Electricity tariffs?

[crossy67]

Any one care to explain the way the French electricity tariffs work and what these red days are all about and how to choose the best tariff for a full time resident?  I have read about it but can't figure out how it works.  How does your meter know what is a red day or any other colour?  It's a mystery to me.  I have tried searching and can't seem to find it explained, only mentioned.

[Quillan]

There are three systems, standard (you pay the same price per kw day and night), Off Peak (you pay a cheaper rate during the night) and Tempo (three different rates blue, white and red plus a cheaper night rate so effectively 6 different prices).

As you mentioned "a red day" I imagine you are looking at Tempo. There are 22 red days running from 1st November to the 31st March the following year. There are no red days on Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays. It is possible to get the 5 'working' days all red which can be a pain. Basically red days always tend to be the coldest days and the cost per kw is double that of the standard rate. There are 43 white days per year and they can be at any time although they mainly tend to be in the Autumn and Spring but never on a Sunday, the price tends to be about 2 cents per kw more than the standard rate. The remaining 300 days are blue days where the rate is about 3 cents cheaper than the standard rate.

Your electricity meter knows what the colour will be because a signal is sent to it over the electricity cable coming in to your house. You should also get a little box that can be plugged in to a power socket which will trigger at 20:00 hours every night to tell you what tomorrows colour will be and if you are on day or night rate. You can also get EDF to send you an email for when the days are going to be white or red, this normally gets to you about 19:00 giving even earlier warning.

The standing charge also varies. Based on a 60 amp supply (36kva) at standard rate you will pay 689 Euros per year, for 'Off Peak' you will pay 809 Euros per year and for Tempo you will pay 605 Euros per year.

The problem with red days is that basically you can't use anything electrical that burns serious electricity like an electric oven, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble drier even using an electric kettle and hair drier can be expensive. Off course if you have any form of electric heating that's a definite no.

Blue and white days (and nights) are cheaper than than the 'off peak' system.

We have Tempo and a clever system that turns things on and off depending on the colour of the day. On red days it automatically turns off all heating and water heaters. On white days the water heaters only come on at night, the rest of the time (blue days) everything can be used. To heat the house on red days we use the log burner and paraffin heaters. Tempo is a pain in the bottom in some ways but once you have got used to it then it's not so bad especially as you know the day before. We cook and freeze stews and things then we check about 20:30 to see if its a red day tomorrow and take stuff out of the freezer to defrost over night and heat through on the gas. We also have a large cooker that whilst a bit expensive does have two ovens one of which is gas.

For more info on Temp and the other systems I have supplied a link below.

http://bleuciel.edf.com/abonnement-et-contrat/les-prix/les-prix-de-l-electricite/tarif-bleu-47798.html#acc52409

 

[crossy67]

Wow, that sounds complicated.  Thanks for the informative reply and the link Q.  I know feel I know everything I need to know to confuse myself with lol.

[cooperlola]

Some bell is ringing in my head, Q, which says that Tempo is not available to new subscribers.  Don't know where I got this from though, I admit!

[Gardengirl]

That was a very good explanation of the tempo system!

We looked into it, but as we're only in France for 6 months of the year, have electric heating and a very small, well-insulated apartment, it wasn't for us. In fact, our bills aren't enormous; we only opted for a small supply, which occasionally trips in winter, when we might have heaters, oven and the kettle on.

EDF paid us back 180 euros in July, which was very prompt and nice to receive, especially as winter seemed so long and cold and we thought we must have used a lot of electricity. We receive a lot of sun, as we have large windows and face south; most of our neighbours facing north have their heating on aleady.The thermometers have shown a steady 23indoors since we arrived back 3 weeks ago, with a temp outside now of 19, but very sunny.

We're considering solar panels in UK, as we also face south there. Maybe something to do next spring. We gather we can sell it on; as we're frequently not there, it must mount up to set against high installation costs. Anyone on here already gone in for that?

[Quillan]

[quote user="cooperlola"]Some bell is ringing in my head, Q, which says that Tempo is not available to new subscribers.  Don't know where I got this from though, I admit![/quote]

There was something about this a year or two back but like you I can't remember. However, it is still shown as an option to buy a contract so I assume it must be still available. I also seem to remember something about having to have electric heating to get it but I see no mention of this on the EDF website.

[Quillan]

[quote user="gardengirl "]

That was a very good explanation of the tempo system!

We looked into it, but as we're only in France for 6 months of the year, have electric heating and a very small, well-insulated apartment, it wasn't for us. In fact, our bills aren't enormous; we only opted for a small supply, which occasionally trips in winter, when we might have heaters, oven and the kettle on.

EDF paid us back 180 euros in July, which was very prompt and nice to receive, especially as winter seemed so long and cold and we thought we must have used a lot of electricity. We receive a lot of sun, as we have large windows and face south; most of our neighbours facing north have their heating on aleady.The thermometers have shown a steady 23indoors since we arrived back 3 weeks ago, with a temp outside now of 19, but very sunny.

We're considering solar panels in UK, as we also face south there. Maybe something to do next spring. We gather we can sell it on; as we're frequently not there, it must mount up to set against high installation costs. Anyone on here already gone in for that?

