Electricity help please - Eco7

[David1983]

Hi all! I’ve just recently had my prepayment meter replaced with an Economy 7 credit meter on nPower. I would imagine that it would provide power to the storage heater / main immersion heater consumer unit under the control of the radio teleswitch, giving 7 hours of heating sometime between 2200 and 0700 depending on how nPower have it set up.

Last night it came on around 2330 and, when I came down this morning at 0650 it was off. However it had came back on again at 0700 or so which has me confused!

My other half spoke to the engineer as I was at work and he said that the storage heaters we have (Dimplex XL series) can be left on at the wall at all times and the radio switch will provide power into the CU and therefore act as the switch for the storage heaters etc.

Wiring wise, I have two electricity meters, a radio teleswitch and two consumer units wired up as follows:

Domestic Meter: 1 – Live – Brown cable – from main fuse
2 – Neutral – Blue cable – from main fuse
3 – Neutral – Gray cable – to domestic CU
4 – Live – Gray cable – to domestic CU

Storage Meter 1 – Live – Brown cable – from main fuse
2 – Neutral – Blue cable – from main fuse
3 – Neutral – Blue cable – to a junction box, splits, has blue to radio switch and black to storage CU
4 – Live – Brown cable – to radio switch

On the bottom of the radio switch there are 8 holes, from left to right, with a brown cable linking 1 to 3, the 4th cable (Brown) from the Storage meter into hole 2, the 3rd cable (Blue) from Storage meter into hole 4 and a gray cable from hole 8 going to the Storage CU.

The radio teleswitch is a Series 2D type NU045-9003 and has a sticker saying Group Code 98 North on the front. The meters are Landis-Gyr 5258K and, on the storage meter, the red led to the left of the pair is lit constantly when there is no demand on the storage circuit.

I hope this makes sense and hopefully someone can explain why my electricity is doing random things. The previous prepayment meter was an Economy 10 I understand and the radio switch was not changed yesterday.

Thanks in advance and sorry for war and peace! David

 

[ricicle]

A photo will paint a thousand words

 

[David1983]

Untitled

• David1983
• 6 Mar 2012
• 1

Untitled

• David1983
• 6 Mar 2012
• 1

Hopefully these pictures are of some use. Please can you correct me if I have the following things wrong:

We were told that, with this arrangement, at the appropiate time, the radio switch would -

1. switch to the cheaper overnight rate and, at the same time,
2. provide power to the storage heater CU (just to left of picture, fed by no3 from storage meter and far right (8th) terminal on radio switch.

Can anyone see why this isn't happening? The heaters were scorching by 2300 last night (and still on) and off by 0650 this morning. They came on again at 0700 so I switched them off at the wall.

The engineer said that the above setup meant that I could leave them on at the wall at all times and the radio switch would be the 'master' on/off switch. Is that the way they're meant to work? The heaters themselves have no timers anywhere (Dimplex XL-series).

Thanks again and I really am getting frustrated with this one! David

 

[RF Lighting]

The metering setup looks fine.

Are you sure your heaters are definitely storage heaters?

 

[David1983]

Just had a thought - is this actually set up for Economy 7? The storage CU has just came on at 2155, way earlier than I would have expected.

I also have no way of getting night rate on the domestic CU as it doesn't have a toggle between 'day' and 'night' rates on the meter. I have a horrible feeling that they've installed the wrong setup, but I have no idea what they've put in!

Should I have been expecting to see a single meter with two rates on it? That's what nPower's website is saying.

 

[Lectrician]

Your metering only allows for cheap lecky to the heaters. This tariff may be fine for your needs if you don't use much other lecky at night, or want to use the dish washer or washing machine at night.

Econ 7 would use a single dual rate meter and teleswitch.

A teleswitch is not a timeclock and is controlled remotely via an AM carrier signal. It often comes on at slightly different times. It also often clicks off early and then comes back on for the final hour an hour or so later.

 

[David1983]

Hi Lectrician! Finally, sense - can you work for nPower please? Right, we have a teleswitch (Horstmann Series 2D) and the engineer even put a sticker on it saying that it was a teleswitch.

We previously has prepayment Total Heat with Total Control (8 hrs cheap heating in any 24hrs, split between 1001-2200 and 2201-1000. I think he has just replaced the prepayment meter with two seperate credit meters, essentially giving us THTC on credit. This isn't what we asked for and I spoke to nPower yesterday who confirmed we are on an Eco7 tarriff.

Please can you clarify, for my benefit, when I get them to put in the correct (Eco7) meter that the teleswitch will not only switch to cheap rate at the designated time but will also supply electricity to the storage CU? Npower seem to think there should be a manaul switch somewhere that I set in addition to teh teleswitch. Are they correct?

Thak you once again! David