Economy 7 - Weird switching times

st07 · 24 Jan 2010

Hi,

Recently I decided to check out my the Economy 7 switching times at my mums flat, as I had a suspicion it wasn't switching on at the 11:30pm - 6:30am printed on the meter.

Rather than wait up all night watching the meter, I decided to utilise the british gas energy monitor I had. The monitor can be plugged in to a laptop allowing you to log energy usage. What I done was wired up a 50w lamp to an E7 spur, put the BG clamp around the E7 meter tail and left the laptop on for 24 hours, logging energy used during that time.

I was surprised to see that the E7 supply switches on between 10am and 5pm. Thinking it might have been a blip, I left the laptop logging for another night, and again we have a 10am to 5pm switch on period.

I decided to check the meters of the other flats in her block (they all share a cupboard). At 11:30pm, the other 4 meters switch over to 'low' rate and my mums stays at 'normal'. This pretty much confirms that my mums E7 meter is way way out of sync with what it should be! Obviously we won't be reporting this to the electricity company, as the E7 period during the day works to her advantage

What I'm wondering though, is if an E7 meter is a telemeter, which my mums is, then how could it possibly be 'out of sync' as it should be switched on remotely like the other meters do? Looking at the little 'antenna' tab, they're all on 'B', so presumably sharing the same radio signal or whatever (I read that not all telemeters share the same switch on signal, due to load balancing).

Any insight on the subject is appreciated, thanks

martinxxxxxx · 24 Jan 2010

To deliberately seek to deprive someone of their property is an offence under the 1978 Theft Act.

I had a electricity meter that was not clocking units in my own house. If I had not had noticed it - it could still be doing it now, but alas my lawyer friend told me I was bound by law to report the fault as soon as I discovered it, as above, or become guilty of the above offence.

Sorry to be the bearer - ignorance is bliss and all that

Martin

st07 · 24 Jan 2010

Meh, it's not like it's clocking up more than 7 hours, or not clocking at all. It's simply clocking E7 hours for the wrong time period. How was I / my mum supposed to know the correct hours, when E7 was never explained to me / her when she moved in?

In all fairness to you, if your meter wasn't clocking units then it'd be fairly obvious that there was a fault when you next go to give your meter readings and it works out that you haven't used any electricity for the last year. If you hadn't mentioned the problem to the energy company, it wouldn't be long before they came out to investigate the problem.

Anyway, time-shift aside, anyone able to comment on the technical aspect of the telemeter, and how it's able to be out of sync when it's controlled remotely?

Roo · 24 Jan 2010

st07 said:
Meh, it's not like it's clocking up more than 7 hours, or not clocking at all. It's simply clocking E7 hours for the wrong time period.

Would you be using the same amount of cheaper electricity if the times were correct?

st07 said:
How was I / my mum supposed to know the correct hours, when E7 was never explained to me / her when she moved in?

st07 said:
11:30pm - 6:30am printed on the meter.

st07 said:
Anyway, time-shift aside, anyone able to comment on the technical aspect of the telemeter, and how it's able to be out of sync when it's controlled remotely?

Never come across a telemeter out of sync myself as I never thought they could be.
Telemeters can be installed in a weak signal area and not pick up the signal that tells it when to switch.
This would usually result in the meter staying on the Peak rate or maybe switching later.

Does your mum definitely have E7 or does she maybe have another off peak tariff were the switching times are different?

Picture would be good.

st07 · 24 Jan 2010

Yeah it's definitely E7, the bill says E7 and the other meters run on the service. I'll try and get some pictures later. I don't really want to get in to a debate of the 'rights and wrongs' of not declaring a dodgy meter time as whatever happens, I won't be telling the electricity company and they have no way of knowing that I may be aware of the offset time period

Adding to that, I've seen a couple of other threads on here with similar issues to mine, where the thread starter has been encouraged to 'take advantage of the E7 hours while you can', so I won't be losing any sleep over it!

bongos · 24 Jan 2010

martinxxxxxx said:
To deliberately seek to deprive someone of their property is an offence under the 1978 Theft Act.

