Martin Lewis warns not to use washing machine before 9pm | Personal Finance | Finance

Martin Lewis has urged people not to use washing machines or tumble dryers before 9pm if you’re on one type of tariff which tracks usage and charges accordingly.

For most energy customers, time of day makes no difference at all to how much you’ll pay for your energy, because a standard tariff, whether a variable or a fix, will not consider the time you use your appliance, even if you have a smart meter.

But a lot of households are on usage tariffs which track the time of day. These time-of-use tariffs, such as Octopus Energy’s Octopus Tracker, will update your price, sometimes every 30 minutes in real-time, to give you different prices based on demand across the country.

On these trackers, the energy becomes cheaper the less demand there is, and more expensive at times of higher demand.

For people on such tariffs, off peak times are the best times to run high energy usage white goods and appliances like a washing machine, according to Martin Lewis.

Martin Lewis, replying to a question on Twitter, previously outlined: “Most don’t have time-of-use tariffs so there’s no price difference.

“If you do, night’s cheaper. Yet peak use is 4pm to 9pm so for UK’s energy security, not then is better.”

Of course, if you have solar panels, this changes again. For solar panel users, unless you have a battery as well to store the energy, you’re going to want to use appliances during the day time.

Martin added: “If UV solar panels, use appliances in daylight hours.”