Electricity charges - I think we're being ripped off...

prolific8

Hi BallandChain, thanks for the reply. The switchover time is an annoyance, but I don't think it explains our prices. It more or less balances out as we're still on off-peak units when we use the shower and very occasionally the tumble dryer in the morning, so I don't think we're really losing out anywhere.

The problem is the general usage - we seem to be using about double the amount of units we should be using.

prolific8

Well, they've just been in to change the timer switch, the guy couldn't do anything with the meter as all they had him down to do was swap that out (figures). I phoned Southern Electric straight away and they took a reading, they now want to wait a week and see what the usage is now they timer switch has been changed (I can't see it making an appreciable difference) and if something looks wrong, put another meter in side by side to see if one is reading higher than the other.

Seems quite difficult to get them to really do anything about it...

prolific8

I spoke to the "Meter Accuracy Team" today who seemed to be indicating there was nothing wrong with our meter "since your average usage is fluctuating". I tried to explain that this is likely because we use certain appliances like the oven and microwave sparingly and not every day. Apparently if our meter were faulty it would always read the same amount of usage (for example, 50 units every day). Is this true? Should I pay the £31.80 to get them to check the meter for peace of mind?

For the record, since I started taking daily readings on the 28th of September we've used 498 peak units and 432 off-peak, for a total of around £100.

Really appreciate any further help!

Magentasue

18 days = 930 units = 52 per day. Previously 302 in a week = 43 a day. That's so high.

What happens when you turn EVERYTHING off for an hour?

prolific8

I haven't been able to do so for an hour (the food would go bad ) but I have turned all fuses off (the meter stops), then turned each one on in turn to see what happens, and I can't see anything out of the ordinary. Tomorrow I plan to turn all sockets and appliances off with the exception of fridge and freezer when I leave the house (having taken a reading), then taking a reading when I come home. On Monday I'll do the same thing with things how we normally leave them, ie Sky box, computers on standby etc. I don't know if that will tell me anything, but I'm getting desperate.

Magentasue

You can safely turn fridge and freezer off for a couple of hours. Just don't open doors until they've had a chance to recover. You shouldn't see the meter move.

Then put fridge and freezer on but nothing else for a day (best when you're out for the day!) - pretend there's a power cut. That should give you an idea of daily usage for those.

Don't have computers and Sky on standby - hardly a big proportion of your usage but every little helps.

I have one of these and have found it very heplful to get the family to cut wasting electricity. I think it would be a worthwhile investment in your situation:

https://www.ecogadgetshop.co.uk/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductCode=Current%20Cost%20Device%20(TEST)&Category=1

Vestra

Don't bother going out to buy an energy monitor just phone Southern Electric and they can send you one for free.

Magentasue

Thinking about it, not sure it would work with you on Economy 7 so maybe not worthwhile for you. Forgot about you being with Southern Elec too - they do give them away, I think, although I'm not sure if they're for all customers. Worth asking.

PrinceGaz

Economy 7 means 7 hours of "cheap" overnight electricity so whoever you spoke to on the phone at first who said 11.30pm-8.30am should have immediately rung alarm bells as that totals nine hours. The best thing to do is to check your meter. There should be some indication on the meter itself of which rate is currently being used - on mine the rate number (1 for day, or 4 for night, but other people with different meters or areas will have totally different ways of displaying things) on the LCD display flashes when that is the active rate, so that you can tell which is the day and which is the night reading. Study carefully what the meter is displaying and you can check for yourself exactly when the night rate kicks in. Continuing with this theme, you might want to ensure the storage-heater is only turning itself on overnight and not during the day, and critically that your E7 electricity readings are not transposed (mine were when I moved into my flat- meaning I was being charged the day-rate overnight when the storage-heater was eating power). In addition, your storage heater should turn on automatically at the exact moment the night rate kicks in, and there may be some light on the heater to indicate when it is receiving power.

18 days, 498 peak, 432 off-peak. That's a lot, but with the day and night totals being fairly similar suggests they might be correct (as you will be using power more quickly in the 7 hours overnight because of the storage-heater, than in the 17 daytime hours).

Off-peak - used 432 in 18 days, that's 24 per day which over 7 hours is equivalent to an average nightime power usage of 3.43KW. That's actually quite reasonable if you are using a storage heater as your main heating source, as that is roughly how much a typical storage heater will draw when "storing heat". A storage heater won't normally run the full seven hours depending on the settings, but it along with other nightime usage (such as an immersion heater in a hot-water tank set to run overnight) could easily result in that usage. It sounds correct.

Peak - used 498 in 18 days, roughly 28 per day which over the 17 hours is equivalent to an average daytime constant power usage of 1.63 KW, and that's continuously from 8.30am in the morning right through past midnight to 1.30am the following morning. That's a lot, even for a 4-bedroom house, let alone a two-bedroom flat where you don't use electricity for room or main water heating during the day. This is the one you need to look into- where is all that power going.

My best guess is an immersion-heater is currently set to run day and night, instead of only overnight. That would explain the high day usage as most hot water that is used would have to be replaced and reheated at the day-rate. On top of that, the heater would be regularly turning on anyway to maintain the water-temperature all day.

If it isn't that, then you're going to have to either call someone out to check your meter, or check it yourself by turning off appliances (contrary to popular belief, a modern well-stocked fridge-freezer set to the correct temperature can be left off for several hours safely because the food itself keeps the temperature down, provided you don't open the door too often and then only briefly). With everything turned off, your meter shouldn't register more than a single KWh reading jump in over ten hours. Ideally you'll be able to work out the amount of power the meter is registering by timing the flashing light or spinning dial and calculating the amount of power it corresponds to (the meter should say something like 1000 flashes per KWh, and a little bit of maths will tell you how long between a flash or a spin converts into the amount of power used - I actually covered doing that in another post on this forum a few weeks ago).

You really shouldn't be using over 1.6KW of power all day every day in a 2-bed flat. That's insane, unless you're running fan-heaters to keep the place warm which would be even crazier. Check your hot-water boiler first though.

prolific8

Hi Gaz,

A lot of people have mentioned the immersion heater to me as being the potential source of the problem. The issue here is that pretty much since we've moved in I've had the immersion heater turned off at the fusebox - unless it's somehow running regardless of the fusebox I don't think it can be that.

Another thing to note with our off-peak usage is that we haven't been running the storage heater every night - in the 18 days mentioned it's probably been on five, maybe six nights at the most, at which point it's been drawing about 35-40 units. The storage heaters were also turned off at the fusebox (a separate E7 one next to the main fusebox), so I don't think they're drawing power when they shouldn't be - like everything else, I think the meter is reporting they're using more than they actually are. Were we to have used them every night since I started taking readings we would be looking somewhere in the region of 900 off-peak units.

This morning I turned off all sockets with the exception of the fridge and freezer, and took a reading. When I get home tonight I'm going to take a reading to see how much they've used in that period, and then I'm going to do similar on Monday except I'm going to leave it how I normally do, ie with computers/Sky box/router in, to see if there is an appreciable difference. What irked me was the guy I spoke to insisting that the meter can't possibly be at fault (or near enough - he quoted me "10 in a million"). Could this simply be a tactic to get me to keep paying them huge sums each month?