Heures creuses/heures pleines: heating timetable

[Loiseau]

I have had the EDF to my house this week to switch my supply from EJP (after 30 years!) to a more winter-dweller-friendly tarif. When - after much research into standing charges and rates - I called to make the initial request, and asked for "tarif normal" the woman at the EDF end was incredulous, and said I would be mad not to have the "heures creuses/heures pleines" option. So after some protests, I eventually went along with her suggestion.

The technician came on Wednesday, and changed something in the box outside, and on the fuse board, and explained how it all worked. Obviously it is advantageous to run appliances between 22h30 and 06h30, and he suggested getting an elelctrician to fit a timer to the water heater so that could be set to run at those hours as well - although he said I would still be able to override it if I wanted to.

HOWEVER, since Wednesday, the all-electric heating (convector radiators) has switched itself OFF at 22h30 (not too good for us night birds!) and ON again at 06h30 - despite the fact that as it was my first day in the house after a month or two, I had set it all to be on for 24 hours solid. That seems seriously bizarre: only working in the most expensive time of day!

All the other electrics are working OK; can run washing machine at midnight etc.

Before I ring and demand that he come back and examine the problem, can anyone with HC/HP tell me if it is normal for the heating to cut out at night?

Angela

[Théière]

Hmm, I hope you got the convincing women's name as I think you have to be mad to pay for the change over although everyone's setup is different.  My heaters haven't gone off at night thankfully.

You shouldn't need a timer the switches fitted should switch over automatically.

[Chancer]

The hours are correct but the switching of the contacteur jour/nuit is the opposite to what you want, you didnt say if the electrician has fitted a timer or contacteur, if he has then its done wrong, the EDF contacteur should be open circuit during heures pleine and closed circuit during heures creuses, I have never heard of one doing the opposite unless incorrectly wired.

 

The EDF woman lied to you, the savings on HP/HC are so marginal now that for most people it will be costing them more, perhaps a lot more.

 

I have night storage heating so all my heating comes to me at 6.3cts per unit instead of the standard rate of 9.32cts BUT I only make a saving on those units a couple of months a year, the price I pay for it all year round is an extra 50cts per month on the abonnement and an extra 1cts per kwh for every unit of heures pleine electricity all year round that is where the scam and rip off comes into play, I only have a 6kva abonnement yours will surely be higher andcost you more.

 

to put it in simple terms, you pay an extra €? per month to save 3cts per unit during the 8 hours of heures creuses and you only benefit during the winter months when you use the heating, but you are screwed for an extra 1ct per kwh for the other 18 hours of heating and for every unit of electricity that you use all year round.

 

They are lying barstewards, my neighbour has lost thousands of pounds over 20 years from believing their lies without question, it was only when he asked me to look at a problem with his HP/HC I realised that he had it yet he has never had electric heating, not only that they had scammed him for a 18kva abonnement on HP/HC, he has now dropped to a 3kva plain tariff and tells me he is saving a fortune.

[NormanH]

One of the reasons I changed to Directe Energie for the country place was that EDF told me peremptorily that they were sending a technician to change the meter to the HC/HP  and charging me a lot for doing something I didn't want and hadn't asked for.

DE let me choose.

[idun]

Well when I saw you say that you were getting rid of the old EJP, the word 'mad' came to my mind too[:D]

WHY???? Why did you do that???

I lived with it for most of my time in France and I lived there the whole year round in the Alpes.

My dishwasher and washing machine went on during the night on those 22 days in winter, but that is ALL they are 'just' 22 and never on a weekend.

We initally had a wood burner to heat, but then got town gas and used that. The only advantage to the town gas was that we had more hot water, but I managed very well prior to the central heating, even when we had friends who stayed with us to ski.

[Quillan]

If you kept your old meter and it looks something like the photo below then if installed correctly you may just need to program it.

[URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205701.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205701.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

If you don't have a manual for it then you need to ask EDF for one. Go to an EDF shop is the best bet but you can try phoning their helpdesk although I wouldn't hold my breath.

