why is my electric costing £10 a night? storage heaters

Someone will help.. can you post a photo of your meter, showing what is displayed on the screen and say what time you took the photo. Also what postcode area are you, first part is enough.

If the readings you’re seeing are actual rather than estimates (that can still happen with a smart meter), then it sounds like your off peak times are wrong. The whole idea of any of the economy tariffs is that you use more at a lower cost to charge up your heaters and then they’re giving out heat during the higher cost times without taking power. 
As Julia mentions, a photo of your meters and immediate wiring might give a clue but we have seen a few examples of the peak and off peak registers being the wrong way around. 

Hey ​@Flora48 

Sorry to hear about this.

I’m glad to see a couple of our volunteers have already stopped by, it would be helpful if you could share the photos/details they’ve asked for.

It sounds like your tariff may not be set up correctly, and that it may be charging all usage to 1 rate, instead of a day and night rate. Your meter should be sending 2 readings, a day and night reading.

We don’t have access to accounts here at the Forum so it’s hard to tell this for sure, but it sounds likely based on the information you’ve provided. If you’ve already raised a complaint about this issue, I would ask them to reinvestigate this so they can correct it. If you’ve not already raised a complaint about this, we’d recommend doing that so they team can look into this for you.

• Everything you need to know about an Economy 7 (Eco 7) energy plan F.A.Q.

Keep us updated with how you get on.

Hi to everyone who has helped. Today I discovered despite being told my night rate was approximately 16.5p per hour it’s still actually 25.45 at 5am this morning!

This has already almost financially crippled me. I have today sent an email to the person who was handling the now closed complaint regarding the previous issue as he was the one who phoned me and told me the tariff. My postcode is DD8 by the way. 

PS I just had another look. There is no plan available in DD8 that has an offpeak rate as low as 16.5 p/kWh, so I can’t say where the advisor who called you was getting his information from. You can see all the available plans here: Our prices | OVO Energy. Be sure to use the filters (Electricity, Multi-rate, Pay as you go) to cut down the number of irrelevant plans shown.

I suspect that you’ve been put wrongly on an Economy 7 plan with day/night rates the same. That would tally with “I can see the usage during the night is approximately £1.25 per hour and then drops to about 10p per hour during the day.”

Dear lovely people who are helping me. I checked and the day rate is the same as the night rate. I have noticed that the immersion water heater which I was previously told needs to have a signal from the meter to switch on is switching on and off at the correct times. This has only happened since the new smart meter was installed. I have just phoned the OVO complaints team as I did have a complaint and at the end the last phone call from them was to say that the tariff previously mentioned was applied (or not!). I was unable to speak to the original person dealing with the complaint but was told that this would be resolved soon as in tonight by a “switchback “.   I was then hurried off the phone call with no further explanation. I then googled switchback and it says that this is when a smart meter is changed to a traditional meter. I’m really hoping this is not what is happening although I’m very doubtful that this will be happening by this evening! I definitely don’t want a traditional meter installed as I need to be on pay as you go. 
 I also questioned the tariff  I had written down the tariff I mentioned earlier when it was quoted to me by the complaint handler. I normally don’t pay attention to tariffs but because of the appalling recent situation with OVO I now pay attention to everything they say! I did not receive an answer and I have to wait until Monday for the advisor to call me back  

Advice please?

Thanks. By ‘the correct times’, you mean the times I quoted earlier - 04:00-07:00, 13:00-16:00 and 20:30-23:30? If so, that’s an encouraging sign - it means your meter’s switch for the heating equipment is working as intended for Economy 9. As regards water heating, it may actually be overkill, depending on how big your hot water tank is and how much you use each day. If you don’t use a whole tankful each day, it may be too much to have it reheating for the six daytime offpeak hours; in many houses, much of that heat only goes to keep the starlings warm in the roof. It normally takes an average immersion heater only two or three hours to heat the tank up from cold, and if it’s reasonably well insulated, it should stay hot enough for a day or two. 

You didn’t mention the storage heaters - are they following the same schedule as the immersion heater? They should be ...

All that remains is to get the right tariff on to your meter, so don’t let them baffle you with obscure terms like ‘switchback’. Tell them you opted for Economy 9, and that’s what you expect to get, with the rates in my earlier screenshot. You may want to do some sums to see how much extra you’ve been charged by not being on the tariff you expected, then ask for that back.

Good luck!  

Excellent advice. I was told by the complaints person that economy 9 was between 11.30pm and 7.30am and that’s the time I hear the water heater switching on  I don’t have any lights at the storage heaters to see if they are charging at the same time  I did manually change the charging times on the storage heaters to this time a couple of weeks ago when I was investigating what the issue could be but of course now I know why it made no difference  OVO did say they would fix it today so I hoping that the tariff changes at midnight to the correct one whatever that’s meant to be like it was supposed to happen a month ago! 
 

