Interpreting Npower T&Cs

1carminestocky

2.5% it is then.

DavidRossitter

Hi

yes it is not a small house and has an annex so I expect to be greater than average.... but our heating and hot water is oil (another story!). We have no heated swimming pool or anything like that - we have a tumble dryer but we religously try and use the wind wherever we can....

I am quite tempted to go get one of these electric monitoring systems to try and see what is chewing up this power. I estimate I am on average buring 2kW continuously which is scary. I cant think of anything major that is doing this - whether it is the sum of a lot of small things - I have 3 kids!

David

1carminestocky

I use an OWL wireless monitor (in conjunction with a plug-in monitor) and would recommend it highly. There is also the efergy which is similar to The Owl but with the addition of the facility to commit readings to memory. I think given your massive usage the outlay of £35-£40 to attempt to get to the bottom of it is a bit of a no-brainer, tbh.

www.theowl.com

www.efergy.com

KimYeovil

"Quite tempted"?!?!? If I was spending more than £2000, soon to go up to £5000, per year on electricity, I think I'd consider a one-off purchase of an £8 to £35 device with a bit more urgency than just "quite tempted"!

Cardew

KimYeovil wrote: »

The increase is (theoretically) up to 142%, Cardew. 113% rise kicks in at about 26,000 kWh.

25000 24272 £1,468 £3,112 212.0%
26000 25272 £1,519 £3,236 213.0%
27000 26272 £1,570 £3,360 213.9%

New bills can be up to almost two and a half times the previous tariff. (12.35/5.1135 = 2.417) (Of course, you would need to be running a hadron collider to reach 141.7%.)

Firstly I am pretty sure the OP means his consumption is 4,000kWh(not 40,000kWh) as he is heated by oil.

Whilst I would agree that if anyone used 26,000kWh a year they could see a rise of 113%, they are hardly likely to use that amount heated with oil; and if they were not heated with oil they are likely to use Economy 7 storage heating.

If my assumption that the OP uses 4,000kWh per year is correct, his rise will be in the order of 32%. Obviously still very high and he should be looking elsewhere.

1carminestocky

If he uses 'just' 4000 then last year I would have 'beaten' that (actually, it's nothing to brag about at all) by 2500 units and I don't live in a mansion (not any more, I've given it over to the servants). Mine is on course for 5000 this year which I'm actually (relatively speaking) pleased about (with thanks to The Owl, of course).

DavidRossitter

Hi

I think I got my figures wrong. My annual consumption is just over 14000 kWh and my bill is forecast to be £150/month under the new tariff. I have done the maths and it is 132% increase - ie my current bill is approx £70

granted I have a largish house with annex - not a mansion I hasten to add! - this still seems very high.

The Owl or equivalent looks like the way to take this so will get on the case.

Interesting that when I did the price comparison the best i could locate was £125/month with the exception of ClickEnergy5 which I gather has yet to have its prices go up so looks like I need to work harder on the energy conservation as well as the supplier i go with.

David

1carminestocky

LOL! So no-one was right! 14000 is still rather a huge amount of leccy, though. Good luck with The Owl/efergy, I would be grateful if you could report back on your views of its usefulness (or not, of course). There are, shall we say diplomatically, people on here who are rather sceptical about its usefulness, lol.

Cardew

DavidRossitter wrote: »

Hi

I think I got my figures wrong. My annual consumption is just over 14000 kWh and my bill is forecast to be £150/month under the new tariff. I have done the maths and it is 132% increase - ie my current bill is approx £70

granted I have a largish house with annex - not a mansion I hasten to add! - this still seems very high.

The Owl or equivalent looks like the way to take this so will get on the case.

Interesting that when I did the price comparison the best i could locate was £125/month with the exception of ClickEnergy5 which I gather has yet to have its prices go up so looks like I need to work harder on the energy conservation as well as the supplier i go with.

David

The size of your house is largley irrelevant as you don't use oil for heating. The number of people has some effect.

You haven't actually said what tariff you are on, but using the tariff in post #3(and being pedantic) your rise is actually 93%. This is obviously massive but reflects more on an the unbelievably low tier 2 rate of 5.11p/kWh than the new rate being excessive.

Granted you should find a better deal(and a better company) but using over 4 times the UK average(of 3,300kWh) your bills are going very high whoever you use to supply electricity.

1carminestocky

I've always thought that average of 3,300 kwh very low, I'm assuming there must be many more people living alone than even I thought if that 'average' figure includes it's fair proportion of households that contain kids of a certain age. Kids, in my painful experience, are huge fuel guzzlers. As they have never had the 'pleasure' of paying an energy bill in their short, carefree lives, they don't seem to comprehend the consequences of wasteful usage.