You are stuck with the hours to automatically switch unless you have a timer and relay(s) installed. We have such equipment installed and a photo is below.

[URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205712.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205712.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

The timer is the bit with a display and buttons. We have two relays controlling the electric radiators, one for the 'living' areas (lounge, kitchen) and another for the bedrooms.

With this system we have the heating come on all the time* on the EDF meter and allow the timer to control when it comes on and off. Because we are here all the time the living areas come on at 06:30 and go off at 23:00. We also have a wireless thermostat in the living are. The bedrooms come on at 06:00, off at 09:00, on again at 21:00 and off at 23:00. There is enough heat stored in the radiators for them to still give off heat for about an hour after they are switched off. I can't remember how much these cost including installation but I think it was around 200 to 300 Euros.

If however they replaced the meter you may well have a Linky meter (this is a yellow box with a LCD display about the size of the average mobile phone screen). We are all supposed to have one of these by 2020 and they make life a bit more complicated mainly because they don't have the control that old meter has unless you attach a special box/interface. The problem is the box/interface, I am told is going to cost you a few hundred euros plus installation (done by your electrician, not EDF) as EDF does not supply them as part of the Linky meter. You can't even control the water heater from the meter without this interface.

Hope that helps a little.

* We actually have Tempo so the meter is set to allow the heating to be on day and night for both blue and white days but not on red days or nights. However the meter can be programmed by the technician to work on the HC/HP tariff and you do not have access to this part of the meter hence the need for the technician to do it.

[Loiseau]

Idun, it's a holiday home and I have been fine with the EJP for three decades, even some years having managed to miss every one of the 22 days!

I had my own "hibernation" system of heating my breakfast space with a gas-bottle heater; contriving to be out all day either hedge-laying or other similar heavy gardening, or else going on research sorties; evening, lighting a big log fire; and night-time retiring to a tiny room behind the fireplace that I could quickly heat up with the gas heater. In fact it was so cosy that often I would be entertaining friends to dinner on such days, and they would never even notice - except that I tended to use more candles than overhead lighting, and it was bl**dy cold if they ventured to the loo!

But advancing years, being a bit less energetically mobile, and lending my house for this coming winter to someone else who might feel the cold more; plus knowing that any future purchaser of my house will not be allowed to continue EJP, I thought I would go mad (as you say) and try life without for the rest of my time here.

Quillan ,thanks for your post, but I can't seem to view the photos when I copy and paste the links. However, I don't think the EDF would take kindly to my fiddling with their meter!

On my fuseboard in the house, I can choose either to have my heating on 24 hours, or on the timer, which I would set to suit me. Now the "24 hours" seems to be ineffectual, as stated in my first post. Of course, when I had the EJP, all heating would cut out from 7am till 1am the following day. Having a large water tank, I didn't worry about lack of hot water on the EJP days, though I did wear a lot of extra layers of clothes!

I am amazed you can manage with Tempo when you run a B and B though. How do you keep your guests warm on "red" days? I never used to invite anyone to stay from November to end March chez moi!

Angela

[Quillan]

Works in preview but not when it is saved. This forum software is getting to be a right pain and nobody will do anything.

The meter is a very light grey unit with a display in the middle and two blue buttons, one above the other to the right of the display.

The buttons are for the consumer, in other words for you to use to set the way it works. You cannot do anything wrong and EDF expect that you use them hence they should have left a manual for it.

Tried bottled gas, big problem with condensation so we changed to those clever paraffin heaters, they are wonderful but then they are around €200 a throw.

We only get 22 red days a year. We leave a hot water bottle and a box of condoms in the bedroom, they soon work out how to keep warn (wink). Actually we have reversible clim which works very well and is very cheap to run in the bedrooms. In the living area we have a massive insert log burner that can throw a lot of heat out some of which is piped round the house. Doesn't heat the bedrooms right up but only to about 16 deg so you only have to raise the heat another 4 to 5 deg. Then we have the trusty paraffin heaters.

