Time for tariff rate change, is it always UTC?

[ericmark]

I got caught out, I thought it was daylight saving time, seems however looking at app it is UTC so have lost £7 due to setting battery to charge too soon. On another forum I got the replay

At one time, my E10 was switched at local time, so UTC in winter and BST in summer - in my contract The meter was changed and that remained, then a year or two later a "meter reader" turned up and claimed he needed to do some software checks, and without my contactual agreement, changed it to UTC all year.

I took this all the way to the regulator, OfGEM, who sided with me but the provider refused to change back. There are some geographical areas which still do use UTC & BST though.

I am not really too worried, now I know, I have set battery to charge 1 am to 5 am so it will not matter as low tariff is midnight to 5 am.

I suppose just as midday or noon is always the same summer or winter so is midnight, so at Greenwich midday is 1 pm in summer and 12 am/0 pm in winter. But that is being a little pedantic, if I say see you at midday I would expect one to use a watch set to time of the year, however I remember signing a 14 month contract to work in the Falklands, and we all thought that was calendar months, but one guy queried it with his solicitor and was told unless it says calendar by default it is lunar months.

So what is the default for time, do we need to say BST or DST or UTC or GMT every time we agree on a time? However I only found out by looking as the British Gas app, I noted high on the right, now changed times I get this the £ option never seems to work, not since split tariff has been used, well one day I did get a cost, but that is now rare, to reach meter it is a stand on a chair job, and I need to go outside and down a set of steps, so now smart meter fitted I do not read it any more. Not sure I even know how. Did expect the in house display to show how much at each rate, but no, and anyway the IHD shows BST so only the app shows as UTC, that 4.93 kWh shown for today will likely stay the same until around 9 pm on most days in summer, some days even lasted until after midnight. Was solar worth it, it will depend on if I ever get payment for exported power, at moment still waiting.

I have had a further reply

That is up to the discretion of the Meter Operator. Although when the Meter Operator buys electricity for their customers, the price is set in £/MWh for each 30 minute period through the day, with Period 1 beginning at midnight UTC. We do the same for the electricity grid - everything collects alarms and data in UTC, then the times are adapted for BST for display to the grid control operators back at the control room end of things. If you don’t do this, you either have an hour gap of data, or an hour of duplicated data when BST kicks in or out.

This does make sense, I can see the problem, however it does seem a bit hit and miss.

Be it EV charging or off peak heating, that first hour will make a lot of difference as everything working full chat, at end of low rate not so much, as battery already charged most of time, and storage radiators already hot. With just a 3.2 kW battery which stops discharging at 10% I have more than enough time with 4 hours cheap rate to recharge, with other users however the drop from 5 to 4 hours can make a huge difference.

 

[flameport]

Contact your energy supplier and ask.
If BG don't know, then move to another supplier that does.

Octopus use either GMT or BST, so for the 4 hours overnight for EV charging it's always 00:30 to 04:30.
4 hours most of the year, but 3 hours on the last Sunday in March and 5 hours on the last Sunday in October.
Equipment which contains a clock such as EVSEs do the same.

Did expect the in house display to show how much at each rate

Good luck with that.
IHDs should not be relied on for anything. Probably best to unplug it and never use it again.

 

[ericmark]

I have tried ringing British Gas, in the main it means a ¼ hour wait on the phone, so charging 1 am to 5 am BST, I am good either way, so not going to bother, but I am sure some do need the full time, be it 4, 5, 7, 10 it does not really matter, if you need full time of low rate you need the full time.

I had never even considered that the rate would not follow the UK government declared time. I am 3º19.5' west, so my true time is not GMT, 13.2 minutes so mid day is 1:13 pm BST or 0:13 UTC old sun dial time. However the trains changed that, and then the government during the war changed it again, we did have one or two years of BST all year around, but basic fact is the government now sets the time.

It does present some problems, many contracts state what time is day work, shift work, and night work, these follow the government time. So although when working at Sizewell we would have liked a 6 am start so we could pass Birmingham on the long weekend Friday before the traffic built up, we could not start before 7 am due to Union agreements on when it was shift work etc.

On the Falklands we had at one point three times, Stanley time, Camp time, and Mount Pleasant time, so LMA could get more work done in the day light. The Farms would simply tell workers it's a 5 am start tomorrow as we round up the sheep, they had a flex time. However in main land UK we have lost that option due to agreements and laws, yes I have a clock in the shack at UTC, but most people do as the government says.

So unless one stipulates UTC default one would think is government time. As set by radio 4 time signals, however I don't know if radio 4 time signals are at this time of year BST or UTC? Since car radio shows right time, I would think BST?

BBC Radio 4 Longwave is transmitted on 198 kHz. This signal also carries radio data encoded using phase modulation, giving a time-of-day signal, and radio teleswitch control signals for Economy 7 electric-heating systems.

 

[Mister Banks]

My IHD was always right when I was on SVT but now i am on a tracker tariff it’s always wrong! Cost wise anyway, energy usage is still correct.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

So unless one stipulates UTC default one would think is government time. As set by radio 4 time signals, however I don't know if radio 4 time signals are at this time of year BST or UTC? Since car radio shows right time, I would think BST?

Time signals, only indicate the epoch, the hour, not the actual time. The switch from off-peak, to on, was always done at UTC times, rather than summer/winter times, but always worth checking with your supplier, to be absolutely sure.

 

[JohnW2]

I got caught out, I thought it was daylight saving time, seems however looking at app it is UTC ...

For what it's worth, my (So Energy, previously ESB) E7 tariff sticks with GMT switching times throughout the year - and the same was true of my previous supplier (Eon)/.

 

[Adam_151]

Octopus use either GMT or BST

I think it would have probably been better to stick to just GMT, when you get agile prices on clock changing days, depending on the season you either get two extra (with repeats) or two fewer. On at least one of these occasion I had issues with my zappi not pulling in for a period after the change that it should have done, so I presume there is a bug in their implimentation that is triggered by having two hours occur twice, with different rates, I'm not sure if thats only if its meant to start during one of those two slots or not.

Dealing with changing times is hard:

Anyway, BST was invented by a bricklayer - make of that what you will

 

[ericmark]

It seems not only can they not decide what time to use, they also give them double names, GMT = UTC and BST = DST and the military also have Zulu what ever that is?

 

[ericmark]

Oh dear at long last found how to read the smart meter, so at about 11:08 it showed so it seems only the app is UTC not the meter or the IHD both of them show BST.

 

[boringoldcodger]

military also have Zulu what ever that is?

I believe that Military time is Z time and Zulu is in the Nato phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo etc.) for Z. UK Military time is GMT, I couldn't say for definite about other countries. but Unix documentation talks about Zulu so I'd assume that the American military does as well.

 

[Why Not Indeed]

If you see "Z" in a timestamp, that's UTC - zero hours offset from UTC, supposedly.