[/quote]

You could try one of these 'inverter' type reversible clim units. Very easy to install and they burn very little electricity. The one we bought from Brico Depot cost us 399 for the unit and 89 for the pre gassed pipe and took a couple of hours to fit. It burns about 800W to get 2.5kw of cold and about 3.2kw of heat and has an A rating.

As for solar, well this month the tax rebate drops by 50% on installation cost and it can take up to 100 years to get your money back according to RICS.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/solar-panels-take-100-years-to-pay-back-installation-costs-917202.html

If you interrogate these 'dodgy' companies in France that try to sell it to you and you have done your research their last line of defence is that by installing it you are protecting the environment for your children, more like grandchildren really because you gain no benefit from it. My argument is if its so good then why don't they make it compulsory to build it in to all new builds.

[crossy67]

The people we are buying the house off did mention that they were on a package that had red days etc. (I assume Tempo) He said it might not be available now though, so perhaps they have stopped it?

One more question.  If we are on a red day then will everyone else be on one too?

[Quillan]

Funny enough I was reading through the EDF website because of what Coops said. There are two types of account with EDF, 'Tarif Blue' and 'Mon Contract Electricité' if you read the link I gave you. With the first the price is set by the government and the second by EDF. When this first started the second tarif was less than the 'Tarif Blue' and was quite attractive but as the cost of production has increased it is now more expensive, so the contract to get appears to be the 'Tarif Blue'. Also, with the 'Mon Contract Electricité' contract you can't have Tempo.

I didn't realize (probably my error) that you are talking about what the previous owners had. They may have been on the old JPL (think thats correct) system which is like the Tempo system but only two colours. This was a very cheap system with the exception of the 22 red days which were even more expensive I believe than Tempo red days but is no longer available for new contracts and has not been for a few years.

As a side issue if you are tax resident in France and as a couple have a joint income of  1,332 Euros per month or less and have 'Couverture Maladie Universelle Complémentaire' you MAY be eligible to anything between a 30 to 50% reduction. The same applies for single people with an income of or less than 626 Euros per month. The system for this is called TPN and there is some info on the link I gave previous.

[crossy67]

You truly are a mine of information, thanks[:D]

One more thing.  A single phase supply is 240 volt there, I have searched about a bit and wikkipedia says so but I would not want to go buying expensive appliances such as an induction hob if it won't work on 110v.

[idun]

It was EJP and they stopped new customers having it many years ago. We had it more or less from the beginning, but the new owners would not be able to have it when they moved in.

I think that EJP was the best of the contracts as you knew where you were with it and the cheap days were cheap!

[Gardengirl]

AFAIK, the supply is 230 volts. We have an induction hob, and the only time we've had any problem is in winter when electric heaters are on and we use the hob on super-heat; if we then switch the electric kettle on, it trips. We only opted for the 30 amp supply, as for most of the time we stay under that. The rise in cost to go above 30 amps seemed quite expensive from what I remember.

 

[crossy67]

Nice one, thanks for that GG.  I could never go back from induction now, we have a pyrolytic oven too, lazy!  Good to know they will work ok, I can start keeping my eyes open for bargains now.

[AnOther]

[quote user="crossy67"]One more thing.  A single phase supply is 240 volt there, I have searched about a bit and wikkipedia says so but I would not want to go buying expensive appliances such as an induction hob if it won't work on 110v.[/quote]There is no 110v in France.

[Quillan]

[quote user="crossy67"]Nice one, thanks for that GG.  I could never go back from induction now, we have a pyrolytic oven too, lazy!  Good to know they will work ok, I can start keeping my eyes open for bargains now.
[/quote]

We have one of these, it does not do what it says on the tin plus cleaning is far to expensive in France because of the amount of electricity used, the time taken and the cost. Whilst the unit rate is cheaper in France its the standing charge that's the killer.

 

[crossy67]

We don't need to use it often, I think we have only used it twice cos we don't cook much meat.  I find ours brilliant but you can't clean the racks which kind of defeats the object a bit.  Don't think I would bother again, like you say, in France we are going to br living on the cheap and it's an expense we cam easily live without.

[Steve Last]

I am just reviewing our electrical account and finding some anomalies as well as huge costs, but this is just a question about the flat rate abonnement: there is a huge increase between 18 kVA and 24 kva (251 > 524 € per year).The 18 KVA shows a trip Amperage of 90 but the 24 kVA shows it at 40A. http://bleuciel.edf.com/abonnement-et-contrat/les-prix/les-prix-de-l-electricite/tarif-bleu-47798.html#acc52401

I calculate 18kva = 72 amps at 250 volts and 24 kva = 96 amps. So it appears that I would overload a 24 kva circuit before an 18 kVA one - can someone explain to me how this system works?

[AnOther]

I think you'll find that 18kva is the maximum for 1ph and for 24kva or higher you would have to go to 3ph.

[Chezstevens]

we have EJP and it stopped circa 1995. Yes, it is the cheapest tarif, we have 18 kva.

[Steve Last]

Thank you for that. Our house is 3 phase and when we took it over were recommended to have the 30kwh tariff. I'd never really thought about how much was actually needed but costs are now very high. If 18kwh is adequate for most domestic installations I'll reduce it. We are normally just 2 adults here and have some electric heat in winter plus the usual appliances.