The house also keeps the temperature inside quite well (it's double bricked with cavity insulation - keeps it cool in summer as well) so we only switched the heating on this month and it will go off in March, sometimes earlier. Funny enough because Tempo predicts when it's a red day on the whole of France it is the north that decides when it is a red day and you have a 50/50 chance that down here in the day it will be 18 deg plus so basically with a bit of luck we muddle through.

Anyway as somebody else said it is probably the way your meter (if it is the one I think it is) is programed. EDF won't program the consumer side for you, that's up to you, they just leave it as it comes out the box which does you no favours.

[Loiseau]

But, Quillan, my meter is in a box outside to which only the EDF have a key... They definitely don't anticipate the customer interfering with it.

[Quillan]

Ok then, have you seen your meter and does it look like any of the meters in the link below and if so which one (if it is a mechanical meter like the ones on the left the case may be black)?

 

French Electricity Meters

 

If you rent your house out for short periods especially in the winter do you expect the renters to register with EDF and pay the electricity bills or are you going make a guess at what they have used? How can you see what electricity you have used? If you think you can estimate their usage then be careful because they might leave you wit a hefty bill. As an example of how people think when you do this the electricity supply for our boat is fully inclusive with the mooring fees. When we have a really cold spell we go to the boat because we have about four electric heaters we can leave on 24/7 and the boat almost glows in the dark. It's cheaper than being at home and the way we look at it is free electricity. People who live on their boats there often run an extra cable from the pontoon in the winter because each connection is limited to 16A so they can 'double' it up to 32A. So you need to think quite carefully about how much of the rent you are allowing for electricity because they will think of it as free but that's another issue.

 

If the meter is outside in  box you are still allowed to have access to it. If you don't have a 'key' then you can buy one from most Brico places. It is a 'one key fits all' and the idea of locking the outside cabinet is to protect the meter from the elements. You have the right to access the meter for readings (and to program it if it is more modern). The meters have a seal over where the cables enter from EDF. Breaking that seal is an offence and there is an alarm that is triggered (on newer meters) if you attempt to open that part of the meter. Where the cables come out of the meter to your house is just covered by a plastic plate, there is no seal nor alarm. It also has the relay outputs for controlling both hot water and heating. You or your electrician have access to this part of the meter.

 

Anyway the rest of your problem will require an enhanced modification to your system to get it to do what you want. The question is do you spend the money now or wait for possibly four years before the new Linky meter is installed which will work differently to all the currently installed meters. Having said that the type of system I have does not rely on the meter (with the exception of red days in my case) and it does save me money because I have zoned the house (living and sleeping areas). No point in having the heating active in the bedrooms during the day and doing it this way means I don't have to think about if I left the heaters on or not.

 

Just a slight note. The Linky meters I am told are very 'Smart'. We have the meter that is next to the yellow one in the photo with a separate 60A EDF breaker. We can get a little extra out of our breaker before it trips, probably about an extra 6A. With the Linky meter you can't do this because the meter is super sensitive and controls the tariff. Best way to explain this is if all out heating is on with that extra 6A we can boil a kettle. When we change to the Linky we won't have the extra 6A and any attempt to boil a kettle will trip the house electrics out if all the heating is on.

[Chancer]

Quillan, you cannot "program" a compteur to alter anything on HP/HC, I can only assume you are talking of an EJP compteur which I have no knowledge of and I assume that if Angela has moved to HP/HC then she has a new compteur electronique (not Linky).

 

When i say they cannot be programmed the EDF engineers with their access code can change from standard tariff to HP/HC and also choose the plage d'horaire, the Customer can only scroll through the meter readings, settings, the PDL number etc

 

It seems to me that Angelas disjoncteur jour/nuit is incorrectly wired and she hasnt replied as to whether she got an electrician in or whether the hardwiring is still the same as for EJP, in which case if the contacteur has double throw contacts (common, normally open and normally closed) all that needs to be done is to change the wire(s) from the N/O contact to the N/C one or vice versa.

