£6000 for one quaters electricty - How?

MagWag

I have recently become the live-in carer for an elderly gentleman who has had a stroke.
One of the biggest things playing on his mind at the moment is his last quaters electricity bill - for an incredible £6000!!! Yes, that is SIX THOUSAND POUNDS!!!!!
At the moment his niece is dealing with it & I haven't seen the bill, but apparently up until this his usual comsumption is in the region of £200 to £300 per quater.
I can't give much history at the moment but there is a new EDF meter on the wall & a new consumer unit - placed so high on the wall that a ladder is needed to read it (& this for a chap in a wheel chair - it could easily have been placed lower). There are also 3 new storage heaters (currently switched off).
My biggest concern is not the efficiency of the various pieces of electrical equipment in the house, but the fact that even when all the trips and mains switch is off the meter does not slow down.
Last night before I went to bed I turned off all the switches - the mains, the fuse box & the consumer unit - no change at all in the speed of the meter!
Currently, to my knowledge, the only items on are this computer, the elderly gents tele & radio, his 'baby' listener & the fridge - yet the thing is still clocking up one unit or more per minute (thats the digit past the decimal place on the meter).
So what on earth is happening? This is an old place with 1950's surface wiring & bakolite plugs & switches, it has an emersion heater that has no thermostat BUT this wasn't on when we did the test last night. What can possibly be drawing this amount of power - we seem to be supplying the whole village!
HELP PLEASE ANYONE?

notbritishgas

Check to see how many cables come out of the meter into the consumer unit. There should only be one set which may comprise a seperate Live, Neutral and Earth cable. If that is all you have and you then switch off the main switch on the consumer unit then the meter should not move.
If there are cables coming out of the meter and not going to your consumer unit then you may have problems, but how are the storage heaters and immersion heater wired? Are they fed from the consumer unit.
If you were using 1 kw of electricity per minute there would be very very very considerable amount of heat or light in the house.
PS He doesn't live near Wembley Stadium?

Just reread your post, do you mean the digit to the left or right of decimal point, if left that is 1 kw, if right that is 1kw every 10 minutes or 6 kwh, still quite a lot of electricity but could be storage heaters.

Cardew

As said above, you simply cannot use 1 unit a minute.

That is 60kW and you cannot 'lose' energy - it has to create heat or light and 60kW would cause something to melt!!!

dunloadin

notbritishgas wrote: »

Check to see how many cables come out of the meter into the consumer unit. There should only be one set which may comprise a seperate Live, Neutral and Earth cable. If that is all you have and you then switch off the main switch on the consumer unit then the meter should not move.

A couple of quick checks you can do...VISUAL only, don't play about with the cables.

There should be no earth cables connected to the meter! (green or green/yellow)

If storage heaters are fitted there should be 5 cables connected to the meter (assuming it's a standard Eco7 set up)

If the meter has 4 cables only, then the wrong meter type has been fitted. (it is possible if the consumer unit and storage heaters were fitted after the meter was..have seen it happen)

Are you sure all the power to the house was off, there may be a consumer unit somewhere else in the house...also the load to the heating (including the immersion heater, may be being controlled by a relay switch set to switch it on when it changes to cheap rate)

Any doubts contact the supplier and get them to send an engineer out to check the meter installation, if you say it hasn't been right since the meter was changed I would think there will not be a charge...unless you get some zealot at the call centre.

The bill needs to be looked at closely, it may well be that the meter read included the digits after the decimal point, i.e. 00123.4 on the meter should be a read of 00123 on the bill, if it's 01234 on the bill then there's your extra money....have seen that happen a few times before as well.

Check the bill that has the meter change on it, there should be a final read of the old meter (not estimated!) and a start read for the new, if not and the new meter has been read then theres gonna be a big difference in the reads from the previous bill. Check the reads of the old meter transferrd from the previous bill, it is possible that estimates have been given for yonks, and they have been underestimating the usage...the final reads from the old meter will then be catching up with previous usage (unlikley it will be £6000 worth tho!).

MagWag

notbritishgas wrote: »

Check to see how many cables come out of the meter into the consumer unit. There should only be one set which may comprise a seperate Live, Neutral and Earth cable. If that is all you have and you then switch off the main switch on the consumer unit then the meter should not move.
If there are cables coming out of the meter and not going to your consumer unit then you may have problems, but how are the storage heaters and immersion heater wired? Are they fed from the consumer unit.
If you were using 1 kw of electricity per minute there would be very very very considerable amount of heat or light in the house.
PS He doesn't live near Wembley Stadium?

Just reread your post, do you mean the digit to the left or right of decimal point, if left that is 1 kw, if right that is 1kw every 10 minutes or 6 kwh, still quite a lot of electricity but could be storage heaters.

Thanks for the reply -I've just had a good look at all the wiring & I'll try & explain what I see (though a picture would be better I think).

First though, re the speed of the meter ...it's truly going like a stop watch with the digits on the right of the decimal point counting the seconds (fast seconds that is) so that the digit to the left of the decimal point is clocking up about once a minute or more frequently!

