£80 pcm electricity bill for one?!!!

DreamerV

Magentasue wrote: »

I'd turn the immersion off and boil a kettle for the dishes.

I used to do that. I also have an electric shower, and live on my own, and so only use hot water for dishes. Being on my own, there aren't too many dishes, so I'd save them till evening, fill up the washing up basin with a kettle full of hot water, and some cold water added in...and wash them in that, and just rinse them off with cold water after. Now with the combi boiler, the hot water just comes on when I need it, so I can use hot water whenever. I'm not sure if this has driven up my bill slightly but in any case the bills in general have come down because of the boiler anyhow.

WhistleBlower

Youch, i'm afraid Immersion and Storage heaters are the biggest culprit i see for unexpectedly large bills, especially wtih this weather.

One thing i'd recommend is tryingt o work out roughly how much money/how many units of elecric your storage heater(s) are/is using, and then checking to see if a little space heater would actually work out better. Depends a lot on your usage though i'm afraid, and isn't practical for everyone.

I'd recommend looking into maybe getting your heater replaced with central heating, most councils are now giving grants for this sort of thing.

EDIT: Ah, you're renting, might be worth asking your landlord to apply for a grant, or tell him you wan tto apply for it, i cna't see any landlord saying no to having a brand new central heating system fitted cheap/for free.

Oh, and boiling the kettle instead of that immersion heater....great idea. Unless you bath rhater than showering. Else Brrr!

Cardew

I don't think we want to go overboard about the cost of heating that tank.

A normal well insulated hot water tank will lose about 3kWh of heat in 24 hours(someone recently posted his had a label stating 2.51kWh/24 hours).

Now as your tank is large a figure might be, say 4kWh in 24 hours. Heating that on Economy 7 @ 5p/kWh that is 20p a day.

However and this is a very important point. In the winter the heat loss of 4kWh is not in fact lost as it goes to warm up your house - it really acts as a form of storage heater.

WhistleBlower

Oh, one last thing, are you usgin other appliances during the night on e7? (Tumble driers etc)

Cos if so then ensure you are using them in the right hours (currently 12-6 i believe due to daylight savings but i can check on monday)

Also, have you checked to see which register is turning at any given time? I.e does the day register turn in the day and night at night, if not, you have a faulty/mis-set timeswitch. Tell npower, they'll send an engineer.

And last (honest) check the bill, are you being billed on the right register for each time of day. (do they have night as day and day as night? Check your readings to be sure) If so, this'll cause your bills to shoot up, it's a simple transposed register issue and relatively easy to fix with a full rebill.

WhistleBlower

spanner200 wrote: »

Also, this may seem a daft question, but looking at the meter which shows you the current time, and therefore when economy 7 should start (i.e. differentiates between night and day)- how can you tell if it has been configured correctly?

Many thanks for all your help!

Turn *everything* off.

Boil the kettle.

During the day the "norm" or "day" register will turn.

spanner200

Cardew wrote: »

I don't think we want to go overboard about the cost of heating that tank.

A normal well insulated hot water tank will lose about 3kWh of heat in 24 hours(someone recently posted his had a label stating 2.51kWh/24 hours).

Now as your tank is large a figure might be, say 4kWh in 24 hours. Heating that on Economy 7 @ 5p/kWh that is 20p a day.

However and this is a very important point. In the winter the heat loss of 4kWh is not in fact lost as it goes to warm up your house - it really acts as a form of storage heater.

I tend to agree with you there, though I still hate the thought of heating such a large water tank for just one! What I might do iss experiment a bit and see how much electricity is used by the immersion heater, and whether it makes any significant effect on actually warming up the house (other than just keeping towels and linen cosy!)

spanner200

WhistleBlower wrote: »

Oh, one last thing, are you usgin other appliances during the night on e7? (Tumble driers etc)

Cos if so then ensure you are using them in the right hours (currently 12-6 i believe due to daylight savings but i can check on monday)

Also, have you checked to see which register is turning at any given time? I.e does the day register turn in the day and night at night, if not, you have a faulty/mis-set timeswitch. Tell npower, they'll send an engineer.

And last (honest) check the bill, are you being billed on the right register for each time of day. (do they have night as day and day as night? Check your readings to be sure) If so, this'll cause your bills to shoot up, it's a simple transposed register issue and relatively easy to fix with a full rebill.

High thanks, for the tips. I'm not using any other appliance at night, though Is sometimes programme the washing machine to do a cycle during the E7 hours.

I've also just checked the register on the meter, and I think it is showing the correct time of day.

I'll do what you suggest and switch off everything and boil that kettle!

Thanks :rotfl:

Magenta

I see that you are paying £80 pcm for one person, well I am paying £94 per calendar month for one.
I live alone and have just one storage heater, no washing machine, wash and bath in cold water, am too ill to cook so just eat sandwiches and cold stuff and have done so for more than 2 years.
So why am I paying £94 pcm to BRITISH GAS.
It is a mystery to me.

espresso

Magenta wrote: »

So why am I paying £94 pcm to BRITISH GAS.
It is a mystery to me.

Which BG tariff are you on?

espresso

spanner200 wrote: »

The storage heater has a capacity of 210 litres which seems enrmous for one person. Does anyone have any tip on how I can reduce the cost, other than turning down the heating for each radiator so that it doesn't charge as much at night.

Do you have an unvented mains pressure water heater like this one here? According to the published figures, the standing heat loss is only 1.91kWh/24 hours for a 210 litre system.