[Chancer]

Angela, if you like you can contact me and on the phone I can get you to tell me the markings on the switch on the tableau that you use for the heater and I can talk you through how to correct it in safety (moving one wire) if you feel confident.

[Loiseau]

Guys, thank you so much for all those techie tips but, in spite of being the descendant of a long line of electrical manufacturers/engineers, I am not aiming to do any of this tweaking myself!

I just wanted to know, from somebody with HC/HP whether it was normal for the heating now to go off all night!

If so, well, I have clearly chosen the wrong tarif ?; if not, whether the EDF guy has made a mistake (in which case he can come and correct it for nothing!), or whether I have to get in an electrician at my expense...

Quillan, there is a rather cloudy window to the box outside, but I never rent out my house, so have not felt the need to take readings.

Angela

[Quillan]

[quote user="Chancer"]

Quillan, you cannot "program" a compteur to alter anything on HP/HC, I can only assume you are talking of an EJP compteur which I have no knowledge of and I assume that if Angela has moved to HP/HC then she has a new compteur electronique (not Linky).

 

When i say they cannot be programmed the EDF engineers with their access code can change from standard tariff to HP/HC and also choose the plage d'horaire, the Customer can only scroll through the meter readings, settings, the PDL number etc

 

It seems to me that Angelas disjoncteur jour/nuit is incorrectly wired and she hasnt replied as to whether she got an electrician in or whether the hardwiring is still the same as for EJP, in which case if the contacteur has double throw contacts (common, normally open and normally closed) all that needs to be done is to change the wire(s) from the N/O contact to the N/C one or vice versa.

[/quote]

 

Sorry but if your assumption is correct and she has a none Linky digital meter then she can, I know because when they changed my meter they set it to HC/HP and when I tried to program it how I wanted it there was only option for HC/HP and not Tempo..

 

I cannot give a direct link to the PDF version but if you Google "Programmation compteur EDF HC/HP Paramètres" there is a link to a PDF file which is really for the technician and how to program it but it also explains how the user can determine if the water and heating comes on all the time, just on nights or not at all. If you have Tempo you can program it further for each individual colour both night and day. Not even the technician can program the physical time (Hour) of when the day finishes and the night starts because this is activated by a signal sent by EDF.

 

If we are talking user manual and not the technicians manual the it explains that it is done by the blue buttons. If you press the top button it steps through the functions, when you get to the one that says EAU. Now press the bottom one and you can step through the two choices which are EAU 1 for water on at night or EAU 2 which is day and night. Once selected press the top button again and it saves and moves on to the next function. The next function is heating which is displayed as CHAU. This can be set to CHAU 0 for all heating off, CHAU 1 for nights only and CHAU 2 for night and day. Press the top button again to save and move on. Because she wants the heating on beyond 22:30 she should get a timer and relays installed then set the meter to CHAU 2. The alternative is to set it to CHAU 2 then if each heater has a manual switch on it to go round and turn them off at night. The problem is in the morning when she will have to manually turn them on. We used to do that before we bought the timer.

 

My guess is that the technician never set up the meter when he changed it and the hot water (EAU) is set to EAU 2 so it is actually on all the time. I say this because the Technician won't touch the consumer side of the meter other than to reconnect the wires. Seeing as the older, mechanical meters have the same relay system as the new ones even if he swapped the wires round the wrong way being only a relay contact it would still work. If however he touched the consumer panel he could have changed the wiring like you said but it is highly unlikely I think unless he was trying to be 'helpful'.

 

 

[Chancer]

So are you saying that you can have both Tempo and HP/HC Quillan?

 

Are they not mutually exclusive?

 

In any case I have no knowledge or experience of Tempo and if Angela has Tempo plus HP/HC then please ignore my comments.

