Everything you need to know about an Economy 7 (Eco 7) energy plan

As a normal user, not sure why I am on eco 7 ! Would it be more cost effective to go on a normal Tariff ? Tia

Hey there @Steveo !

I don’t think you’ll benefit from Economy 7 if you don’t have storage heaters or an electric vehicle, so switching back to a single-rate setup is probably a good idea. The Support Team can take care of this for you over the phone - it needs verbal confirmation so Live Chat and Email won’t work for this purpose (and neither will social media, sorry!).

There’s just one thing that I would like to double check first. Please can I see some photos of your meters? Ideally, please make sure at least one photo includes all the equipment in the meter cupboard and anything that’s directly wired into the electric meter. This will help me to figure out if there’s any potential snags you might encounter along the way.

Thanks!

Hey, thanks for your prompt reply, I will certainly do this asap 👍

No worries. Glad to help. :)

In some cases, switching back from E7 to Single-Rate is as simple as having OVO agree to modify your contract, but in other cases it can involve a Meter Exchange - especially if some kind of Time Switch is currently installed which is controlling one or more circuits. Having a MEX in these cases to remove that from the equation is of course completely free of charge - but may require a Smart Meter upgrade. This is one of the reasons I like to help you to double check first, so that you have a better idea upfront.

Ok thanks. Pic's as follows.

Perfecto! Thanks for the snaps. :)

I have some very good news for you then. You’ve got an S1 Secure Liberty 100 Smart Meter - and these are fully compatible with OVO in both S1 and “S1+” configurations. You won’t need a MEX in this case so all that would need to happen, is for OVO to reconfigure it to Single-Rate Mode once you modify the contract. This can be done remotely with no need for an engineer visit, so you won’t have any disruption to your supply at all, not even for five seconds.

Pretty much the only significant differences that you’ll notice will be that your future bills and meter readings would be flattened to reflect the fact you’re no longer on E7 - and all your usage will be billed at the same rate regardless of when you use it. The meter will also only show a single meter reading in the future as well.

So yep, this is a pretty easy one that can be sorted out in a single phone call. OVO will discuss this with you before you commit, so you’ll have a chance to double check that it’s definitely the right move before you sign the dotted line.

I hope this helps. :)

Cheers, that's good to know. Thanks again for your help 👊

Hi again, just spoke to cust services, and they said to they could change me to a single rate tariff, still receiving the both readings, but only use the one for billing. When asked if they need to reconfigure the meter, he came back after speaking to someone, and said we probably cant reconfigure the meter !! Not too sure if this is correct. what would your thought be please ?

No worries. It should be fine either way - OVO’s systems are capable of handling E7 meters being used for Single-Rate setups and will generally figure it out automatically.

From my understanding, reconfiguring that particular Smart Meter should be as simple as  OVO throwing a few SMETS Commands at the meter remotely, provided it’s communicating properly. But even if comms are down, you can always do manual readings and have the system run the numbers.

I’m wondering if it’s currently being migrated to DCC right now - this does cause a temporary WAN drop during the process, but it recovers once OVO is able to reconnect post-migration.

You should be fairly safe to switch to Single-Rate either way though and go from there. Feel free to mention this forum thread as it’ll help with context.

Hi @Steveo and welcome to the OVO online community!

Great to see you’ve already been given some great advice by our community volunteer, @Blastoise186. As you’ve advised without a high-energy consuming device active overnight (such as an EV or storage heaters), an Economy 7 tariff might not be the most cost-effective plan for you at the moment (we usually estimate that you’d need to be using at least 35% of energy at off-peak times to see a benefit).

Glad to hear the Support Team have already been able to update you on to a single-rate plan:

Just to chip in and explain the thinking behind this one - whilst the function to change your meter to a single-rate mode does exist, unfortunately we’re limited by the current function of our billing system to remove the extra register here.  This shouldn’t affect the management of your account whilst with OVO - you may notice that you’ll still be charged for day and night-time usage, but as we’ll use the same unit rate for each register your overall charges will be the same as they would be on a single register.

Let us know if that makes sense (it can be tricky to explain these background processes!) 

Makes sense thanks

I beg to disagree with the likely benefit of Economy 7 being only if you have heavy-consumption items such as Storage Radiators and EVs.  Also consider your personal choices.

We get benefit from Economy 7 because we choose to do our clothes washing and our dish washing overnight. That pushes enough consumption to make it worth while, and there’s only two of us not a family so we don’t need washes every day. Ours is a combined washer-drier, so on the rare occasions that we dry as well (rather than hanging on coat hangers or in the airing cupboard), that is even more effective use of cheaper power.

