Paying more for Elec than Gas per month. Normal?? we have mainly gas....

PrincessJR

Hi,

We have a small 2 bed house, have gas cooker, gas central heating through our boiler, just 1 TV on at any time as its just the 2 of us, and yet our fixed monthly direct debit is £39 per month for Elec and just £27 per month for Gas.

Is this the general norm? I had never given it much thought but someone I work with said I must have got them the wrong way around, but I havnt!

She says our Gas should be more than our elec.

We do have a computer, and some nights this is left on overnight as we download large files for our work which can take hours. Could this be responsible for our larger elec bill or do computers not really use that much elec?

Any advice appreciated


What do you think?

hexham1_2

Well this would generally be classed as abnormal. I have a 3/4 bed detached house and currently pay £20 for elec and £46 for gas.(I have no kids) However beware.... I use low energy bulbs in pretty much every outlet. I also have new fridge and freezer. Old refrigeration devices can guzzle energy. If you do not have a measuring device, notice how long they are on and how long off. If on a lot, consider replacing.
A TYPICAL FRIDGE/FREEZER UNIT would be typically rated at around one unit per day. This equates to £35 to 40 per year depending on supplier. This is for a new unit under ideal conditions. I would estimate from my knowledge and experience, that a worn out unit, working overtime as they do, especially if open for too long and too often, could easily use three times this amount and likely more. This could therefore be well over £10 per month rather than £3 or £4. It all adds up. Also it may not be keeping temperatures low enough.

Traditional light bulbs will cost over 1p per hour (100 W bulbs)....sounds cheap but if 10 bulbs are left on for 5 hours per day, this is £0.50 per day or a staggering £15 per month.

These are relatively low power items. If you are extravagent with electric showers, ovens, tumble driers etc. then it really can add up.

Remember it is both the power rating of the appliance and the time left on that determines the energy used and hence the cost. Computers are not high power particularly but when down/uploading for long periods, remember you do not need monitor, printer, speakers and goodness knows what else switched on.

You can buy simple plug in devices to measure energy usage from a 13amp socket. It will tell you how many units or kWh (kilowatt hours ) have been consumed since you switched it on. Then it will be roughly 10p for each unit/kWh.

http://www.greenorb.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=133

I think they now allow you to program the unit cost so calculation is done for you!!!

Get back to me if you have further questions.

foreversummer

My electricity bill has always been bigger than my gas bill in both my current and previous house. Both have had gas central heating and I have always cooked with electricity.

I don't think it is particularly unusual, just down to your individual usage.

Foreversummer

KimYeovil

As already suggested, it's more that you have a small gas bill rather than an unusually large electricity bill.

One thing is that file sharing or file downloading software can be memory intensive and kick machines into highest power modes (despite the relative straightforwardness of the task). The same software will also often block sleep mode - even after downloading is complete. Although a laptop will be cheap a standard desktop could easily hit £10 per month if used for 4 hours and left on 8 hours per day. And if it's a powerful quad or more core computer, that'll be why your gas heating bill is so small!

(And if, by any chance, you're with E.on then £12 or more of your monthly 'leccy bill could be standing charges.*)

*Behave yourself, Kim. That is uncalled for.

fuzzybear01

My gas bill has been smaller for quite a while. I use electric for cooking and only use gas for hot water and heating. Bear in mind that the monthly charge may doesn't reflect the fluctuations. Your electricity usage will be around the same amount each month however your gas usage may vary drastically. E.g. over the summer quarter my gas bill was £35, winter quarter was £145

Francesanne

fuzzybear01 wrote: »

My gas bill has been smaller for quite a while. I use electric for cooking and only use gas for hot water and heating. Bear in mind that the monthly charge may doesn't reflect the fluctuations. Your electricity usage will be around the same amount each month however your gas usage may vary drastically. E.g. over the summer quarter my gas bill was £35, winter quarter was £145

My elderly Mums gas bill arrived last week and was a whooping £439.00 (British Gas). She was putting £15.00 a week on her gas payment card and thankfully had paid roughly half towards the bill but still had to pay out over £200.00. She's over 80 and she did receive £400.00 heating allowance plus an extra £60.00 in January. She's got a small detached 2 bedroomed bungalow and lives alone. In comparison her electric direct debit with e-on is over £67.00 in credit and they're reducing her direct debit to £20.00 a month.
I would prefer her to move from British Gas but she won't entertain the thought because 'I've always been with them'. I doubled checked her gas meter which they'd read and it was correct. Tried to explain that gas prices did rise almost 40% last year. I'm dreading my electric bill arriving because we've got economy 7 storage heaters and we're only paying £60.00 a month on direct debit.

fuzzybear01

My electricity bill was £240 for the quarter upto Jan, on economy 7 tariff. That compares to £140 at around the same time last year!