 

A modern Sagem or other make of compteur electronique does not have contacts for eau, just a single pole non changeover HP/HC contact plus data and ground for the téléreportage, they must be different ones for Tempo which in any case is no longer available, maybe when you change from Tempo to HP/HC they leave the existing meter and you can still use the functionality.

 

Thanks for the link re the tempo programming but as my head is full of enough stuff at the moment and its unlikely that I will ever encounter Tempo I havn't read it, sorry [:(]

[Loiseau]

Dear, helpful chaps,

I phoned the depannage service and the woman said definitely not THEIR problem; that it is NOT normal for HC/HP to behave like that, and that I needed an electrician to change the contacteur chauffage. So I have left a message for my local electrician, and hope he will come next week to sort it - at €€€€€

Out of curiosity, I will go and peer through the misty Perspex outside to see if I can spot what meter I now have. ?

Xx to you both

Angela

[suein56]

Tempo is still available at EDF though they will say anything (possibly even lying) to discourage you from opting for it. And yes you can have HC and HP with it.

It is EJP which, I believe, is no longer available as a new contract.

Sue

[Quillan]

[quote user="Chancer"]

So are you saying that you can have both Tempo and HP/HC Quillan?

 

Are they not mutually exclusive?

 

In any case I have no knowledge or experience of Tempo and if Angela has Tempo plus HP/HC then please ignore my comments.

 

A modern Sagem or other make of compteur electronique does not have contacts for eau, just a single pole non changeover HP/HC contact plus data and ground for the téléreportage, they must be different ones for Tempo which in any case is no longer available, maybe when you change from Tempo to HP/HC they leave the existing meter and you can still use the functionality.

 

Thanks for the link re the tempo programming but as my head is full of enough stuff at the moment and its unlikely that I will ever encounter Tempo I havn't read it, sorry [:(]

[/quote]

 

No your wrong again. From the link I gave. There are seven different setting controlling which colour day and then ether night, night/day or nothing, the same is for the water. It is still available and it is displayed on the new EDF website. The reason it is hard to get is because people down south can run their A/C in the summer for the price of a 40w lamp bulb. In the summer (blue days) we pay just 0.09 per unit. HC/HP is 0.11 and of course standard is 0.14. Seeing as we are at home all summer it saves us a fortune what with all the washing, water heating, laundry etc. Our bill is around €1,700, down from €2,600 since we install air heat pump units and when I did a spread sheet two years ago just going to the HC/HP tariff would take us up to just over €4k and a plain standard tariff would mean we (well me really) would work for nothing. EJP was even cheaper which is what the previous owners had but we couldn't get it. I think the OP may well be warm over winter but her pockets will be a lot lighter when she out her first 12 month bill. Personally I would have stuck with EJP like Idun said and spent my first years savings on a couple of paraffin heaters. Problem is you can't go back to EJP which was by far the best tariff.

 

By the way you don't have to change the digital meter to change tariff, all the technician has to do is break the seal, re-program it and re-seal it. With the exception of Tri-Phase it is 'one meter fits all'. There is nothing physically different between them. That's another reason why I think it is the programming but as you say even EDF technicians can be stupid at times.

 

Easy to spot the difference when you look through the window of the box. If you see a LCD digital display then it is what we are talking about. If you have counters, like you used to get in the UK in the old days, then it isn't and you can't program it. If it is yellow then it is Linky and something I know nothing about.

 

 

[Chancer]

Quillan I dont know what I have said to upset you but I ask a question to learn, as that is what forums are for and you keep saying, you are wrong, you are wrong again, this is not a pi55ing contest its a public forum of which you are a moderator.

 

Are you saying that I am wrong and that my 8 new electric meters installed by ERDF just over a year ago (plus the 6 that I bought myself) do indeed have contacts for eau and chauffage? Or am I wrong about something else? I am always happy to learn, perhaps these contacts are on another box?

 

Easy to spot the difference when you look through the window of the box. If you see a LCD digital display then it is what we are talking about.

