Possible TEMPO Problem

[Quillan]

I seem to remember that one or two people here also have TEMPO.

This morning all our heating was on when we got up, this should not be the case as our system is programmed to de-activate the heating on red days. Our little box that shows what today and tomorrow's 'day' colour will be says it's a blue day but alarmingly that it is 'night' as well. The indicator for tomorrow shows it as being a red day, I seem to remember that there should be no lights there until tonight when it tells us what tomorrow will be. I have checked the meter and that says it a red day also and until I turned the heating off manually was clicking over at an amazing speed. So my question is this, do I have a problem or is there a general problem in that everyone is experiencing the same today?

[Loiseau]

I did visit the EDF website the other day, to see how many EJP days had gone by, and to gloat vicariously from England...

I seem to remember that there was a day somewhere where they said something to the effect "sorry, we have changed our minds today" or something - which I presume meant that they were caught on the hop by this early cold spell, and having to wing it. So maybe they ARE messing about.

Try looking at the Tempo part of the EDF site and see if there is any mention.

Angela

[Quillan]

Thanks for that but my investigation leads me to believe that I have a dodgy meter. The website says it is a red day, the units burnt are ticking over on the 'red' part of the meter but what it's not doing is turning off the electric heating (there are two sets of connectors for TEMPO, one to control the hot water and the other the heating). I have isolated (disconnected the wires) from my board to the control connectors and using a meter it is definitely showing an 'on' when it should be an 'off' for the program setting. I now have to wait for the EDF man to come and look but that won't be till the 20th December (this year I hope but you never know [;-)] )

[nomoss]

The contact for water heater is normally closed, and opens to de-energise the relay for the heater (which has normally open output contacts). What one would expect.

However, the contact for the house heating is normally open, and closes to energise the relay for the heating (which thus has normally closed output contacts).

I was told by a local electrician that this is to avoid the heating relay being energised for most of the year (300 days maximum), but that would apply to the other contact also.

I expected to be able to re-programme the contacts via the meter buttons, but this is not the case. I have a complete manual, in French, in pdf, which I got from the Web. I don't remember from where, but it wasn't hard to find.

The contacts for "chauffage" within your meter may be failing to close, or are burnt away, OR the relay in your panel is not energising, or has stuck contacts.

You seem to say that on a red day the control contacts for heating were closed, if so this is correct, and your relay or its wiring are faulty. It's a red day today, so you can easily check.

Edit: The relays I installed have manual overrides, small toggle switches on the front. If yours have these, make sure they are in the "Auto" position, and have not accidentally been moved to turn the circuits on. Illogically, this is ON (I) for the hot water, and OFF (0) for the heating.

[Quillan]

My 'house' electrician came today to check out the 'house' side and make sure there are no errors or faults. He has confirmed what I thought having taken meter readings over several days. It does not matter what colour of the day EDF tells the meter it always thinks it is on a 'Blue Night' as confirmed by entering the TEMPO setting on the meter to check the day colour and also which reading is actually changing on the meter.

It also seems I am not the only person in my area with this problem as many other TEMPO users are experiencing the same. It is something to do with the 'tones' not being sent down the main power cables which tell the meters what colour day it is and if it is nighttime or daytime. This also explains why all our indicator box's are not showing the correct colour. My neighbour who is on EJP is also not switching to red days. My 'house' electrician tells me to forget speaking French when the EDF man comes, show him the colour on the EDF website, show him the indicator box showing Blue night and point at the hot radiators then walk away with a gaelic shoulder shrug with a 'thick' look on my face.

[Aurian]

Hi there,

to make sure whether tomorrow will be EJP or not, i use a free e-mail newsletter service. It also works for tempo www.fournisseurs-electricite.com/edf-tempo

[Aurian]

You should subscribe to the newsletter system on fournisseurs-electricite.com/edf-tempo, they ll mail you every day between 4 and 5 PM to tell the colour of the day after

[Quillan]

Here is an update.

Firstly what it is actually doing. If you get a red day it stays stuck on the night tariff of the day before. So if it were a blue day/night when it changes over to red day it stays on blue night. If it were a white day?night before it stays on a white night. Red nights always seems to work OK. The 'counter' for the red day has not changed since before Christmas when the meter was read by EDF and we had our bill.

We have had two visits from EDF. On the first visit the guy bought a new 'indicator' box (the box that tells you what tariff your on and what tomorrow will be), he never bothered to look at the meter, in fact he refused to look at the meter.

Today he came again, with another 'indicator' box to which I told him NO it was not just the box and got him to look at the meter. He told me, what I thought was the problem, that it's external to the house and was a 'regional' problem i.e. the system was not sending the signal to switch the tariff over on red days. The question is did he just discover this or did he already know? I did ask him if he knew of anyone else who had reported the same problem to which he said he didn't know.

Now some might say "keep your mouth shut because you are getting free electricity" but your not, what you are getting is discount electricity because it's on the wrong tariff. The thing is I shouldn't even get that because my meter is set to disable the heating on red days so it will show that I am burning loads of electricity at night on blue and white days which I was not before, lucky I manually turn the heating off manually but others may not and there are couple of times when the EDF email has not arrived (it does not seem to be as reliable as previous years) so neither have I. The thing is there is no such thing as a free meal so how is EDF going to work this out because they are sure going to want some money from us? I told him that I manually turned the heating off on the advice of my electrician and asked him to make a note of this and put that on by account file just in case. I guess what I am frightened of is a massive bill at the end of the year.

I would be interested to know if anyone else in the Languedoc region has a similar problem with Tempo. I am wondering if this is a regional problem or may be a local sub-station problem but I don't know how this works other than it is a 'tone' or set of 'tones' sent down the power cables somehow be it all the way from the central control for France or at local level as Tempo is not reginaliseed like the old EJP system.

[crossy67]

Jesus, that sounds confusing. 

I don't see how they can bill you for an unknown amount of electricity at an unknown tariff, it wouldn't happen in the UK because they can't quantify exactly what you're paying for.  So long as you have not tampered with the meter I would have thought you're in the clear.  But then again, this is France we're talking about.

As a side note, what time does the night time tariff start and end in general.  We were over last week, turned the power on and the meter was spinning a bit quick.  Did some investigation and found the hot water tank was getting warm.  I turned the switch off but it made no difference, I am assuming the switch is an over ride so you can have hot water if you run out during the day.  I need to find out how the power to the water is turned off, we won't be needing hot water all the time.

[5-element]

[quote user="Quillan"]

I would be interested to know if anyone else in the Languedoc region has a similar problem with Tempo. I am wondering if this is a regional problem or may be a local sub-station problem but I don't know how this works other than it is a 'tone' or set of 'tones' sent down the power cables somehow be it all the way from the central control for France or at local level as Tempo is not reginaliseed like the old EJP system.

[/quote]

Here, different part of Languedoc, no Tempo problems (yet) such as you are experiencing Quillan. Good luck, sounds horrible, I hope you get to the bottom of it.

[Quillan]

Thanks for the replies, I have a suspicion the problem lays with our sub-station across the river.

Even though it's not my problem, as confirmed by the EDF man and I have two visits logged, why do I have this gut feeling that somewhere along the line they are going to try and charge me for something. [:(] I just have this nasty feeling if you know what I mean.