eDF tariffs

[Blodwyn]

Our electricity bills are divided into heures creuses and heures pleines but it doesn't switch automatically to hc (22.30-6.30) so we have to remember to switch the hot water on every night and occasionally forget. An electrician recently replaced the immersion tank and is to come back and sort the heures creuses issue - but I'm wondering if another tariff would be cheaper. In our old house we had hc in the afternoon as well as overnight, and a storage heater came on in both. Also using the washing machine and oven was hc in the afternoon. Now only dishwasher, fridge and freezer are going overnight (washing machine too noisy). Any thoughts before the electrician comes back? I looked at the eDF website but can't see how to work out if there is a tariff that would work out cheaper.

[mint]

We had quite a discussion about this very issue last year, in the autumn, I seem to remember.

We stopped our  HC/HP plan though it was more for convenience than cost.  Also, I can't now really compare costs because we installed a new kitchen and are now all electric instead of bottled gas for cooking.

We had automatic switch off and on but we'd changed meal times, etc because of social activities and the 2 hours of HC between 12.00-14.00 hrs were no longer suitable.

Our bills are relatively high but we do keep warm the rooms we use and I am unapologetic about having some heating on in the bedroom on cold nights because we are all three (dog making a third) getting older and feeling the cold more.

The discussion concluded that the costs, if usage remained the same, were not vastly different.  You might be able to access the discussion using the search engine.  I no longer remember what the thread was called!

Sorry, can't answer your question more specifically.

[Chancer]

There is only one HP/HC tarif apart from the different puissances  souscrite available within it, there are 3 maybe 4 different plages d'horaires but they all give you 8 hours HC and 16 HP, some of them do have an hour in the afternoon. What is available in your area dépends on ERDF.

 

The plage and hence switching times can be changed by re-programming your meter, were they to change it you would be charged but they wont, there is not a prestation in their barème de charges for it, this is (sadly) France, you get what you are given,  the only chance you will have is if you have the technician there to reprogram something else, say a change of puissance and you ask him, I did this during a mise en service and after lots of head shaking and fermeté he was forced to admit that there was no reason not to change it (he leaves them all on the default setting) and did it to humour me but a Customer requesting something be done to suit their wishes was incomprehensible, they probably still joke about it now.

[Chancer]

By the way, if you no longer have storage heating then you are being royally shafted by EDF for HP/HC is its only for water heating base consumption (fridge freezer, stuff on standby etc), they have changed the pricing over the years so there is little saving during HC but you pay more for all your daytime units throughout the whole year plus the extra abonnement.

 

I did the calcs and you need to consume around 5 times as many HC units as HP ones throughout the whole year which is very difficult even with storage heating as its only used a few months of the year, last year for my own flat there was still a small benefit but at this tme of year I was throwing away heat when the weather warmed up suddenly, now switch off the storage heaters at the end of the real winter and use my clime in spring and autumn, no wasted heat, its efficiency (heat pump) gives me better savings than the HC tarif, I will recalculate in autumn and am fairly sure I will have to dump the HP/HC.

[Blodwyn]

Latest bill, after meter reading: hc 3014 kw and hp 6440. We have electric heaters (no storage heaters now) but also a woodburner - in a very well insulated small house. Maybe we should ditch the hc thing?

[mint]

I know nothing about pricing but I do know that I much prefer not having to watch the clock and feeling guilty about leaving the hoovering too late or not getting all the cooking done in the time slot[:-))]

Me, I was brought up on guilt trips.........And now I feel liberated[:D] at least as far as my electricity consumption is concerned!

Should you decide to change, you just call them and they give you a time for the technician to come and he takes seconds and they charge you ....oh dear, can't remember how much, but it wasn't a big sum.

[Chancer]

[quote user="Blodwyn"]Latest bill, after meter reading: hc 3014 kw and hp 6440. We have electric heaters (no storage heaters now) but also a woodburner - in a very well insulated small house. Maybe we should ditch the hc thing?[/quote]

That one bill will give a false reading, you need your annual consumption which is easy to find, even with that bill without even doing the calculation you are being screwed, with the annual figures without heating it will probably be  worse.

 

Please also advise what is your puissance souscrite and how many kw is your heating load, do you have an electric oven/hob.

 

My neighbour got screwed by EDF some 30+ years ago when he was young and naive, now he is old and naive [:D] he accepted what they told him he needed, HP/HC with the maximum puissance yet he had no electric heating or cooking, I discovered this when the HP/HC contacteur stopped working, he has now changed and is really angry that it has cost him thousands of euros over the décades, he could have bought even more fags and been in his grave by now!