 

I dont think that "we" are talking about the same thing, my meters are what are fitted as standard to all new supplies since EJP was no longer available to new consumers, they definitely dont have extra terminals for eau, chauffage, they have C1 and C2 for the HP/HC relay and also terminals 11 and 12 which I think are a data bus for use with une gestionnaire d'energie and are common with the new Linky meters, maybe your meter is connected to a Tempo box by them? In which case we are talking about the same compteur but with different set ups, yours Tempo plus HP/HC, mine just HP/HC. In any case Angela needs to confirm what she has now, is it HP/HC with or without Tempo, if the former then she can ignore my advice, if the latter, then how can I say this................[Www]

 

As you say the EDF guy selects the tariff and to enter his programming mode you have to break the seal and remove the top capot, you probably need an engineers code as well but I do know that the meter registers and time stamps every time that the capot is removed as an anti fraud measure, when the meter reader swipes the pastille it will bring up a tamper warning and you will probably get a visit.

 

Once programmed by EDF for HP/HC without tempo (which is what I read that Angela had done, switched from Tempo to the standard tarif and was persuaded to go to HP/HC) then the programming menu will not contain any options for tempo settings, hot water, heating etc, none of mine do although I have seen the sections in the programming manual, my compteurs for the flats on normal flat rate tariff dont have the menu function to flip between HC and HP readings because the meter doesnt record them, its just straight KW/H

[idun]

We could open our meter, just used a screw driver, quite a big headed one from what I remember. I used to read it regularly.

I realise that you only have 22 red days Quillan, but you also have 'other' days where you pay more too, haven't you. Certainly not the good deal EJP was. And the biggest saving for us was the abonnement annuel.

We always had alternative heating, ie the wood burner with some radiators running from it and we had a radiator in the loo, hate cold bathrooms and toilets.  Then we had the town gas, so with a little thought for us it was 'easy'.

[Quillan]

Idun - It seems from photo's I have seen there are basically four different types of meters that have been used over the years. Within each type of meter type there have been different manufacturers supplying them. The type I have are made by Sagem and I think Siemens is another manufacturer but don't quote me on the company names and there may be a third and even forth manufacturer for all I know. The type I have which is the digital type (as opposed to the mechanical type with a disc that goes round and mechanical tumblers with numbers on) has two covers one at the top held in place by a screw and EDF seal the other at the bottom that can be simply pulled off. We have white days which are the same price as the normal day/night tariff. The there is blue days which are incredibly cheap.

 

Chancer - Sorry about that, I am not 'having a go'. To be frank I am p*ssed off with this forum software. It would be so easy to put a picture up so you could understand but I can't even do that since they have changed things. Archant seems to have lost total interest in this forum now and even though as a moderator I have complained, pointed out the posts in the Tech Support section from the members nothing has been done and not even a PM to say it is being looked into. I shall try another browser today.

 

Right now I have got that of my chest and kicked the wall a few times lets move on. You may or may not remember I had a long run in with EDF because my Tempo meter would not register a red day but stayed on the night before. On the face of it you might have thought it was a good deal but it's not because your stuck in night mode and all the water heaters are on 23/7. I had four meters replaced in two years, paid a lot of money for a proper registered electrician to test my house out and be on site when the EDF chap came and it all turned out to be the 'tone' repeater for the village. I did get something like €2k back for them getting wrong on their estimates and the inconvenience which I guess was a result.

 

Now I know there are two different manufacturers of the meter because the first time it was changed I got one with no, lets call it connection, for the heating, only one set for the hot water. He had to come back with another meter that had the second pair of contacts for the heating (I believe they refer to it as a pilot connection). What he did was connect the heater control wire along with the hot water one to the single terminal that is for water. I can't recall exactly what happened but it didn't work the way it was supposed to with regards to the heating. It turned out that whilst the meters look very similar from the outside they are made by different companies and one has the extra terminal to control the heating and the other doesn't.