You can't steal electricity. That's why the offence of abstraction of electricity was created.

Roo · 24 Jan 2010

st07 said:
Yeah it's definitely E7, the bill says E7 and the other meters run on the service.

Does not mean it is E7, I see it daily.

st07 · 24 Jan 2010

Roo said:
st07 said:

Yeah it's definitely E7, the bill says E7 and the other meters run on the service.

Click to expand...

Does not mean it is E7, I see it daily.

The code on the bill starts with 02, which I've found to mean E7. The low rate time period runs for exactly 7 hours. The tariff she signed up for came under Economy 7. All things considered, without calling up the electricity company and asking, I'm fairly confident in saying she's on Economy 7.

Also, I was always lead to believe that the energy company has no control over the switch on times of the low rate meter and that this was sole responsibility of the DNO - so any argument over tariffs is void as it wouldn't actually matter what tariff you were on.

Stoday · 25 Jan 2010

Are you told the switching times on your bill? If not, how do you know they are wrong?

Roo · 26 Jan 2010

The reason I'm asking if it is definitely Economy 7 is that quite often when switching suppliers the original DNO tariffs get mixed up.

For instance if I was in the Manweb area with tariff Option 14 and a man from Southern electric (or any other supplier) knocked on my door to maybe give me cheaper electricity, they would probably quote Economy 7 prices as the do not provide the Option 14 tariff.

I would then switch to the new tariff and receive a bill saying Economy 7 and at the Economy 7 prices but the metering setup would still be switching at Option 14 times.

There are many different 2 rate tariffs Economy 7 is just the most popular.

st07 · 27 Jan 2010

Stoday said:
Are you told the switching times on your bill? If not, how do you know they are wrong?

Nope, they're not on the bill. I'm assuming the E7 meter is switching at the wrong times, firstly because the meters for the other four apartments all switch at the same time and secondly because the sticker on the E7 meter reads '11.30 - 6.30'. Admittedly the sticker looks pretty old but it seems very odd to have a seven hour switching time so late in the day, especially when I struggle to find anyone else on the internet who report their switching times varying so far from the normal 11 - 6 / 12 - 7 periods.

I really wanted a reply to the technical aspect of telemeter switching i.e. why when the E7 meter shares the same antenna selection as the other four meters, it switches on at a different time and also how can a telemeter be 'out of sync'.

@Roo, short of phoning the DNO I guess there's no way to be sure, and I wouldn't want to risk alerting them to the possible out-of-sync E7 timer, so I think I'll just leave it for now

Cheers all!

Roo · 28 Jan 2010

I cant remember ever seeing a teleswitch out of sync regulary.
They can loose the signal from time to time but afaik they would have to miss the signal at the same time each day and some how pick up a signal that shouldn't be transmitting at the times yours is kicking in.
Also you say the others are working fine.
The above said yesterday i was sent to a job where the teleswitch was switching at the wrong times!
I thought of this post and asked the customer loads of questions but unless as i've stated above the customer was on a different tariff than she thought i couldn't explain it.
I replaced with a telemeter setup, explained how it worked and what times it should kick in and told her to phone her supplier to send me back out if there are any more problems.
I'll let you know if i have to go back and i find out what it was.

JohnD · 28 Jan 2010

IIRC if the teleswitch fails (they sometimes do) then they just chug along on the internal clock. This will drift a bit as it is not perfectly accurate, but yours seems a very long way out. Maybe it lost some hours during a power cut - though I thought they had an internal battery.

I do not believe the teleswitch would be picking up a signal to switch at the times you say, so I reckon it has failed.

Roo · 28 Jan 2010

I dont think the ones we fitted had an internal clock John and thought they just wouldn't switch if they broke.
I dont know about ST07's.

st07 · 28 Jan 2010

Cheers for that, Roo

JohnD said:
IIRC if the teleswitch fails (they sometimes do) then they just chug along on the internal clock. This will drift a bit as it is not perfectly accurate,

This seems the most likely explanation. There's obviously some kind of timing going on for it to switch on as accurately as it does.

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Economy 7 - Weird switching times

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