Home Charging - New 60-80A fuse upgrade charge

[K3v1n]

Moderator comment - thread renamed from "Charging"

Hi All,

So Northern PowerGrid have now implemented a charge for upgrading a main fuse from 60a to 80a, something that was always free before, nice to see the government telling us all to go electric and we should charge at home as there is now profit for the DNO in enabling it, got to love capitalism.

 

[Billbrown1982]

Ugh. Can just imagine a lot of the operators getting in on this as more and more people have their fuses upgraded.

I had to get my fuse upgraded and my meter tails uprated. Which meant 2 seperate visits, one from UK Power Networks and one from Octopus Energy.

Luckily, both were free, but I know some electric suppliers are already charging to have meter tails done.

 

[Jason71]

Getting Western Power to come do this was a real Pitta. but eventually they did do it and do it for free. and fixed a mistake the Octopus installer made when fitting the smart meter as well! They said they would have charged for a 100amp since that would have been more than just a fuse swap. But you are right I checked a few DNO websites and they were all free at the time. Some including 100amp so this does seem like a new development.
Thing is it isn't capitalism is it or at least not a free market since the DNO has a monopoly. No one else is allowed to touch the fuse so I hope there is some regulation on this since we can't exactly shop around!
How much are they charging?

 

[K3v1n]

Getting Western Power to come do this was a real Pitta. but eventually they did do it and do it for free. and fixed a mistake the Octopus installer made when fitting the smart meter as well! They said they would have charged for a 100amp since that would have been more than just a fuse swap. But you are right I checked a few DNO websites and they were all free at the time. Some including 100amp so this does seem like a new development.
Thing is it isn't capitalism is it or at least not a free market since the DNO has a monopoly. No one else is allowed to touch the fuse so I hope there is some regulation on this since we can't exactly shop around!
How much are they charging?

Its £144 inc VAT which does seem a bit excessive.

 

[browellm]

The Western Power experiences are interesting. I've had two reasons to call them and they've been absolutely outstanding on both occasions, both from a customer services on the phone perspective and the follow up in getting the work done.

It's very noticeable they don't use a call centre, presumably because of a low volume of domestic enquiries. The chap I spoke to both times was really knowledgeable and I had their field guys on the doorstep the same afternoon. After speaking to him the second time around for a different enquiry he mentioned there's quite a lot of regional variability within WPD and the Nottingham/Midlands team are really "on it".

They upgraded me to 100A FOC, btw.