Economy 10 help with quantum storage heaters

Your storage heaters will be wired to a separate circuit which is only live during offpeak hours. Some customers recently migrated from THTC to single-meter Economy 10 have found that this isn’t working exactly as expected, but each installation is different. 

Are you asking because the heaters aren’t coming on when you expect them to? 

It would be helpful to see photos of the new installation:

• A clear close-up of the meter itself, taken after pressing button A to light up the display. Make a note of the time the photo is taken and put it underneath the photo when you post it;
• A view of the meter box/cupboard/backboard showing all the cables coming to and from the meter and the other bits of equipment around it.

Do you know whether your meter is successfully communicating with OVO?

I ‘successfully' moved after 27 years of THTC now obsolescent meters to a single E10 Smart meter and IHD on 5th November in my all electric detached bungalow on the Moray Coast.  I have 3 Dimplex Quantum storage (@20C) and 4 Monterey panel heaters (@18C), supplemented by a couple of Dyson’s.  All the Dimplex heaters are set to ‘Home All Day’ four comfort timer programs: 05:30-09:30, 11:00-13:00, 15:00-17:00 & 18:00-22:00 which under THTC would be at 24/7 heating rate if any boost was required, as would be the double immersion water heater. I gather from the Forum that E10 in my area 23M will only supply at the heater rate 00:00-05:00, 13:00-16:00 & 20:00-22:00 but for everything being used at those times, outside of those times all at the higher rate.  I have yet to discover if that is advantageous, I doubt it; but have no guidance to date.

@David_in_Moray, if you’re on the Moray Coast, you’re in the Scottish Hydro region (17, P) and not the good old YEB region (23, M). That might make a big difference, especially to the rates you’re charged. Could it be that you took the first two digits of the Meter Serial Number (MSN) seen on the meter itself instead of the MPAN to find your region? The MSN starts with its year of manufacture, so that looks quite possible … 

Here are the current rates for 17 as far as I can see:
  

The THTC rates apply if you had only two different rates before being moved to Economy 10. Some customers have three - Peak, Offpeak and Heating. Only you can tell us!

The E10 timings for this region according to this page are:

• 4:30am - 7:30am, 1:30pm - 4:30pm, 8:30pm - 12:30am (GMT)

although I’m not certain that these are the ones recently-migrated customers are in fact seeing. The big difference from the ones you quote are the overnight offpeak period - instead of five hours from midnight, there are only three from 04:30.

Now to your heaters. The important timings are not your preferred Comfort ones - these just specify when the fans come on to push warm air out, although for some models there may be extra heating elements to try and make sure the air is warm enough - and that could get expensive if they’re operating at peak rates.

If the meter is doing its job properly, the heaters should be charging up only during the offpeak times. This is the important bit; the heaters probably draw ~3kW each. How long they take to become fully charged again varies with the model, so you’d have to observe them carefully.

It may be that three hours overnight is enough to charge the heaters enough to keep you warm until lunchtime, at which point they can start charging again during the afternoon offpeak slot ready for the early evening comfort zones. If necessary, the late evening offpeak period will help.

The panel heaters and especially the Dysons will be expensive to run outside of offpeak periods, so this should be carefully monitored. 

I’m afraid you’ll have to experiment and make careful observations to see if you can minimize using power-hungry heaters in peak periods. This will depend a lot on your lifestyle: what times you get out of bed in the morning and go to bed at night, and what time you spend doing nothing much in the evenings other than perhaps watching television. Even then, you might find that you’re more comfortable wrapped up in a heated blanket in front of the television instead of keeping the living room itself at 20º.  They don’t cost that much to buy and pennies to run.

Note that all usage in offpeak periods is charged at offpeak rates, so try and limit activities like washing, drying, cooking and hoovering to offpeak times if you can.

The hot water tank should have two feeds: the main immersion element at the bottom of the tank should be on the same circuit as the storage heaters, while the other one near the top should be on the constant circuit, so you can apply a boost if you run out of hot water during the day. How long it takes to get the tank up to temperature depends on its size, how well it’s insulated and how much hot water you use and when; again, careful observation needed! If the tank has its own time switch, make sure it’s set to an offpeak period, and only use the boost switch to top up during offpeak periods. Check the tank’s thermostat temperature, too, if you can: many people find it’s quite enough to have it at 50º instead of the common 65 or even 70º. 

I think with care you should be able to arrive at a regime that doesn’t cost you any more than THTC did, and it might even work out cheaper.     

I’ll just cut in here before somebody else does and mention that legionella bacteria survive in stored hot water less than 60 degrees C, so there is advice to heat it to 60 or above, which would disinfect it.
However I don’t do this. I heat mine to 50 degrees and am still here. It’s much more comfortable out of the tap at 50 max rather than being a scald risk.