As to the wiring set up - this is what I see: The power comes in via a thick cable up from the floor to a Western Power Distribution contraption (No we don't live near Wembley Stadium ). Out of this come 3 thick cables - one marked live, one neutral & the third the green & yellow of earth.

The earth goes to an earth terminal. Out of this come 2 earth leads, one goes back down towards the floor (it disappears behind some panelling), the other goes to the consumer unit).

The live & neutral cables go to the meter. Now it gets more complicated!

Out of the meter come 3 big cables (2 live, one neutral) and one old smaller live one - this goes to an old bakolite mains switch. One of big lives goes straight to the consumer unit, the other appears to go to an old bakolite fuse box.
The neutral goes to a small black box (I don't know what this is) out of which come 2 big & one smaller neutral. The small neutral goes to the old mains switch. One big one goes to the consumer unit, the other to the old fuse box.

Therefore three big cables enter the consumer unit - one live, one neutral & one earth.....phew, that was a lot of typing!

dunloadin

MagWag wrote: »

Out of the meter come 3 big cables (2 live, one neutral) and one old smaller live one - this goes to an old bakolite mains switch. One of big lives goes straight to the consumer unit, the other appears to go to an old bakolite fuse box.
QUOTE]

Ok, the earth is good.

I'm assuming the new consumer unit is for the domestic supply (lights, sockets etc) and the older bakolite fuse box is for the storage heaters.

Looking from left to right on the meter the 5 big cables should be as follows

1 Cutout to Meter Live (it will be the one coming out of the main fuse)

2 Cutout to Meter Neutral

3 Neutral(s) from all consumer units to meter (the block is to connect all the neutrals together)

4 Live from meter to domestic consumer unit

5 Live from meter to bakelite fusebox (heating consumer unit)

The smaller live going to the bakelite main switch could be the elephant in the room....it could also be the switch/fuse for the immersion heater boost, which terminal is it connected to? Try switching it off.

Have you tried switching off the supply on the bakelite fuse box..that should knock off the supply to the storage heaters.

duggie1982

I bet its that god damb Tumble dryer!! Only kidden

notbritishgas

Now you have confirmed it is the unit digit increasing by 1 per minute, that is 1kw per min or 60kwh. That is the equivalent of 20 electric fires on full for each hour.
Your wiring looks as if you are not supplying the town so my bet is on a faulty meter.
can you switch off or take fuses out of the 2 old balkelite boxes as well as switching off the consumer unit. That should isolate the property completely and the meter should stop, if not I think it is faulty.
Just had another thought. If you really were using 60kw then the fuses would blow or the circuit breakers in the consumer unit would trip as 60kw = 240 amps (if my maths is correct) and that would surely blow the main fuse before the meter.

MagWag

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to try out the suggestions this evening.

Dunloadin - I think that the new consumer unit relates to the new storage heaters...what is written inside corresponds to the rooms in which they are situated. So everything else comes off the old fuse box.

When I did my test the other evening I switched off all obvious switches - the mains one, the one on the side of the old fuse box, and the red one inside the new consumer unit. The meter kept on going without any obvious change of pace!

My partner spoke to the electricity supplier last night & they have asked for readings over 3 consecutive nights.

Last nights reading at 20.25pm was 19:19:22
Now at 13.15pm (about 17hrs on) it is 12:11:47
It seems to be going so fast it is clocking itself! I will try to keep an eye on it this afternoon to see how high it goes (would that be 99:99:99 before resetting?)

I suspect that it must be a faulty meter...it's not a slightly high reading it is unexplicably, outrageously huge.

I will get back to to you to let you know what happens later.

Many thanks

P.s.duggie1982... currently I don't even have the luxury of washing machine, let alone a tumble dryer - it's a washboard & wringer for me :-(

Premier_2

MagWag wrote: »

...Last night before I went to bed I turned off all the switches - the mains, the fuse box & the consumer unit - no change at all in the speed of the meter!...

As this newly installed meter continues to spin even when you have isolated the supply, call the supplier and get them back to check the meter/installation.

dunloadin

Last nights reading at 20.25pm was 19:19:22
Now at 13.15pm (about 17hrs on) it is 12:11:47
It seems to be going so fast it is clocking itself!

The read you are giving looks a bit weird....is it clocking up approx once per second by any chance, looks more like the time on the meter clock (the meter clock is fixed on GMT and is an hour behind at the mo) looks like your meter/watch have 4 minutes difference.

If I'm teaching you to suck eggs I apologise now, but the meter reads should look like this:

Press the button on the meter untill you see the following (first few presses will give the test screen, time and date)

t 00000.0 (t = total day and night use added together - do not use as a read!)

r1 00000.0 (r1 = Rate 1, day/normal)

r2 00000.0 (r2 = Rate 2, night/low use)

The rate currently in use should be displayed as the default screen before the button is pressed...and the 1 or 2 of the r1/r2 will be blinking off and on to indicate that is the read that is currently in use.

A single phase meter has a five digit read...ignore the digit after the decimal point.