All Inclusive Electricity Plans

[Tia Maria]

Does anyone have an All Inclusive Electricity Plan?

Apparently it uses controlled power:

This is where your hot-water cylinder and some other appliances (usually night-store heaters) are wired up so that the company can turn them off at peak times. This is known as 'ripple control'. The company will often guarantee to supply power to your hot-water cylinder for a minimum number of hours a day (the fewer the hours, the cheaper the rate). Ripple control does not affect the power you use for cooking, lighting and plug-in appliances.

One of the companies says it switches off your hot-water cylinder for 5 hours. How does that work? Does that mean you don't have it for 5 hours in the night, or that it gets turned on and off throughout the day? Do you run out of hot water?

Also it says about wiring up the cylinder, is this a simple job and do you have to pay for it?

Cheers

Tia

[sizzlingbadger]

I would be skeptical. It's not something we would go for.

Watched Wasted this week and the woman went to the extreme of what they were asking. Dinners by candle light, no heating and switching her hot water cylinder off every night. The effect of turning on and off the cylinder actually led them to use more power because the water had to heat up every time it was turned back on.

[Tia Maria]

I saw that show as well, it did make me laugh when she admitted she wasn't making any of the changes because of the environment, but because of the cash!

I got the description from Consumer, they seemed to imply that this was a reasonably normal electricity pricing plan, similar to getting a meter to record night usage, for a day/night plan.

If you sign up for this kind of plan they charge you a lower daily rate and lower cents per kWh. So that's how you save money.

I just wondered if there were drawbacks to this, or whether I was missing a trick that every Kiwi already knew about!

Cheers

Tia

[KerryS]

Hey Tia - which companies are offering this? I'd be quite interested, but from a geeky work related point of view rather than actually taking it up...

[TFR]

Try Meridian, I think...

[Tia Maria]

Kerry S wrote:

Hey Tia - which companies are offering this? I'd be quite interested, but from a geeky work related point of view rather than actually taking it up...

Well if its in the pursuit of geekiness ..........

The three companies that came up as giving me a saving on my Contact Energy 'anytime' plan (a word they seem to use to mean a continual supply of power) are:

Mercury Energy - Standard All Inclusive
Meridian - Meridian Plus Economy 24
Energy Online - All Inclusive

The top 2 seem to be some kind of 'interrupted' power supply, not sure about the last one as the website was down when I last looked.

Cheers

Tia

[Moorf]

It was installed in our previous house here and worked just fine - except when we had people to stay one day, we ran out of hot water in the morning and there was no override so we couldn't reheat water until it was remotely turned back on at about 11pm that night! We never did find a way round it, but I can't believe that all systems don't allow you to heat on demand too!!

The signal to turn it on and off was, according to Prof.Woz here, done via the electrical connection... remotely.

[sarahw]

That sounds really interesting. I've never heard of it before.

We just had an Infinity boiler installed which heats water as you use it rather than you paying to constantly heat a tank of water - its supposed to save a heap of energy & give you hot water pressure as high as the cold water pressure you have (since its cold water being forced out at heat through the boiler). You could have 100 visitors & still have hot water - or if you go away on hols you haven't got to remember to switch the boiler off - you only pay for what comes through the tap - so far its been great.

[jaycee]

Sarah, is that the Rimnai one? Was it expensive? I've been looking at those, as my hot water pressure is abysmal and as a result I think the temperature is set too high. I've considered a pressure pump, but something like this might be a more efficient option - yes I do leave the cylinder on all the time, for the reasons Sizzlingbadger mentioned.

[sarahw]

Hi yes it is the Rinnai one - you can get internal & externally mounted ones - ours is outside next to the gas bottles & is only about the size of a briefcase on the wall - and yes we used to leave our hot water cylinder on all the time too before we got this (our water too was turned up too high too because of the low hot pressure).