Warning to anyone with octopus energy on economy 7 for electric

[Jimbob1982]

Just thought I should let people know who are in the same boat as I was. I emailed octopus asking what the prices per kw were for myself on economy 7.

It turns out if you pay two different rates for your electricity (IE economy 7) then the day rate goes up to 63p per kw, when the price cap set by ofgem is 34p per kw. And the night rate is 25p per kw.

So in short, unless you're using most of your electricity between 12pm and 7am. Then it will cost you far more on economy 7.

Apparently it says on their website that you can switch to the standard price cap 34p whenever you use electricity for free. So I would strongly advise doing this otherwise your bills will be even higher than they need to be unless you use a high percentage of your electric at night.

Found the email, so it seems we still are.

Found this on the email. At the moment we use more day rate as we have not used our storage heaters as yet. But I have started putting timers on things and we have the bathroom electric heater coming on before everyone gets up and run an oil filled heater all night long.

Yep you're definitely still on Economy 7, both your day and night rate should be about 34p, depending where you live, mine is 33.97p for both day and night. Email them telling them you want their standard tariff, and they'll send a reply on same day with the rate they will give you, you can then sign up for it, or not - your choice. The E7 rate is going up 8% in January, it would have been 45.559p - day, 17.386p - night in my area. You should have been informed of this already as an E7 customer by email anyway. If you use less than 40% on night tariff, you are better off changing it. About 18-20% cheaper depending what you use.