[Blodwyn]

Thanks for reply. Our puissance is 15 KVA. Oven and hob are electric. As I said, washing machine is on in the daytimes. I don't do a huge amount of ironing! Computers and TV mostly before 22.30 though often recording later. Not sure about heating load. We have no heating on most of the time at the moment.

[mint]

You must live in a huge house to need 15kva!

We have 9 and that has always been enough.  We have all the usual electric appliances and the new 4 ring induction hob, also a powerful extractor hood.  Plus electric radiators, towel rails, etc that we never hesitate to use.

Would your 15 kva make your bills higher?  I am ignorant about this puissance bit so would be following any explanation given[:)]

[Chancer]

Please advise your annual HP and HC consumption.

 

I can already see that you are probably paying for a puissance that you dont need, I am all electric with electric storage heaters and never trip out a 6kva supply, its tight though, I have the washing machine timed to come on during HC but when the storage heaters have charged, so arguably I could need 9kva to be on the safe side, you with a bigger house maybe 12kva but 15??............... In fact from the figures you gave me which were winter ones I can see that you dont need 15kva.

 

Give your annual consumption and I can tell you how much your supposed savings are actually costing you. Its the same for millions  of others so you are in good company.

 

Mint, the standing charge rise with the puisance souscrite so many are paying a lot for something they dont need.

[Chancer]

[quote user="Blodwyn"]Latest bill, after meter reading: hc 3014 kw and hp 6440. We have electric heaters (no storage heaters now) but also a woodburner - in a very well insulated small house. Maybe we should ditch the hc thing?[/quote]

 

Was that the latest bi-monthly bill or the annual one?

 

I ask because having looked at my electric accounts the consumption above is 1.5 times my annual consumption, so maybe you are benefitting from the HP/HC tarif, it would be good to have the figures and to do the calculation it may prove you are saving or may be an example to others that they are losing.

[Blodwyn]

Thanks for the interest. We have a small house! on one level. Two (too) small bedrooms, living/dining and kitchen and another room. We extended into the garage but the electricity was already on 15kva. As said above, it is very well insulated. Triple glazed and wall insulation. Our son complained last week that the house was too warm - with no heating on! How can we be paying far too much for electricity?

We are all electric except for the wood burner - which we didn't use every day last winter and don't use the heaters excessively.

The 6 bills up to April this year came to 2100.

[Chancer]

Sorry to keep repeating the same thing, unless you have recently moved into the house can you please give the annual consumption of kw/h HP & HC, you can find this on your EDF rubrique on the net if you have one or compare 2 bills following actual readings one year apart, I think they also print your annual consumption on the bill or one of them but I am no longer with EDF so cant confirm.

[Blodwyn]

It's horribly confusing with all the estimated bills and deductions for massive over estimation.

(Must read the meter before paying next bill!)

On my Feb 2017 bill there is 'regularisation' for 2014 and 2015 just to muddy it even more.

Fumbling round the website, it says we used 4350kw in total in 2016 but not how much was hc.

So, back to the bills and from 17/04/16-16/04/17 it looks like: hc 1970 and hp 2870.

I rang eDF who looked at our account and assured me I'm better off with Tarif Bleu. He said it would cost 35 euros to change tariff (but I think more to get our electrician in to make the water tank automatically switch over to hc!). It would only save 1 euro a month on the abonnement (currently 13,64 a month). I said people were suggesting I might save if I changed from TB and he sounded slightly miffed, saying he has no interest either way. I do wish I could do paragraphs, or even bigger spaces, to make the post clearer!

[Loiseau]

Is it possible to open the outdoor box to read the meter oneself? Mine has a little Perspex window through which one is presumably supposed to be able to read the meter, but it is yellowed with age and impossible to see through. The box itself has a lock with a sort of triangular sticky-out bit, which presumably requires a triangular gadget to undo it.

As I had a massive bill 12 months ago, and a tiny one recently, the EDF themselves actually queried it with me, and asked me to read the meter myself. But it was impossible without opening the box.

Sorry, not trying to hijack the thread, but just interested in a tip about opening the box.

[mint]

Yes, Angela, we did have a truc with a triangular aperture that fitted exactly over the thingie on the door of the meter.

Now, we no longer have that because I left it for the buyers of our house.

OH gets a pair of pincers (wrench,) with fine jaws and he just turns the lock and, well, that's it!

[Loiseau]

Good thought, mint, thanks! Will give it a go when I am over next week...

[pomme]

It is called a Clé à triangle EDF. You can find them on Amazon and elsewhere.