Relay\Contactor

[peteinwilts]

Hi Guys

'scuse my ignorance and apologies for such a newbie question.

I am running Economy 10 heating plan with wet storage. (I specced a larger wet storage boiler, but the wrong one was delivered... rather than waiting another three weeks, I installed it regardless... another story!!)

E10 was great for working people, but my other half now works at home, so the water that was heated between 12-4am is exhausted by mid-morning and has to wait until early afternoon until the E10 switches back on.

I phoned the electricity board and suggested we just have one tarriff, they strongly suggested we shouldn't as the bills would be astronomical.

so... having two circuits coming from the meter, is it possible to have a relay or contactor to switch all electrics between circuits, so the heating is available day and night, but also switch the normal electricty to E10 when on. I have a very large marine fish tank that uses a huge amount of power which if on E10 may help offset the additional cost of the heating bill running on unrestricted power.

Would a relay or contactor do this?? would a contactor be fast enough??

If so, do you have any recomendations?

Any other thoughts or\and ideas would be welcome

Cheers

Pete

 

[aidanb19]

I may well be wrong but I believe the latest meters can 'switch' the whole installation, i.e just records the kWh for each tariff.

So presuming you have 2 fuseboards, you can just have both coming off the same tails.

 

[peteinwilts]

The electircity board came out and swapped the meter recently. Beforehand I had two seperate meters, but now I have a digital meter.

The meter has incoming, but two sets of outgoing.

One set attached to the restricted fuseboard, the other for unristricted.

If all my power was coming from the unrestricted tails, would I still be using E10 discounted electricity??

 

[PBC_1966]

With the old "white meter" arrangement your 24-hour supply (via the regular "black" meter) was always charged at the standard rate, with only the off-peak supply billed at the cheap rate.

Most of the newer tariffs, however, have a dual-rate meter and switch the entire installation to the cheap rate during the off-peak times. There is still a contactor so that power to a distrubution panel for storage heaters can be controlled.

It could be that your supplier is using a newer meter which serves the dual function of the old "black" & "white" meters though. If you can't determine it from the meter or your bill, I would call your supplier to check which arrangement you have.

 

[peteinwilts]

sounds like a plan!!

...if not, i'll be asking about contactors\relays again!!

cheers

Pete

 

[peteinwilts]

thank you both for your help!!! I called the electricity company and you are right!!! Applaud Smiley

that has made life easier!!

cheers

pete

 

[PBC_1966]

There you go, you can transfer the system to your 24-hour supply. Install your own timer and set it to benefit from the the cheap-rate periods, but you can have a manual override to boost when necessary.

 

[steptoe]

I may be wrong(probably)

but is the actual heating tariff not slightly cheaper than the cheap rate they give you for the rest of your power.? (if that makes sense.

ie, you have 3 tariffs,

tariff 1 = heating, for the time controlled board

tariff 2 = cheap rate, for the rest of the power when your off peak is running

tariff 3 = normal, for the time when the off peak is not running