Measuring Parents' Electricity usage - are all 'units' the same?

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buel10
buel10 Posts: 453 Forumite
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in LPG, heating oil, solid & other fuels
Hi,
My parents' electricity bill is £80 per month and they live in a 2 up, 2 down cottage and I'm trying to get to the bottom of why their bills are twice the average (so I'm told on this excellent forum).

For the last six days my Mum has given me the electricity readings from their meter at 9am and 9pm of every day. Now, she did this about four years ago and I still have the readings. At this time they had a pay-as-you-go card meter (and was paying something like £120 per month. I managed to get them switched to a normal deal with EDF with direct debits and their bills went from £120 to £40ish).

My question is would the readings of 'units' taken now be the same 'units' as what were taken four years ago, or would the fact that the meter is a different meter make a difference?

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  • Smiley_Dan
    Smiley_Dan Posts: 948 Forumite
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    A unit is a kilowatt-hour... Don't think that's changed. More than likely you need to look at usage, and the best place to start is heating: space heating and water heating.
  • Cardew
    Cardew Posts: 29,037 Forumite
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    I managed to get them switched to a normal deal with EDF with direct debits and their bills went from £120 to £40ish).

    Even when pre-pay tariffs were more expensive than standard tariffs there is no way that that sort of reduction could have been achieved - a few % perhaps.

    As said above an electricity unit is a kWh, and always has been.

    Until recently most tariffs had a 'two tier system' where the first xxx kWh per quarter were charged at a higher rate.

    All the latest tariffs have a flat rate for all kWh used, but have a Daily Standing Charge(DSC). That DSC can range from zero to 50p.
  • PasturesNew
    PasturesNew Posts: 70,698 Forumite
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    It is most likely the units are the same. There is a small chance that the old meter was imperial and the new one metric, in which case the numbers produced daily will be vastly different.
  • Smiley_Dan
    Smiley_Dan Posts: 948 Forumite
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    What would be the imperial measure of energy? I'm interested!
  • R34GTT
    R34GTT Posts: 424 Forumite
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    PasturesNew wrote: »
    It is most likely the units are the same. There is a small chance that the old meter was imperial and the new one metric, in which case the numbers produced daily will be vastly different.

    That only applies to gas meters.
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