Thanks for the reminder, Julia. I understand that many users are able to minimize both the risk and the cost by simply turning the temperature up to 60º for a day once in a while, say weekly or monthly.

Of the total of 44 reported cases of Legionnaires’ Disease in Scotland in 2022, 57% were acquired elsewhere; only one of the patients died. You’re much more likely to contract the disease in your Spanish holiday hotel than in your own bathroom, and your chances of dying in a traffic accident are much better (155 fatalities last year).
 

Excellent news @Firedog 😄 

The default on my heat pump is to run the legionella cycle once a week, but the general feeling is that it is pointless, the water is constantly being refreshed as it’s used. I’ve switched it off as have most heat pump owners I know of.

Firedog wrote:

@David_in_Moray, if you’re on the Moray Coast, you’re in the Scottish Hydro region (17, P) and not the good old YEB region (23, M). That might make a big difference, especially to the rates you’re charged. Could it be that you took the first two digits of the Meter Serial Number (MSN) seen on the meter itself instead of the MPAN to find your region? The MSN starts with its year of manufacture, so that looks quite possible … 

Here are the current rates for 17 as far as I can see:
  

 

The THTC rates apply if you had only two different rates before being moved to Economy 10. Some customers have three - Peak, Offpeak and Heating. Only you can tell us!

The E10 timings for this region according to this page are:

• 4:30am - 7:30am, 1:30pm - 4:30pm, 8:30pm - 12:30am (GMT)

although I’m not certain that these are the ones recently-migrated customers are in fact seeing. The big difference from the ones you quote are the overnight offpeak period - instead of five hours from midnight, there are only three from 04:30.

Now to your heaters. The important timings are not your preferred Comfort ones - these just specify when the fans come on to push warm air out, although for some models there may be extra heating elements to try and make sure the air is warm enough - and that could get expensive if they’re operating at peak rates.

If the meter is doing its job properly, the heaters should be charging up only during the offpeak times. This is the important bit; the heaters probably draw ~3kW each. How long they take to become fully charged again varies with the model, so you’d have to observe them carefully.

It may be that three hours overnight is enough to charge the heaters enough to keep you warm until lunchtime, at which point they can start charging again during the afternoon offpeak slot ready for the early evening comfort zones. If necessary, the late evening offpeak period will help.

The panel heaters and especially the Dysons will be expensive to run outside of offpeak periods, so this should be carefully monitored. 

I’m afraid you’ll have to experiment and make careful observations to see if you can minimize using power-hungry heaters in peak periods. This will depend a lot on your lifestyle: what times you get out of bed in the morning and go to bed at night, and what time you spend doing nothing much in the evenings other than perhaps watching television. Even then, you might find that you’re more comfortable wrapped up in a heated blanket in front of the television instead of keeping the living room itself at 20º.  They don’t cost that much to buy and pennies to run.

Note that all usage in offpeak periods is charged at offpeak rates, so try and limit activities like washing, drying, cooking and hoovering to offpeak times if you can.

The hot water tank should have two feeds: the main immersion element at the bottom of the tank should be on the same circuit as the storage heaters, while the other one near the top should be on the constant circuit, so you can apply a boost if you run out of hot water during the day. How long it takes to get the tank up to temperature depends on its size size of the tank and how well it’s insulated and on how much hot water you use and when; again, careful observation needed! If the tank has its own time switch, make sure it’s set to an offpeak period, and only use the boost switch to top up during offpeak periods. Check the tank’s thermostat temperature, too, if you can: many people find it’s quite enough to have it at 50º instead of the common 65 or even 70º. 

I think with care you should be able to arrive at a regime that doesn’t cost you any more than THTC did, and it might even work out cheaper.     

 

Thanks Firedog, yes my MPAN is indeed 17, and all your points are how I am; and have been set up with THTC before the Aclara SGM 1416-B Smart meter and IHD were fitted last Monday (4th November).  Everything seems to be operating as before and I’ve been looking back at this time last year stats which were actually a little more expensive, but it’s too early to gauge properly at this early stage.  The Quantum heaters do have a 24hr Boost supply to a halogen tube at the base inside the fan housing which will operate if the core drops below 50% off charge times and extra demand is placed on the thermostat, so will need to watch that!  I pay monthly on actual usage so my unit rates are slightly higher than you state, but had nightmares over runaway changes to my Direct Debit payments before transition from SSE to OVO.  Coincidentally, today was my monthly meter reading day but my online account wouldn’t accept the Rate 2 Off-peak figures, instead it duplicated my Rate 1 Peak figures but billed me to the previous meter’s removal final figures, which I promptly paid.  It will no doubt catch up eventually as the meter transmits as ‘advertised’ to WAP and the IHD.

I just woke up to the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ program as always and SMART metering problems was being discussed so I ‘cut and pasted’ some of my Forum input to them as ‘Panorama’ has a program on the subject tonight, I shall be watching!