 

Now because of the Linky system they are not buying in any more of the digital meters, they are using up the stocks they have which must be several thousand or hundreds of thousands throughout France. My EDF man had to source my replacements from a friend of his in a different region because our region had used all theirs up and only had the ones left with a single terminal. Probalt because everyone had the same problem and they swapping meters out so quickly in huge amounts.

 

Now if you go back and read the OP's original post she had EJP. My neighbour has this and her meter looks the same as mine. My house had EJP when I arrived but was changed to Tempo because I had to have a new contract and EJP was no longer available. I can't remember what they did to change it over but I suspect they simply came and reprogramed the meter.

 

I removed this text because I can put pictures in now.

 

Even with you meter you can control/program if the water heater comes on all day or just nights as I explained. However it is not a timer in that you can't set the time in hours that it comes on and off as this, as you know, is controlled by a signal sent to the meter from a central control in EDF. This is also the problem the OP seems to have or it could be that the EDF man has replaced the meter with one that only has one control connector like yours and did what he did to mine and join the two control wires together. On this we are saying the same but differently because I am using English and (probably rightly so) you are putting in French words.

 

Before I finish my post I am going to try to insert a photo again using a different browser.

 

[URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205701.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205701.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

 

Wow look at that it works, that's my meter.

 

Now then this will help, this is a photo of the one fitted last year and my guess is it looks different to yours.

 

[URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151128_162612.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151128_162612.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

 

Now mine was fitted new last year.

 

That should now clear matters up, sorry for the cross wires and me being wound up by the Forum software, deep apologies.

 

Now I can put up pictures this is the one of the timer and relays we had installed to 'zone' the house. The timer can control up to four 'zones' but we use just two.

 

[URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205712.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205712.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

 

[Loiseau]

Just tried peering through the murky Perspex "window", and I can dimly make out a blurry white shape which must be the face, with a black surround.

So nothing too sophisticated there, Quillan!

[idun]

 Wasn't a case of what sort of meter we had. We got EJP just after it came out and it was simple in the extreme. 1st Nov to the 31st of March, 22 days between those dates, never a weekend or bank holiday, we had expensive electricity between 7am and 1am. And that was it.

At first we could call a number to find out if it were to be the next day, and then eventually look on line.

Abonnements were really really cheap, and that was our greatest saving.

..... and one winter, they didn't even use up the 22 days.

The later versions, were dearer and far more complicated, and maybe they would be meter dependant, but ours was simple, as I imagine that Loiseau's is.

[Chancer]

I have got to the bottom of it and know exactly what Angelas problem is.

 

This is what all my meters are Quillan, a standard EDF tarif bleu reference S10C4, yours will undoubtedly be to the same standard as they are intended to be interchangeable but the French manufacturers do their best to make them otherwise, they are indeed multi-tarif, EJP, tempo, HP/HC and as we agree that is set by the ERDF installer and we cannot alter it.

 

http://www.bis-electric.com/compteur-abonne-agree-edf-mono.html

 

Now click on the "documents technique" link, go to section 5.2 and read the bit in red regarding the C1/C2 asservissement contact, you will note that the contact state is the opposite for HP/HC as it is for EJP, this explains what is happening to Angelas switching relay.

 

Angela the problem is not EDF, your contacteur jour/nuit in the tableau électriques needs a wire removing from one terminal and placing in the one beside it as I thought, its a 2 minute job for an électricien or I can talk you through it if you wish.

 

Its good to have learnt more about the compteurs and to have got to the bottom of your problem.  

 

 

[Quillan]

Seems according to your link I have the 'superior' [:)] with two sets of connections and you have the 'inferior' with only one set of connections. [:(].

 

The thing is compared to mine there is also another change in that if you look at the photo above each pair of connections I have a fuse. Just goes to show, as you said, they are all standard, well sort of. Also note that the connections are marked differently, on yours it is C1 and 2 whilst on mine they are marked A1, 2, 3 and 4, no wonder the EDF chaps get confused.