Hot water can't be turned on outside peak hours after economy 9 smart meter installation

Hi ​@Mwksl ,

Please post photos of the meters and we’ll try to figure this out.

Thanks

It would be helpful to know where you live, because there are so many parameters of the energy network that vary significantly with location. The first part of the postcode is usually enough.

Two old meters have been replaced by one smart meter. One of those meters will probably have been for a 24-hour heating supply, delivered at a preferential rate. The other will have been a dual rate (peak/offpeak) where the offpeak part served storage heaters. It sounds as if the water heater was wired on the heating circuit, so it made no difference cost-wise when you switched it on. Now that there is no 24-hour heating circuit any more, the meter engineer has probably connected the water heater to the switched (offpeak) circuit. 

Many hot water tanks have two immersion heating elements, the main one at the bottom and a booster about 2/3 of the way up. If yours is like this, then there should be a separate switch for the boost element to allow it to be turned on anytime. Any usage outside of offpeak hours will be billed at the peak rate, so it really is an emergency measure for when someone has used all the hot water.

 If your tank only has one element, and it’s been wired to the switched circuit, it will be able to heat up for up to nine hours a day. Most domestic hot water tanks will heat up to target temperature in 2-4 hours, so 3 x 3 hours should be plenty to keep you supplied with hot water all day. Are you saying that this isn’t enough? If it isn’t, an electrician should be able to move the water heater on to the constant circuit quite easily with no major disruption.

I’m looking forward to seeing your photos. It would be good to see one or two of the water tank, too, showing the electric cables to it, any markings on it and its switches. 

Hi guys, thank you very much for the reply. Please find relevant photos attached. First part of my post code is PO14. 

No I don’t need the hot water to be on all 9 hours at all, given the recent hot weather, it’s on maybe just for an hour the whole day. Also I don’t have a night storage heater so really don’t need economy 9, hence requested to change to a simple flat-rate plan.

 
I am looking forward to hearing back from you guys. Thanks a lot! 
 

Thanks very much for sending that photo across ​@Mwksl. I’m wondering if ​@Lukepeniket_OVO, our metering expert can offer some advice here?

Thanks for the photos. I’m wondering just why you were on a restricted tariff if there are no storage heaters involved. The meter exchange label left by the engineer only shows one reading for each of the old meters, so perhaps you had an arrangement with one price for heating (including of water) and another, higher price for everything else. You mentioned that these meters were one for peak and the other for offpeak - so there must have been some time restriction to determine when to change to or charge at the offpeak rate. Perhaps you could explain. How is the property heated? 

The red cable marked L5 in your photo is the one feeding your switched circuit, which is apparently powering your water heater. What else is on this circuit?

Hi ​@Firedog, 

Thank you very much for your reply. 

To answer your question, I moved into this flat when there were 2 electric meters, and I thought one was peak and the other was off-peak time with SSE. Then OVO took over and called them “anytime” and “heatings”, even though I have no storage heater I thought OVO just called them differently. Regarding how the time restrictions worked, honestly I didn’t have a clue. Maybe there wasn’t? I am sorry that I just don’t know. Hot water has always been available whenever I wanted it to be on, no time restrictions at all, and both old meters seemed working fine. The property is heated by electric oil-filled radiators and fan heaters.

A few years ago, the property has been rewired and the fuse box has been updated. The electrician somehow left one fuse box as shown below (the left one) and said it’s for the water tank it’s safe and didn’t need to be removed which I believed at that time. Now I realised that I was silly and it should’ve been updated too. I’ve just switched it off and tried all sockets and lightings, all seemed unaffected, just the hot water stoped so assuming it only controls the hot water? The newer fuse box the modern one is the one on the right in the picture. I wonder if that’s possible to move the hot water circuit to this one? So that it won’t be affected by time restrictions? In other words I can turn it on and off anytime I want. 

Once again I really appreciate your response and help in this matter.