Hi, does anyone know much about the mysterious Southern Electric Flexiheat tariff?

It isn't on their website and most of their Customer 'Service' staff don't know what it is. It has a three-rate meter, and my storage heaters are running very effectively on the lowest rate.

Unfortunately, I inherited an electric boiler (again, most people don't know they exist) which runs the upstairs heating and hot water to a cylinder tank, it works very well but is ENORMOUSLY expensive.

I have been told that water heating can be run on the stored heat rate on Flexiheat, but nobody can tell me if it is possible to use my electric boiler in this way. Does anyone know exactly what can be connected to the cheap stored heat rate and how I can get it done? I have underfloor heating in the kitchen as well which is only rated at about 1kw and is very effective, but runs on the very expensive day-time rate.

My latest bill is colossal, can anyone give me any useful advice on how I could cut it down?

thanks

Mary

Yes. I also have flexiheat.

You can indeed have your electric boiler running from the storage heating electricity, but you reveal one of the problems of flexiheat. If your boiler, or anything else for that matter, is wired into the storage heating, it will then ONLY work when the storage heating board is energised. With E7, If you have something wired into the "normal" boar, you can make use of the E7 overnight rate, and still have the option to use the item during the day. With Flexiheat, the ONLY way to get the lowest rate is from the storage heating board.

Take your underfloor heating for example. You could have that wired into the storage heating board, and it would become a lot cheaper to run, but you've then lost the option to top-up from expensive electricity, as when the storage heating board is off, it's off and that's that.

I "get round" this to some extent as I have some sockets wired into my storage heating board, so I can make use of cheap electricity to run my washing machine, or any other heavy load I might have. When the storage heating is off, I can of course then move the plugs back to normal sockets if needs be. I still think it's a bit of a con that when the storage heating board is energised, the normal board is still at it's more expensive rate. I can have adjacent sockets with one costing 4 times as much as the other.... it's the same electricity.... it should be at the same (lower!) price.

Just out of interest, what hours does your flexiheat come on? Mine seems to be very reliably from 02:33 to 07:33, and then from 14:03 to 16:03. On some occasions I've known it to come on slightly earlier on it's overnight stint, and I've actually had about 7h15m of cheap rate, rather than the normal 7h.

I'm considering a change to Economy 10 now that the daytime weekday rate of flexiheat has gone so high. over 20p/unit is a bit expensive really.

Hello David and thanks for replying

Where did you come across this amazing information? Since I wrote the original post I had the Southern Electric rep round and he reckons I can only have an immersion heater on the storage heater board

The solution I am going for (I think) is to have the upstairs radiators taken out and replaced by more storage heaters

The boiler will then only be used for hot water and two very small radiators, so I don't think it would matter if it only runs in the night and 2 hours in the afternoon, there is an immersion heater in the tank but last time I used it I only had a couple of inches of lukewarm water in the bath

Not sure what times my stored heat comes on, there aren't any neon indicators on the storage heaters so how can I tell?

regards

Mary

It's not so much "information" as what I know can and can't be done.

Thinking about it, there may actually be a reason why you can't run your electric boiler from the Flexiheat: What happens when you turn the power off to the boiler and then turn it back on? Does it need to be reset? or maybe the boiler has an internal timer in it, which would cause problems if the boiler is only energised for 7h a day. If it needs power to be on all the time (even when it's not actually heating water) then I'm afraid it's probably not a good thing to use with Flexiheat.

This is why storage heaters and immersion heaters are fine for conncting to a switched board: they are nothing more than a mechanical thermostat and a heater element. They couldn't care less if they were switched on and off 20 times a day. If your underfloor heating is just like this (IE a mechanical thermostat controlling the underfloor elements) then there's no reason why it couldn't be connected to the switched board, and you'll turn your kitchen floor into a rather massive storage heater. Even if it does have some electronic control at the moment, that doesn't mean it couldn't be changed to make it possible.

<>Shame that you have no neons to indicate when your flexiheat is energised. You can tell when it's on from the meter, as the second channel metering lamp will be flashing, and you also hear a fairly loud "thunk" from the contactor in the meter when it turns on and off. I was just interested as I had expected the heating times to be more variable than they are. Maybe different areas are switched at different times. What (very rough) area are you?

the boiler is controlled by an electronic programmer, the instruction book just says to turn off the power supply 'if the boiler is to be switched off for any length of time', doesn't say anything about resetting

have looked at the meter a couple of times this afternoon and there was one red light flashing, it has stopped now (5.30pm) so maybe that's the stored heat indicator? will have another look early tomorrow morning and see what time it goes off

am going to have to do something, read the meter again today and the bill for one month since the last reading is over £300

I am near Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire

Hi Mary,

I don't know if you have resolved this problem yet, but a few comments from my own experience:

The reason they won't let you connect an electric boiler to the water heating supply is that the contacts are rated at 25 Amps. Electric boilers use more like 40 to 50 amps. The storage heater supply is 100 amps, so possibly you could put an extra breaker in that consumer unit. (Check that the total is not over 100 amps or you will blow the main fuse.)

Unless you spend a lot of time upstairs, you would probably be better off using plug in heaters upstairs connnected to timeswitches. (Set them for the evening and night time rate.)

Similar to David, I saw the injustice of paying 20p a unit for other things at the same time as 5p for my storage heaters. In my last two properties I installed relays to switch the whole supply over to the heating rate when it came on. I even went out and used my flymo in the afternoon when it came on!

Regards

James

Hi James and thanks for your input

You are, of course, quite right about the boiler overloading the supply, the engineer from Southern Electric said the same thing

How I do envy people like you and David who can do things for yourselves, the limit of my technical expertise is replacing a plug, so I have to pay a professional for every little repair/alteration and live within the limits of what they advise

So in March I bit the bullet, paid the plumbers to take out the remaining wet radiators, then paid Southern Electric to put in storage heaters upstairs, I do need the heating on somewhat earlier than the Flexiheat evening tariff drop at 7.30pm, or it is a very miserable business getting ready to go out in a perishing cold bathroom & bedroom!

The incredibly expensive boiler now runs only 1 hour a day at overnight rate to heat the water

The payback period will be quite a while, but the house is very much more comfortable and the running costs are coming down

The moral of this story is: when you buy a house, get the heating system checked out VERY thoroughly and don't rely on what the survey & previous owners tell you ...

regards, Mary

E7 rates from Standing charge ppd 14.10 Day Rate 14.25 Night Rate 4.72

Unfortunatly not allowed to place contact details.

regards Mark Huber