Economy 7 help!

[itsmrb]

Hey guys

Any electricians out there? lol I have economy 7 electricity in my flat and I know that this means it runs off two tariffs - a cheap night time rate and the normal day rate. My question however relates to how it knows when to switch between the two. I have a timer clock in the meter cupboard which clicks over to the night at 11pm and day at 7am. I have two separate fuse boxes and I know that one controls things like sockets, lights etc but I'm not 100% sure about the other however I assume its the storage heaters. Looking online it seems that if you have separate fuse boxes the storage heaters are controlled separately by a different circuit and use the cheaper rate automatically. The rest works off the other fuse box which is controlled by the timer clock. The thing is I've noticed my storage heaters come on at about 10pm which seems to coincide with the timer clock (its running an hour slow). This would appear to be using the normal rate at this time but I didn't think this was possible with the separate circuits. Very confused now!

Thanks

 

[Eggster71]

Is the time clock combined with the meter? If so the meter will change over to cheap rate when the clock tells it to, that is, the same time your storage heaters come on.
If you want to check there should be a peak reading and an off peak reading on your meter. As the heaters come on you'll see one or the other speed up considerably as storage heaters draw a fairly heavy current.

 

[itsmrb]

Is the time clock combined with the meter? If so the meter will change over to cheap rate when the clock tells it to, that is, the same time your storage heaters come on.
If you want to check there should be a peak reading and an off peak reading on your meter. As the heaters come on you'll see one or the other speed up considerably as storage heaters draw a fairly heavy current.

Thanks. The meter and the timer clock are in seperate boxes so not sure if this means they are combined. The timer looks old fashioned to me in that its a dial with a metal clip at 11pm saying off peak and one at 7am saying peak. My flat was built in 1986 and the electrics have not been modified since.

 

[Eggster71]

You should still have 2 sets of readings on your meter so see which speeds up after the timeclock kicks in!

 

[MarkP]

If your storage heaters are heating up then the meter will be recording on the low/night reading as the timeswitch is doing its job and kicking in. No problem. Only thing that you might want to do is to contact your supplier to get the timeswitch set to the right time as the heaters will be clicking off two hours earlier in a morning with them coming on at 10pm.