THTC Meter Help

[suicnarg]

Hi guys, I'm hoping you can shed some light on a problem I am currently stuck with.

I live in North East Scotland and have recently moved into a property with fully electric heating, which has a "Total Heating Total Control" tariff (two meters with a reduced price for heating). I understand this is best suited for properties with storage heaters. Unfortunately for me, the previous owner of my property replaced these with regular plug-in wall panels but didn't change the meter. On top of this, even the reduced rate from this system is more expensive than a flat rate available to me from another provider.

I am looking to get the THTC meter removed so that I can eventually switch providers to a better deal for me. The issue is that upon the arrival of an Engineer from my provider to complete the works, he informed us that we would have no heating or hot water if he removed the meter, and that we needed to get an electrician in to rewire everything to the standard meter before the THTC one is removed.

As far as I understand (albeit very basic understanding!), all that would be required would be for the meter tails from the THTC meter to be re-routed into the standard meter? Am I missing something here?

Now though, all the electricians I have been in touch with (4) have advised that they cannot do this, as only my energy supplier can complete this service.

What can I do? I have read numerous stories of others with issues similar to me (i.e. that the provider will remove the meter, but rewiring to the standard meter is cost to the consumer).

I hope you guys can help! I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

 

[scbk]

My last place was on THTC, to be honest I think it's better than normal night rate/economy 7 (which is what we have now) as you get daytime hours. The rates are about the same.
The disadvantage is you can't change supplier.


The only thing is, if you take it out, you'll never be able to put it back in.


Are you planning on keeping the electric heaters?

 

[suicnarg]

Hi scbk,

My understanding of economy 7 is you pay a slightly increased rate during the day and reduced at night?

My partner and baby are at home all day with the heating on so in my opinion, we’d be better off on a flat rate (as far as I understand).

At the moment we are approx 14p for heating and 20p for everything else. 30p standing charge x2 for the meters.

For comparison, I’ve seen we can get as low as 12/13p for a flat rate and 20p a day for the standing charge. Even if we had to pay an electrician to do the rerouting of the tails it would pay itself off just on the standing charge after a year or so.

How did you get SSE to swap your meter?

 

[suicnarg]

And yes, we’ll be keeping the electric heaters for now. Maybe we will look at central heating in the future.

 

[scbk]

Hi scbk,

My understanding of economy 7 is you pay a slightly increased rate during the day and reduced at night?

My partner and baby are at home all day with the heating on so in my opinion, we’d be better off on a flat rate (as far as I understand).

At the moment we are approx 14p for heating and 20p for everything else. 30p standing charge x2 for the meters.

For comparison, I’ve seen we can get as low as 12/13p for a flat rate and 20p a day for the standing charge. Even if we had to pay an electrician to do the rerouting of the tails it would pay itself off just on the standing charge after a year or so.

How did you get SSE to swap your meter?

Sorry, I was meaning the house I was in previously was on THTC.


Yours might be different, there the main heating and hot water circuit only came live at certain times, which was on the cheap rate. I'm sure I wasn't paying the standing charge twice?

It's 2 years since I moved out, I used to know the live times off by heart, it was about 10hrs in total I think;
Coming on in the small hours, and going off about 7/8am.
Then on again from 10.30am to 2pm
Then another 30mins of time about 8pm

Which seemed to work quite well?


Are your current heaters (non-storage) only going live at set times throughout the day?

 

[suicnarg]

Looking at my bill, I am definitely being charged the standing charge twice, which I also thought was weird.

No that is another unusual thing, I have sockets where my radiators are, so I have complete control over the reduced rate power and I can use it as I wish. There is a light that comes on during the evening to show that my hot water is on even if the switch is set to off though.

To add to this, SSE wouldn't remove my meter until I changed to a flat rate tariff first, which I obliged to thinking they would remove the second meter. So now I have two meters, two standing charges and 18p per kWh for all power usage. I still have 14 days to switch back to my original tariff but it is annoying they changed it when the agreement was it would change when the meter was removed.

 

[JohnW2]

Looking at my bill, I am definitely being charged the standing charge twice, which I also thought was weird..... SSE wouldn't remove my meter until I changed to a flat rate tariff first, which I obliged to thinking they would remove the second meter. So now I have two meters, two standing charges and 18p per kWh for all power usage. I still have 14 days to switch back to my original tariff...

This all sounds pretty bizarre. What was your 'original tariff'?

Kind Regards, John