electricity: day and night

Wow, I'd never trust that!

It's as reliable as a meter reader entering the readings into his portable terminal manually.   Of course, it's still a good idea to check the readings yourself from time to time.

That's my point.  I would always want to check them myself.

Vicky

I just had the gas meter read an hour ago. He doesn't have to get out of the truck. He drives down the street and receives a signal in his truck.

That's my point.  I would always want to check them myself.

Ah, gotcha!  Yes, whether your meter is read manually or by telemetry, it's always a good idea to check.  There have been odd cases where the wrong telemetry ID code has been associated with the address, or the manual equivalent where the meter reader has accidentally entered readings against the wrong address.  There can even be mistakes where the reader transposes the day & night readings by mistake, which can result in some rather odd bills.

I just had the gas meter read an hour ago. He doesn't have to get out of the truck. He drives down the street and receives a signal in his truck.

That's telemetry in action.  As well as electricity and gas, some water meters are also read the same way.

This is all great information. Does each Borough have their own utility company, with some Boroughs having more than one? From your experience, do you like the competition btwn the different companies and your ability to pick and choose, or would you rather have just one? Where i live now [Tallahassee FL] we have one utility company that manages the water, gas, electricity. Its very convenient but also a hassle when they keep raising the prices and we have no choice but to use them.

Does each Borough have their own utility company, with some Boroughs having more than one?

Not anymore.   Power companies in Britain had grown in a rather ad hoc fashion in the late 19th/early 20th century, and by the 1940s there were several hundred different suppliers, each serving its own little area.  Some were privately owned companies while others were publicly owned by individual city corporations or borough/district councils.   In general, there was no choice of supplier, since you were supplied by whichever utility happened to serve the area in which your house was located.

Legislation in 1947 nationalized the entire industry, and all of the small private companies and city/borough/district suppliers were swallowed up into 15 regional electricity boards, each serving a substantial portion of the country.  For example, the South Western Electricity Board covered from Bristol right down to Land's End, while the Eastern Electricity Board's area covered from Luton right out to the Norfolk & Suffolk coasts.  Still there was no choice; you just had to take power from whichever electricity board served your area. ^*

The industry was privatized again around 1990, with the electricity boards being sold off to become some of the companies we have today.  Since then it's become possible to choose your supplier wherever you live.  The distribution lines and equipment in a given area are owned by just one company (e.g. EDF in my area), but you can select who you actually pay for your electricity and change supplier at will (the companies have complex settlement plans between themselves for paying the local network operator for its distribution services).   So now it's possible to live in London and pay Scottish Power for your electricity, or even to have British Gas as your supplier, since the latter diversified into electricity as well.

A similar situation exists with gas for those areas in which it's available, with the old gas boards being privatized in the 1980s (fellow Brits will undoubtedly remember all the commercials at the time). 

At the moment there is no choice for water/sewer services, so you have to use the incumbent supplier for your area.


^* You'll still sometimes hear people refer generically to "the electricity board" when talking about their power company.   Now you know why!   

...and spread from there. The (UK) National Grid bought my local (Rhode Island) electricity company. And then, a few years later, the natural gas company.

It felt really weird writing out utility checks to National Grid instead of Narragansett Electric and Providence Gas.

The U.S. arm of National Grid now owns several networks around various parts of New England and, I think, New York as well.

The "National Grid" as a physical project developed in the 1920s & 1930s to link various parts of the U.K. together.  The nationalization of the electricity industry in the 1940s took it under control of the British Electricity Authority, which by the late 1950s had become the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), a name with which many people will be familiar today.  The modern National Grid Co. was created from the privatization in the 1990s when the old CEGB was split into several different organizations for selling off.

There has been a huge number of international corporate mergers and takeovers since privatization.  Large parts of the British network are now owned by EDF, the French state utility Electricité De France.   Eastern Electricity (the private successor company to the Eastern Electricity Board in this part of the country) was bought out by TXU Energi (sic), a corporation which has its origins as Texas Utilities.  TXU was in turn taken over by Powergen, which itself then became part of e-on.   The situation changes so rapidly it's hard to keep up!

Of course, you don't need to know all the ins and outs as a private consumer.  You will have to deal directly with your local DNO (Distribution Network Operator) if you are building a house and need a new service installed, or are refurbishing and want an existing service moved, etc.   So if you live in an area where the local network is owned by EDF, you will always have to go to EDF for such things.  But once the service is installed, you can then select from the various supply companies who will deal with the metering and billing.

One thing everyone should know, is that if you are on a plan that offers cheap nighttime electricity (Economy 7 or Economy 10, as they are usually called)....

*You NEED TO CHECK your METER TIMER.  It's a joke in the industry (ask any service person) that the timers often break, lose time, or don't work.  A meter timer is another piece of equipment that usually sits next to your actual meter, and has a clock-- either a manual looking one or a digital one.  If the meter timer is off, or continually loses time, then you get billed for DAYTIME energy when you are actually using NIGHTTIME energy!

We discovered this w continually high bills, and didnt know why.  We checked the meter timer, and found it was 4 hours behind the actual time. Then the next day, we found it was 6 hours behind. IE it was continually losing time.  We had nightmares w EDF energy, and had to get the timer replaced 4 times. Finally they came and replaced both timer and meter, and so far its been okay.

*You SHOULD CHECK your METER regularly too.  Especially if you just moved in.  Why? Because meters DO NOT START FROM ZERO, even if you're getting a new one installed. Their starting number is listed on a sticker on top of the meter.  Your electricity co, tho, may accidentlly list the starting point as zero, and then presto, in one month, it mysteriously lists you as having used 40,000 units of elecctricity.

I've heard that Eon is much more responsive to problems than EDF.

One thing everyone should know, is that if you are on a plan that offers cheap nighttime electricity (Economy 7 or Economy 10, as they are usually called)....

*You NEED TO CHECK your METER TIMER.  It's a joke in the industry (ask any service person) that the timers often break, lose time, or don't work. 

Oh yes!   And while they typically have a clockwork backup mechanism designed to ride out power failures, extended outages can sometimes exceed the length of clockwork backup provided, so the timeswitch ends up completely "out of whack."

Many newer Economy 7/10 installations don't actually use a timeclock at the customer's premises, but instead have a radio-teleswitch.  It receives signals from a central control point which tell it when to switch the meter to the different rates, and when to turn on the power for storage heating.  While these circumvent the issues with timeclocks, there's still the possibility of malfunction, so it pays to just look at the meter from time to time and check that it is switching to the correct rates at different times of day.