electric wet central heating

[ISA]

Hi - Looking for advice please. Just installed a heatrae sadia electromax wet central heating system after having night storage heaters for many years. Gas/Oil not an option. The confusion I have is I thought this would work on an off peak tarriff for my CH. I am currently with scottish power and am on economy 2000 which gives 18hrs reduced rate electricity. My water boiler which is seperate to the CH boiler is on the cheaper tarriff but i initially had the CH wired up to off peak but found it wouldn't work when there is no off peak electricity available. My normal rate electricity is around 4.30pm - 6.30pm 7.00am - 9.00am and another 2hr period during the day i think. As you can see the above times are really when you want the CH on therefore having it wired into off peak wasn't any use.
Am I right in thinking the off peak is really only any use for the water? Sorry if this is a bit vague but I'm totally confused now. The heatrae sadia maual keeps talking about off peak tarriffs but makes no mention of the fact the CH doesn't work when normal electricity kicks in.
Any advice would be very helpful at this stage.
Thanks

 

[ecowarm]

I think you need a good electrician to look at it. If it was on storage heaters before and you needed to have a boost in the day that worked, didn't it?
Eco

 

[oldplumber]

boost on storage heaters only means opening the vents up, unless you have a convector heater built into the storage heater which needs to have its own normal electricity supply in addition to the supply from economy 7 or whatever

 

[ghost]

Cheap rate electricity only switches on when the demand for power on the national grid is low. The times you want your heating on is the peak demand time.
Off peak metering came about to shed some demand from the grid through the day, this is where storage heaters came in. A storage heater is just a bank of elements which switch on through the night and heat bricks up in the heater. These bricks store the heat, hence the name storage heater. During the day the power to the heaters is off and the heat comes from the retained heat in the bricks. Basically a flap is adjusted when you want more heat out.
Now, you want to run an instantaneous water heater instead.
An instantaneous heater is, again, just an element heating the water. Just like a kettle. The difference to a storage heater is the element heats the water which is pumped round your radiators. These boliers work the same way as gas boilers.
Off peak electricity is completely pointless with these boilers, unless you are nocturnal.

The off peak electricity is ideal for your water heating because it is a water storage cylinder. The off peak power comes on through the night, switches on the element in the immersion heater and heats the water. The cylinder is lagged, thus retaining the heat in the cylinder.
A lot of electricity suppliers also switch the off peak power on at low demand times through the day to balance the load on the grid, maybe for an hour at a time. This gives storage heaters an extra boost through the day.

 

[ecowarm]

boost on storage heaters only means opening the vents up, unless you have a convector heater built into the storage heater which needs to have its own normal electricity supply in addition to the supply from economy 7 or whatever

Thats what I mean, it turns over to on peak electricity. My last house had economy 7 and everything was on peak or off peak, no seperate supplies.

Eco

 

[commgas]

You probably need a thermal store to provide hot water for your heating circuit, this would allow the off-peak electric (e.g. Economy 10) to heat up the store and then distribute the heat when you're home, GAH Electrastream is one such unit, but you do need very good insulation to avoid using too much full rate electric.

 

[SimonG]

Probably sorted now

 

[Centralheatking]

In this situation cant you wack a few panels on the roof to help the situation
there are still deals out there CHK