Stick with storage heaters on E7 or switch to standard meter and heaters?

[jak731]

My dad recently moved into a flat with an E7 meter and electric storage heaters dated 1988, pretty old.

There is no gas to the flat and no practical option for a heat pump. He owns the lease and will likely stay there for the rest of his days (hopefully 20+ years).

I've read that with these heaters, the idea is that they charge up on the cheap rate during the night and steadily release heat during the day. However I've heard that they often end up cold before the end of the day, requiring power to 'boost' them during the expensive rate to keep warm.

The question is, should he stick with this setup, or change to a normal fixed rate meter, ditch the storage heaters and get standard resistance heaters to use when cold? Only worth doing if it would save money/ increase comfort.

 

[Fireskull]

You would need to check his storage heaters actually have a boost, we are also on storage heaters and they only work on the off peak tariff, they are on a separate CU that only works during the E7 hours.
So you would only switch from the E7 tariff if you had a better normal fix, which is very unlikely currently, or you have an EV and go on one of the flexible tariffs but they offer even less off peak hours, but at a cheaper rate than E7, and you'd need timers etc, very messy...
Can't comment on if you'd save money going to different heaters, I expect unlikely, probably a better investment to go more modern storage heaters.

 

[ttaskmaster]

Ours are pretty old and only operate on E7. They're utterly crap and still use a lot of electricity.
The boost function seems to just define when they vent the majority of their stored heat, either early or late in the day, but they still run out before 11.

Modern ones might be better, but if we actually owned our place we'd have installed something else a long time ago.

 

[VersionMonkey]

The point of storage heaters is not to use less electricity, it is to use cheap electricity.

All the electrical energy stored as heat in the storage heater will end up heating the living space - there's nowhere else for it to go. If you don't store it overnight when electricity is cheap and you are sticking with conventional electrical heating, you'll need to use near enough exactly the same amount of electricity to get the same amount of thermal energy into the living space during the day when electricity is more expensive. If you want to maintain the same temperature for the same time, that is.

If the existing ones are "running out" of heat, then it's possible that the flat is simply losing more heat (energy) than the storage heater can acquire during the E7 period (which I think has the longest off-peak period of the time of day type of tariff). So the answer might be insulation, rather than a change of heating - the amount of energy the flat is losing will still have to be replaced somehow unless you reduce the rate of energy loss.

Some of the more modern/advanced storage heaters (most of which require an off-peak and a continuous supply - so upgrading may require some extra electrical work) have timed controls which allow for a different target temperature at different times of the day. It still remains inevitable that if the flat is losing more energy over a day than the size of element in the heater can draw in during the E7 period, they will go cold at some point. However, having a continuous supply, they can also use that for the boost to actually add more energy - as a conventional heater would - and at the same peak supply cost.

 

[ttaskmaster]

The point of storage heaters is not to use less electricity, it is to use cheap electricity.

The problem with this and storage heaters (certainly old ones) is they still use so much electricity that it puts a massive dent in your electric bill. We don't even turn ours on until the house temperature reaches single digits, because it's so expensive.

 

[TheVoice]

I had storage heaters in an old flat about 10-12 years ago and they (as well as my flat) were always cold by the afternoon when I got home from work. Newer systems are likely to be better but personally I'd never go back.

If you're looking for electric heating systems Rointe seem pretty good, my Gran just had her bungalow kitted out with them and they seem very efficient so far., with the benefit that you can set a target temperature rather than an arbitrary 1-9 setting that you need to fiddle with to work out what's best. She has the independently controlled versions but you can get wifi-enabled ones too.

 

[VersionMonkey]

The problem with this and storage heaters (certainly old ones) is they still use so much electricity that it puts a massive dent in your electric bill. We don't even turn ours on until the house temperature reaches single digits, because it's so expensive.

That's a general problem with electric heating. Unless you are trying to use storage heaters without an E7 (or other time of day) tariff.

Even the most modern gas central heating boiler is less efficient than electrical heating, but because the price per unit energy of gas is so much less than electricity it is much cheaper to heat with gas - more energy is used with gas heating, but it costs less so the overall bill is less. Storage heaters disconnect the time of day the electricity is used from the time of day the heat is released (mostly), meaning the electricity can be used when it's cheap.

Any conventional electric heater - convector, fan, oil-filled, storage heater, GPU or whatever - is pretty much 100% efficient - near enough all of the electrical energy is converted into heat energy[1].

Storage heaters, particularly older ones, provide a constant release of heat through the day, so if you don't need that (e.g. nobody is home for most of the day for most days, and your insulation is good enough that you don't need to worry about freezing pipes on the coldest days), then you might use less electricity by using a non-storage electric heater just in the evenings; for example. But that might not save much money, depending on what your E7 night rate is vs a non-time of day tariff rate. The more modern storage heaters could, to some extent, address that scenario by controlling the release of heat during the day (there will always be some) and saving as much of that heat as possible for the evening. That should be much more cost-effective because the E7 night rate is usually noticably cheaper than a non-E7 tariff.

Only changing the desired temperature profile (i.e. what the target temperature for a room is) over the day will make a difference to how much energy is used. Keeping the room at the same temperature at the same times of day will always need the same amount of energy from the heating system. It's the price of that energy that then becomes significant. Swapping storage heaters for non-storage electric heaters but still heating the room to the same temperature at the same times of day will not change the amount of energy used, only the cost - and non-storage electric heating in that scenario will always cost a lot more than storage heaters because you have to use the electricity when it's more expensive.

[1] GPUs are slightly less efficient heaters - some of the electrical energy may end up as light emitted from the monitor (perhaps), or noise from the fans, but actually that will also heat up the room too.

 

[VersionMonkey]

If you're looking for electric heating systems Rointe seem pretty good, my Gran just had her bungalow kitted out with them and they seem very efficient so far., with the benefit that you can set a target temperature rather than an arbitrary 1-9 setting that you need to fiddle with to work out what's best. She has the independently controlled versions but you can get wifi-enabled ones too.

I think it was Rointe that an electrician tried to push onto my Mum after she asked him to quote to replace a convector heater with a storage heater.

If it was, I can say they certainly make attractive electric heaters. However, there was nothing on their website that I could see that suggests to me that their oil-filled radiators are any more efficient than a cheap oil-filled radiator from Argos. Mainly because they canna change the laws of physics (cap'ain).

What they might do is provide a more "comfortable feeling" due to a low hysteresys in the thermostat. But they'll still use the same amount of energy to maintain the same temperature. And it will still be expensive peak time electricity.

There's something of a trade-off - comfort vs cost. Storage heaters will be cheaper to run - the E7 night rate is generally a lot cheaper than day rates or non-time of day tariffs - but they may not provide heat exactly when you want it, particularly old ones.

Longer term, if more fine-grained time of day tariffs become a general thing (think evening peak surge pricing), storage heaters will become even more cost-effective, unless you can look at installing more than 100% efficient systems like heat pumps.

 

[ttaskmaster]

That's a general problem with electric heating. Unless you are trying to use storage heaters without an E7 (or other time of day) tariff.

Even the most modern gas central heating boiler is less efficient than electrical heating, but because the price per unit energy of gas is so much less than electricity it is much cheaper to heat with gas - more energy is used with gas heating, but it costs less so the overall bill is less.

Yes, that was my point.
Efficiency of use is irrelevant when cost of use is the defining factor, and right now we're on 18p/kW for our cheap rate but that is expected to at least double next time they hike the 'leccy.