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My auntie lives miles away from me and lives in sheltered type housing, she has her own flat that she owns the lease for but there are communial areas and a manager on site 24 hours in case help is needed. The flat is heated with night storage heaters. A few months ago a company sold her some super duper flash new heaters to replace the old heaters.

She has 2 consumer units, one for sockets and lights etc and one for the storage heaters and water heater. She has the meter where there are 5 tails, live and neutral in, neutral out, live out to the general consumer unit and live out to the storage heater consumer unit.

So I pop my head into the cu cupboard and what they have done in pulled the feed from the meter to the storage heater cu and henleyed it in the general cu feed. So now there is only the general live out of the meter which splits and feeds the 2 CU's. They didnt cover up the hole where the storage CU live tail was.

My understanding of these types of meters is that the tail that feeds the general CU is at the standard rate and the tail that feeds the storage heater CU is at a lower rate.
Am I right or are both outputs at a lower rate at night time?

Also apparently these new super duper heaters are so efficient that they can (and are used during the day). Can they really be that good!
 
Yes you are correct, only the 5th tail will be at the low rate.
Are the new heaters still storage heaters?

What happened is I was visiting and she was complaining her heating bill has gone up since they were installed. I know what the system was like before as I have change a fuseboard for her. So I told her to phone them up and complain as the hot water is now not on the cheap rate and also about the hole in the meter.

My auntie told me that they have been round and plugged the hole in the meter, they told her the hole wasnt their fault. They also put a nice new shiny electronic timer on the water heater and then told her she is on a cheap night rate. I them began to doubt myself thus my post.

The heaters are not storage heaters, they are standard electrics heaters. They look lovely but I am dubious about their claims that they are so efficient that they are cheaper to run than storage heaters. There isnt much I can do about that though but I can get them to put the hot water heater back onto the cheaper nightime rate.
 
What frustrates me is that my auntie is in hers 80's, if it wasnt for me this situation would of gone on for ages. The best part is that when she asked for compensation for the increased bills the company said that they dont give compensation. I wonder what they will say when I mention it!!
 
There is a bit of a trend at the moment for replacing storage heaters with so called energy efficient radiators. I suspect the OPs auntie had little control over the original storage heaters aside from switching them on and off when required, assuming they did not have peak time convector boosts. I don't know much about these new radiators but they probably consume less energy, however things are only energy efficient if they are used and controlled in a way to make them so. I suspect auntie is using them in a way she could not with the storage heaters, and why not if she is cold and hence she is consuming more electric than before especially as they are using peak time electric.
 

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