horrendous elec bill

jentiggy

yesterday i received my quarterly electric bill from British Gas. It was an actual bill and my previous 3 bills have been actual. The bill was for £372.00 !!!
There are 2 adults & 2 teenagers in the house, and we cook and heat the house with GAS !!!
I phoned Brit Gas and got through to their energy efficiency team who agreed that my bill was high. I am using on average 40 KWH per 24 hrs - 30 per day and 10 per night.
We have spend the last 24 hours checking the meter every 4 hours and recording it down. We have had no major appliances on in the last 24 hours (ie washing machine, dishwasher or tumble drier) and our usage was 10 KWH during the night and 30.53 KWH during the day.
I do not know what to do?

saver_sam

Can't help much but perhaps if you listed all the items that are on and what kw they are someone smarter will come along and help you know what is using what.

jentiggy

We have the normal things plugged in 24/7 - fridge, freezer x 2 (1 small table top in the shed), aquarium but only running an air stone, clock on microwave etc. during the night nothing was plugged in apart from those things, but still managed to use 10 KWH.

jentiggy

we don't have a immersion as we have a gas combi boiler.
My husband tripped the switch on the consumer unit for an hour and the meter went up 0.06 KWH in that time when everything was off.

Alan_Vickers

This should not happen jentiggy. I would suggest that you have a case to ask the electricity distributor to replace your meter and make some allowance for its previous inaccuracy.

Alan Vickers.

rhiwfield

Jentiggy,

saver sam is correct. List everything that is consuming electricity and the amount of time per day that it is left on. Get your teenagers onside and explain the problem and ask them to help find out the problem. Find out if they or OH has been using any heavy drain appliance (eg electric rad/fan heater).

Then do a wattage x usage calculation to work out what you think the daily kwh should be. If need be invest in or borrow an energy tracker. Dont forget to include lights especially external ones left on all night, greenhouse heaters etc.

Hopefully that will identify what's using the power

edit: seen your latest post, looks like it may well be a meter problem.

bockster

i would initially ignore the 0.06 kwh . (when EVERYTHING ?? was tripped off).
and try leaving on just one mcb/fuse at a time for an hour and see what that shows up
or alternatly turning off one mcb/fuse at a time.
either way, it will hopefully point to one cicuit to focus on.

hope this helps

jentiggy

last night between 11pm & 7 am we used 10.3KWH and had on the following:- fridge, freezer x 2, aquarium, 2 x outside lights (9W bulbs), 1 alarm clock, telephone answering machine, microwave (clock), and Gas cooker (clock). everything else was unplugged.

bockster

rhiwfield wrote: »

edit: seen your latest post, looks like it may well be a meter problem.

i don't know if meters actually 'consume' any electricity, ............mmm! was going to say 0.06kwh is pretty low, but times 24hours = 1.44kwh! theres nom way thats right??!!
i'm tempted to test mine as a comparison, unless anyone wants to sit in the dark just now???

mbs1

Now you need tyo narrow it down as to which is using the most units...

turn microwave off anyway, then outside lights and gas cooker and see what you use.

Whats your fridge freezer set at? do you have a thermometer in each?

Alan_Vickers

Electricty meters are required to have a required degree of accuracy and must not rotate when no electricity is flowing through them, if that were to be the case then it would affect the accuracy of the meter.

Alan Vickers.