£937 half-year bill for a one bedroom flat -is this normal?

Frugaldom

An alternative to Economy 7, ask about Scottish Power's Comfort Plus, it is tiered on 3 rates with a standing charge and is available on prepayment meter. Current rates are £1.60 per week standing charge, 12.88p per unit daytime, 5.84p per unit cheap rate and storage heaters are on a set rate of 5.18p per unit regardless of what time they are on - they are boosted remotely depending on the weather forecast. During the coldest weather, my meter was clocking up between 50 and 70 units per day and I still have coal & logs to pay. Returning to the original question, "is this normal?" then I'd say yes, that's a normal winter fuel bill for an all electric house but the £30 monthly direct debit is ridiculous, as it's only covering about 7 or 8 units per day.

stewie_griffin

nykmedia wrote: »

An alternative to Economy 7, ask about Scottish Power's Comfort Plus, it is tiered on 3 rates with a standing charge and is available on prepayment meter. Current rates are £1.60 per week standing charge, 12.88p per unit daytime, 5.84p per unit cheap rate and storage heaters are on a set rate of 5.18p per unit regardless of what time they are on - they are boosted remotely depending on the weather forecast. During the coldest weather, my meter was clocking up between 50 and 70 units per day and I still have coal & logs to pay.

I would have thought that this meter/tariff is only available in SP's host area.

James123_2

If you don't use Economy 7 - and there seems little point in doing this as you're out all day - switch to a much cheaper tariff like British Gas Click which is about 9p a unit in most of the UK.
Panel heaters in the evening wouldn't use more than £1 a day for 3/4 hours at this rate. Your immersion is a 3kw effort which will take about 40 minutes to heat using 3 units per hour ...so a full tank should kick-in at about 20p. As such, your bill does seem high in my opinion for such a small space. Flats can be wired so that others in the building have your power ... there have been well documented cases. Live without electricity for an afternoon (unplug everything) and see whether your meter still gobbles up the units.
I live in a four-bed house, in all day and use £300 in gas & £550 in electricity ... by being careful but not cold! We are well insulated though and have internal temperature of no more than 18 degrees ... cold for some!

Mikeone

Thanks for all your kind tips and advice everyone. GF and I are going away for the weekend, so we'll switch everything off and take a 'before and after' meter reading to see if there's any more 'leakage'!

Our plan is to pool cash to get the outstanding bill paid off by September, but we'll definitely be switching provider/tariff to ensure that we don't rack up any more balances like this one!



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