.
 

I did not say I would lose out however  it will definitely inconvenience me not having a 24 hour off peak supply especially during winter periods.

I repeat again that I at no point said I’d use my own meter so would not have to go through eons of red tape  and a non rts time switch is a solution  whether or not a company would install one, it should have been seen as a possibility.  

the point still remains that this tariff has been in existence for decades  sse and Ovo had ages to come up with a practical solution and didn’t.  Only time will tell if the existing off peak solutions will work for people who have to change and there are still thousands of them if not tens of thousands. 

If you’re not willing to share all the details of your current rates and consumption figures, I’d at least like to know what you’re charged for peak usage, offpeak usage and 24-hour heating usage. The tariffs for existing THTC customers aren’t published anywhere (that I can find, that is), so I’ve no way of knowing whether or not those moving away from RTS systems are going to ‘lose out’, and if they are, by how much. 

This is a topic I’m interested in as I will be moving from THTC in the near future. My current setup has replaced the storage heaters with panel heaters so all my heating currently comes via the 24 hour cheap rate. The reason behind this was that the storage heaters were old and needing replacing and had no easy controls on them timers, etc. On the advice of a local electrician I went with panel heaters, he said they would cost about the same. As it turned out this was the case and the first winter with the new panel heaters used approx the same amount of energy. Now the move from THTC means that I will probably lose out although for the E10 tariff that is hard to quantify.

As you can see from my yearly usage (1754 kWh at low rate, 3439 kWh at high rate) you can see that it would be £60 more expensive going to a single rate. The current E10 rates for me are 22.8 high, 18.04 low and 59.25 standing charge (these prices do not include VAT). It’s difficult to predict what my cost would be using E10 so I’m thinking that a single rate meter would probably be best for my situation but this does mean that I ‘lose out’ with the switch of of the RTS signal. 

@awills61 Thank you for those data. I’m afraid I’m not much the wiser: are you charged the same offpeak rate on the 24-hour heating circuit as for offpeak hours (which?) on the other circuit? Or is there a special heating rate?

I’m just wondering what those two-thirds of your consumption at peak rate are being used by if not heating. One explanation would be charging an EV, but in that case OVO’s Charge Anytime plan would cut a great deal off the cost. 

E10 might be able to give you five hours of cheap-rate during the day, which would go a long way to keeping you warm and also allow you to do electric showering, washing, drying and cooking at offpeak rates if you’re able to be flexible with timings. The overnight five hours would be enough to heat up a sizeable tankful of water for baths and washing up. Do you know the E10 timings? 
  

[EDIT] It looks as if you might have mixed up the usage figures ‘1754 kWh at low rate, 3439 kWh at high rate’. The costs you give suggest it’s the other way round, in which case my EV remarks don’t make much sense - sorry! 

@Firedog yes you are right I did mix up the rates should be 1754 at high rate, 3439 at low rate. The times I’ve seen for E10 in my region are 4:30 to 7:30 am, 1:30 to 4:30 pm and 8:30 pm to 12:30  am. 

The 24 hour rate is the same as the off peak rate.

My heating comes on at 7:30 am and goes of at 9:00 pm so there would be some use of the cheap rate during this period but I’m not sure what the saving is or even if it could be worked out. Flexing times for cooking etc. whilst possible would not be straightforward as the times for the rate between 1:30 and 4:30pm are not ideal. I don’t have an electric shower so the cheap rates would be good for water. However given the single rate tariff has a lower rate than the high rate on E10 and the standing charge is cheaper it’s difficult to come to a definitive answer of what would be best

Thank you. Where did you see these times?

The times are initially set by the DNO and then applied by the supplier to the smart meter. One thing to be wary of is whether they change in British Summertime; as far as I have been able to find out, this particular regime is (unusually) in local time, which makes it a bit easier to manage. Most are set in GMT, meaning that there’s an hour’s difference during BST. I’ll try and find out for certain.

Since you say the heating currently comes on at 07:30 and stays on until 21:00, I assume that there’s some sort of thermostatic control to switch the heaters off when the room temperature reaches a set level - otherwise you might find yourself sweltering on a warm day in October and pouring money out of the window if the heaters stayed on all day. I think you’ll have to spend a few days investigating just how long it takes to get each room up to a comfortable temperature and how long the heaters stay on for once that level is reached. I’m thinking that you might be able to get away with, say,

(a) some of the heaters on the offpeak (switched) circuit, set to come on at say 06:00 and off at 21:00, if that switch-off time is late enough to keep you warm enough until bedtime;
(b) one or two heaters in the room(s) you spend most time in on the other (constant) circuit, so they could be turned on (at peak rate) if it gets too cold. These could be simple fan heaters or modern infra-red panels, for example.
(c) If the water heater has a time switch, it may be enough to run it only during the 04:30-07:30 offpeak slot. Again, you’d have to check whether this is enough - it depends both on how big the tank is and how much hot water you need each day. If it’s not enough to ensure there’s still hot water when you need it in the evening, you’d have to turn it on again during, say, the afternoon offpeak period. You shouldn’t have to use peak price electricity to heat water.

It’s worth mentioning again that all usage in offpeak hours is charged at offpeak rates, so that’s when power-hungry appliances should be used if at all possible. Even using a 1500W hoover for half an hour a day could amount to 20kWh a month. 

You can say that again! Lots of tests and sums ahead if you’re to make the best decision before you get your new meter.

I contributed to this discussion about 4 months ago (pages 5,6,7) asking why I could not have my THTC/RTS system removed and replaced with a single smart meter. I ws told that it was not possible, to wait for OVO’s smart meters solution to the THTC/RTS issue and that other suppliers wouldn’t touch my setup. Thought I’d report that we switched to Octopus without any issue in June - they knew all about THTC and didn’t miss a beat. Today, they have ripped out all the old THTC hardware and replaced it with a single rather elegant looking smart meter. I’m now looking forward to selecting the right tariff to make best use of my solar panels and fancy storage heaters. Might even treat myself to a battery for Christmas.

In the best answer at the top of this topic there is a link to complex meter types. The times are in that document, MPAN 17.

@awills61 Thank you: I see it now. I read that article when it was posted a year ago, but I’m afraid some of the details faded from memory in the interim. Of course, sod’s law says that it makes no mention of whether the times are local or GMT, but if the regime* is the one it looks like, then I think they’re local times, which may be a blessing or an annoyance depending on circumstances.

*   Regime is the term used for the set of timings; the full name is Time Pattern Regime, which you may find referred to as TPR. There will be two TPRs stored in the meter, one for peak and one for offpeak. Together, they comprise an SSC - Standard Settlement Configuration - which governs how much the DNO charges the supplier for the electricity you consume. The only SSC I could find which matches those timings is SSC 938:

A different source tells me that this particular SSC always uses local times. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. 

That’s really interesting, so thanks for coming back to tell us. Although your advanced set-up (e.g. with solar panels) won’t apply to most of the RTS refugees, it would be very helpful if you could keep us posted on how things progress. Meanwhile, would you be so good as to tell us which region you’re in? The first two digits of your 13-digit MPAN will do. And it would also be good to know what sort of smart meter you now have - make and model. It will also be good to learn what tariff you’re eventually able to settle on.

There are many frustrated RTS customers who will be very interested in your experience, if you’re willing to share it.