Thanks again for your very useful advice 

Economy 9 is a plan giving nine hours of offpeak electricity in three 3-hour slots, one during the night, one in the afternoon and one in the late evening. I’m not sure what your complaints handler was referring to.

If your water heater is switching on at 23:30, then what I wrote earlier doesn’t apply. I really hope that OVO’s fix today will get you sorted out, but my confidence level isn’t high …

Next time you have to contact Support, I’d suggest using webchat rather than the phone. That way, you can get a written record of what was actually said, not just your recollection of it. I can hardly believe that a complaints handler would say something so wrong as “economy 9 was between 11.30pm and 7.30am” so I’m wondering what your conversation actually consisted of. There must be a misunderstanding somewhere.

I’m 100 percent sure of the tariff and times given to me by the complaints manager as I wrote them down specifically because of my previous experiences with OVO. I have his name and his email address. I emailed him yesterday with the information and he is apparently going phone back on Monday. In the meantime no fix happened yesterday.  
 

I was also surprised by the times and tariff because I was on economy 10 (well I was supposed to be ) and then economy 7 recently so I had an idea of the times etc. 
 

i find the chat is very difficult because operators don’t understand the issues normally. This has been one of my biggest problems 
 

Now you’ve got me really confused, I’m afraid. When you started this topic two days ago, you wrote “… I’m newly on Economy 9”.  When did Economy 10 and Economy 7 come into the picture - since then, or before? What did you ask for when your meter exchange was booked? 
  

Yes, I recognize that difficulty. However, you mentioned having a complaints manager. If you have entered a complaint, the case passes to the resolution team to sort out, you should hear from a named resolution specialist (they have a baffling variety of titles, I’m afraid) and you should be given a complaint number. Does this sound familiar?

If you have your complaint number, be sure to quote it at the beginning of the real chat (e.g. “I would like to hear how my complaint no. 1234567 is progressing”). That should remove any need to go over old ground again. 

I was on economy 10 for several years but I suspected that I wasn’t actually on the correct tariff even then. I decided to ask for a smart meter because I wanted to monitor the usage and was given one which unfortunately stopped communicating after a couple of months. Then I was given a different meter that wasn’t a smart meter but it stopped my immersion water heater from getting the signal to switch on at night. It took me a 2 year battle with SSE and a complaint to the ombudsman and then a traditional key meter was fitted and I was put on economy 7. This was around the time OVO took over from SSE however OVO then did a key overwrite to compensate for an engineer not arriving. This according to OVO then messed up the meter and stopped the economy 7 working this was in May this year. After another complaint this time regarding why I was now paying over the odds for my electricity because I no longer had economy 7and another issue OVO then installed the current smart meter on the 15th of January. A couple of days later the complaint handler then phoned me and told me that at midnight that night I would be put on economy 9 as that was the best tariff for the all electric storage heaters and the times and tariff previously mentioned. I have estimated that I am paying approximately £4 a day more or should I say night on the single rate tariff than what I should be if I was on the economy 9 tariff. I will take note of the usage in kw tonight and work it out precisely in preparation for when or if the complaint handler does phone me on Monday. 

I do also have a complaint no which was closed when the complaint according to OVO was resolved by putting in the current smart meter and putting me on the correct tariff. I have used the complaint no to get in touch with the same complaint handler to say that they have not in fact resolved the issue 

Thanks. That’s quite a saga. It might have helped if you’d told it at the beginning, though.
  

OK, so this is one update that didn’t take, if your immersion heater is coming on at 23:30 instead of 04:00 as it would be on Economy 9. It’s also clear that the other update - to the tariff itself - didn’t work either, because at 05:09 you should have been on the offpeak rate of 20.78 p/kWh, not the 24.45 p/kWh your IHD was showing. 

On Monday, please impress on your complaint handler that your tariff information needs updating in the meter, and that the load control switch has to be set to the same timings as the tariff. I hope you manage to move forward … 

I’m frankly exhausted and sick of checking every single thing that OVO does. I haven’t mentioned everything in the saga because it wouldn’t be relevant. It does include engineers turning up the next day after the arranged appointment or not at all. As well as a cable that was “in the wrong place “.
 

I’m thinking that there are probably people out there in the same as me on a too high tariff who haven’t realised and simply trust as I did that OVO is doing their job!  
 

Thank you again for listening and your help. I will update you on Monday 

Thanks to Firedog giving me the correct tariff and assuming I’m supposed to be on Smart Economy 9 I have now been able to work out exactly how 

much I’ve been overcharged per day (£2.33) and I am ready to ask for this money refunded