Are you ready for the RTS switch off?

What is an RTS meter?

A Radio TeleSwitched meter (RTS) is a type of electricity meter that has both Peak and Off Peak rates, and switches between them based on a signal it receives that tells it which to use. Having peak & off peak rates is also known as Economy 7. Some meters will even be economy 9 or 10 - this just means that they have 9 or 10 off peak hours in a 24hour window instead of 7 hours of off peak that most people get.

These types of meters were originally fit in homes who use certain types of heating or hot water. If you have storage heaters or if you have an immersion heater for your water, you most likely have an Economy 7 meter!

E7 meters usually rely on a clock to swap over from the Day/Peak rate over to the Night/Off Peak rate. What happens when this changes is that a switch clicks shut inside the meter, and the circuit within your home that the storage heaters/immersion heaters are connected up to will go live as power comes into them from the meter. This needs to happen for your storage heating or immersion heaters to charge up. They charge up in off peak hours at a lower tariff rate to make your heating and hot water use much more cost effective.

What makes RTS meters different to normal economy 7 meters is that instead of a clock to tell them to send power through to your heaters, the RTS meters need a radio signal to tell them to switch from Peak to Off peak rates, and so to let power go through to your heating/hot water. This is where you get the name: Radio - for the signals that tell it to switch, and Tele - referring to how it happens at a distance, and Switch - for the switch inside the meter.

Where do these signals come from?

The signals that are sent out to the meters are sent out from the same radio towers and masts that the radio in your kitchen or in your office taps into. Specifically, they piggy-back on the radio signals for BBC Radio 4 albeit at a much much lower frequency that isn’t picked up by your radio. So when you’re listening to Just a Minute, you might also be receiving signals telling your meter to change from Peak to Off Peak. 

RTS meters are also sometimes called Weathercall meters. This is because they have the functionality on them to be switched to Off Peak mode whenever the network operators want. Historically if there was a severe cold snap, or other bad weather conditions, then the network operators were able to remotely enable the off peak circuits on RTS meters to give people more off-peak time, and so more heating in their homes. More recently using this system has declined as more and more people move over to smart meters. Smart meters can operate in the same way but are much, much more reliable when it comes to letting power on to the off-peak circuits through to the heaters, and can be boosted (turning on the heating during peak hours) at any time by whoever is inside the property at any time they want.

Now, as pretty much all radio, and especially as all BBC radio is going digital (meaning not using radio networks anymore and moving on to internet networks), the signal that is sent out to RTS meters will be switched off entirely.

This switch off is just around the corner, scheduled for 30/06/25

Do I have an RTS meter?

If you are billed on a single rate tariff, it is highly unlikely that you have an RTS meter. If you have a dual rate meter and you do not have gas in your property, it is more likely that you will have an RTS meter. If you have storage heaters for your room heating, or if you have an immersion heater for your hot water, then it is a lot more likely you have one of these types of meters - so please go and have a look at the electricity meter. The only way to know for sure if you have one or not is by looking!

The radio teleswitch will either be integrated into the meter itself, or will be present as a separate box on the wall right next to the meter. If it’s a separate box this will usually be black & will have “Radio Teleswitch” printed on it.

If the RTS is integrated into the meter, this will be written on the meter. It may be written again as “Radio Teleswitch” or also it could be written as “Radio Telemeter”. If you’re unsure if you have a radio switch next to the meter or if your meter has one built-in, please send us a picture and one of our metering specialists will be more than happy to help identify the type of meter you currently have.

What happens after the switch off?

After the network shuts off the signals to these RTS meters, then there could be some unfortunate side effects when it comes to the heating and hot water systems in your house. As the radio signals tell the heating and hot water when to come on, these could never receive the instructions, and so never turn on.

If the meter needs the radio signal to close the switch inside of it that sends power to your heaters, and there is no radio signal, the meter will just not close the switch. You won’t have any heating available to you. What’s even worse is that as the switch off is in summer - you may not even realise this has happened for months!

The other thing that could potentially happen to you is that the switch inside the meter is already closed when the signal switch-off happens. This means that your meter will never receive the signal it needs to stop sending power to your heaters. Your heating and hot water could be charging up 24/7.

The whole point of heating and hot water that uses the off-peak rate on the meter is to make sure you benefit from having a lower rate when you use these, as both heating and hot water usage consume the most energy of anything in a home. If these get stuck on all the time, this can cause your bills to skyrocket, and nobody wants to be paying far in excess of what they should be. We want to get this sorted for you before it happens, and make sure you’re not paying for any higher bills. 

What do I need to do now?!

If you have an RTS meter we need to get you booked in for a meter exchange in order to make sure you don’t have any issues after the switch off. These exchanges are completely free of charge and we’ll arrange this at a time convenient to you.

You can request an exchange using our handy form here.

Or you can email us at smartmeters@truenergy.co.uk

Or give us a call on 0113 880 0476

If you are billed through one of our sister companies, including Huddle, Unihomes, Split the Bills, Bunch etc. - you can also speak to someone from their team to request the job. They will get in touch with us to raise the request & we will give you a call as soon as we can to get you booked in.