Since having solar panels, that has made the choice even more biased in favour of E7.  I’ve even dug out an old timer (that we had originally for Christmas tree lights) and use that for the phone and tablet chargers so that they charge overnight!

@Jess_OVO NB the table of when E7 night time rate applies by MPAN number has disappeared from the original post above.

I’d not realised till today that BST / SummerTime isn’t reflected by my make of meter, so I might benefit even more if I avoid the overlap hour.

The layout of the Economy 7 bills changed on 14 September.  Whereas my bill previously showed Day and Night, it now shows Offpeak and Peak.  Not only has it changed the names it uses, but it has changed the order of showing them. Change for the sake of change.

Do the times remain the same?

Great spot on the vanishing table there, @EverythingNeedsAUserName - not sure where that wandered off to!

Interesting points to make about the other use cases for Economy 7, particularly with Solar panels reducing your daytime grid consumption - How well to you think our suggestion of 35% off-peak usage lines up with your own consumption patterns?

 

The layout of the Economy 7 bills changed on 14 September.  Whereas my bill previously showed Day and Night, it now shows Offpeak and Peak.  Not only has it changed the names it uses, but it has changed the order of showing them. Change for the sake of change.

Do the times remain the same?

 

Looks like the change in how your day/night or peak/off-peak registers are labelled is merely an update on our billing platform - rather than a change to your meter times. Is it an OVO smart meter you’ve got installed there, @EverythingNeedsAUserName ?

I've got an S1 Secure Liberty 100 Smart Meter installed by OVO.

When I get time I'll post the % night rate electricity consumption from my spreadsheet and how it has changed before and after solar. 

Yep - so the meter times for your meter should match those given in the table above then, @EverythingNeedsAUserName - not factoring the BST hours.

Would be really interested to see that breakdown - particularly relevant to those who might be considering installing Solar panels in future too! 

The first chart is based on each quarterly bill, the second on annual totals.  From the first, you can see that since we had Solar Panels installed in late 2015, there has been a much higher proportion of Night Rate usage in summer, as the panels cover more of our daytime use. 40% summer, 28% winter.  Annually about 33%.

We inherited the Economy 7 from the previous owners.  Early on, our dishwasher and clothes washer didn’t have timers for overnight use. 

Several of the peaks were from estimated bills where I’d not got an actual reading to substitute in my data set.  We also swapped suppliers several times until joining OVO in April 2014. There was a lot of weirdness between getting the panels installed 2015 and getting a smart meter in 2017.

Each time I have investigated a new contract, I have checked using our actual usage to see if a standard meter would be cheaper.  It never has been.

Fantastic to see this data visualized, @EverythingNeedsAUserName. 

The first chart is based on each quarterly bill, the second on annual totals.  From the first, you can see that since we had Solar Panels installed in late 2015, there has been a much higher proportion of Night Rate usage in summer, as the panels cover more of our daytime use. 40% summer, 28% winter.  Annually about 33%.

Any ideas on the spike in 2017-2018 for that night time usage split? Related to estimation again?

Idiocy or carelessness! 

I’ve found my pdfs of the bills and it is absolutely clear that I had transcribed the data into the wrong columns.  The bills had changed the order of presentation, but did so again in June 2017 which is why the data got put in the right columns again!  When I got the smart meter, I changed the way I had been entering the data, by using a separate tab. 

I should have delayed submitting that post, as I couldn’t explain the peaks, but accidentally clicked send before I went away for the weekend.  I no longer have the older bills, so the odd peaks and troughs prior to 2004 are a mystery. Back then bills were only quarterly, and life was even more complicated, because there were low, normal and normal 2 prices! The normal had a premium for the first so many units per period and was replaced by the daily standing charge in 2011. 

This is what it should look like.

Ahhhhh that’s a much better graph with a clear trend to off peak usage. 

This is v interesting. I was paying bills in 2011 but I don’t remember this, probably as I was a single rate, zero generation household. It does remind me of an idea posted by @Simon1D in an old AMA thread, about possible replacements of the standing charge to favour lower users. This sounds similar….

I replaced my storage heaters to normal heater and changed from economy 7 no single rate but its been 4days and my heaters are not working until 11pm at night. Ovo are basically ignoring me about the situation instead of sending someone here  or change the hours that used to be on the economy 7 that was 11pm to 6am to a normal rate hours all day around. And it's starting to be ridiculous. If this carrys on I will be switching suppliers

Hi @Cordeiro ,

Please post photos of the meters and any equipment near to them.

Here is the pic from the meter

I’m sorry, but it seems your photo failed to post. Please try again.

If you keep seeing this message, you can send the photo to forum@ovoenergy.com and a moderator will assist you.

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