electricity bill way high help.

bryanlewis1973

i wondered if any one can help
i nkow i havent been paying enough monthly on my elec account.
it seems extremley high.
we have switched off extra frezer in shed
we dont tumble dry
washing machine once a day
dishwasher once a day
shower is on three times a day
2 fish aquariums both now shut down to minimum requirement
all lightbulbs are energy savers
we only really have small lamps on in house if any

however i did notice that when shower is working it takes only 2 secs for one tenth of unit of elec even the kette doesnt use this much.
please has any body got any dvice,im about to change the elec showr for one that runs off gas boiler.
i have £500 outstanding elec bil for last quarter.
have just sighned up to ebico two weeks ago.

chrislee765

Out of interest do you submit meter readings or are you going by the estimates. Im not very experienced in the field but they may just be estimating that you will be using far more than you actually are. Does it say the estimated meter reading on the latest bill? If so i guess you could check with your meter and if the reading they have got is much higher than your actual reading then that could explain it.
I hope someone follows up soon with a more definitive answer

Sparky47

bryanlewis1973 wrote: »

however i did notice that when shower is working it takes only 2 secs for one tenth of unit of elec even the kette doesnt use this much.

Electric showers do use a lot of electricity although they are generally only on for a short time.
The amount of electricity used depends on the kW rating of the appliance.
As an example a 8kW electric shower uses 8 units per hour ie. 0.13 per minute.

Good2go_2

hi, the best thing to do is work out how many units you are using in a 24 hr period then report back !
i also cant recommend enough a owl engery monitor device, you can get them from tesco's/argos etc, they show you in real money how much your using , its really quite scary, they cost about £30, but ours has paid for itself already in savings off the electric bill, and we have only had it 4 months !!!

bryanlewis1973

My bills are actual not estimated
think i will get energy monitor thanks for that
i always thought i was careful
my dad runs car repairs workshop running lots of equipment and his quarterly bill was 376 pounds yet mine was nearly 500

ormus

you need to tell us the yearly cost of your electric, size of house and number of occupants, to get a valid comparison with others.

ie
a typical 3 bed semi has an approx yearly lecky bill of 823 quid.

tomstickland

Just monitor the meter every few days and from that work out how much you are using per day/week/month/year/whatever.

There are only two things to consider at the moment:
1) Are you using a lot of units?
or
2) Are you paying too much for the units you do use or being overcharged in some way?

Bluefish_2

We also found an energy monitor was an eye opener so I would definitely try one - it is often the items you are not aware of that use the most electricity. We find our bill is much higher in the winter than the summer due to central heating, and as we moved into our house in the summer we found we underpaid over the first winter. When the weather heated up (with that phenomena that some may call summer ) our consumption dropped due to the heating being off, but our bills didn't because we were still paying for your winter usage. Your bill does seem incredibly high though, so although it may sound silly another thing you could check is that you are on a domestic tariff. When we moved into our property our water was on a business tariff which meant our bill was huge! A simple phonecall put us on the correct tariff

benjo

Seems you have tried most of the things I would have done, a couple of other things to consider if you havent already are..

switch the washing machine, dishwasher, microwave off at the wall when not in use - silly to power the little 'power light'.

Same with an electric cooker - if you can put up with resetting the clock.

External motion sensor lights, switch them off during the day/evening, put them on only during the night time hours.

Lotus-eater

You don't need a monitor to start with, you need to watch your meter and note down the useage over a few days. Try to pick average days and note if you do anything unusual.
Crunch a few numbers and find out how much you are using over a week/month/year.

I have a monitor that you plug individual things through and it tells you how much the item is using, very useful for washing machines fridges etc,
You need to concentrate on the high useage things you have.

Check that you are being charged the correct measures, ie you have a metric meter and you should have a metric bill. There has been problems with people having imperial meters and being charged metric.
I think that's the right way round.

bryanlewis1973

thank you all so much im on the case now