£3000 in 6 months on electricity???!!!

xxjohnboy

Hi,

1st post though I have been getting the newsletter for yonks...

Straight to the problem. All sorts of problems actually with my electricity.

I moved into a house in January 09, it is a 2 bed flat. So I moved in with 1 other person, the bill was in the name of the person who moved out. In the process of changing the bill over to my housemantes name, she actually paid to bills for the same period, but at different address. This was a big mistake caused by the flat fronting on to 2 streets. Anyway, that is one issue which I won't go into too much detail about, just though you should know to get the background. Then we switched the bill across to my housemates name and she ended up getting a bill for £1500 for 3 months!!! roughly covering November to January. Then she got another coveruing the next 3 months for a similar amount. Now she got completely stressed by the situation and moved into an all inclusive accomodation, so I has to transfer the bills across to my name. Of course I wasn't going to accept responsability for the bills so far, as they were definitely wrong and I came here from Australia to enjoy myself. But I still want to sort them out and pay what I am meant to pay.

Anyway, I have since switched the account to my name, or rather, have created a whole new account under the correct address under my name.

So to sum up so far.... 3 seperate account numbers, 1 for a small amount on the wrong address which we got credited to another account, which has been charged 2 bills of £1500 (this was also setup under a different incorrect address (but correct meter). And now I finally have my new account which appears to finally be working properly (correct address, correct meter).

Now the issue we have is figuring out how the bills (and they did read the right meter for these apparently) for the 2nd account got to be soooo large. We don't have a hydroponic setup or anything like that, in fact we hardly use the electricity as we are quite frugal by nature. I have recently checked the meter by using only our heater for 30 minutes and measuring how well the meter measured it. It was bang on... I should probably do more testing to double check the meter is reading correctly, and i will. But assuming the meter is reading things correctly, I have worked out our electricty bill for a quarter to be £450. This is without using the water boiler which I have been suspicious of. So a 2 bed flat with 3 people using no heaters and no hot water (we have a power shower and a kettle). This seems like it could actually be correct as well.

So the boiler, I have had electricians take a look at and they say it is working fine though it did blow a fuse (actually maybe even 2 fuses, I cant remember now), I insisted they put a timer on it (though i dont have it on at all anyway) just in case.

So now with the colder months getting closer I decided to call the LL to advise them I was going to start using the heater again. This may or may not cause a huge amount of electricity to be used.

But what do I do about these bills of £1500? Neither of us can afford to pay them, and there is absolutely no way we used that much juice, but how can we prove whose liability it is?

Back in Australia we can ask an energy company (as part of some greeny policy) to come out and check your house to see how much power appliances are using. Is there anything like that over here so I can be sure the meter is not faulty? Otherwise, there can only be the boiler that was causing that kind of power consumption, which would make the landlord liable.

Any ideas or pointers for me?

Sorry if it is a bit confusing, it is for me too..

JB

paceinternet

In all those switches and account changes did the supplier take, or ask for, the meter readings?
Or were some of them estimates?

Tim_Nicholas

We got 4k for 6 months... 3 air con machines in the house soon racks up !!!

xxjohnboy

Yeah I know electricity isn't meant to be free, but we are talking about a little 2 bed flat using virtually no heating.

As for the readings, some were estimates, but I have since got readings and take readings myself.

03/04/09 28009.8 KWH
08/04/09 28276.7
21/04/09 28402.2
23/04/09 28421.0
11/05/09 28574.7
12/06/09 28911.4
16/06/09 28947.3
06/07/09 29063.5 @ 8:15am

I asked them what the readings were when they measured.

They said that reading on 11Feb was 24517
25Feb 25266

paceinternet

In March the kwh were 28009 -25266 = 2743 / 37 days = average 74 kwh a day. How much does that cost in £'s ?
11th Feb to 25th Feb was averaging 53 kwh per day.
So you have demonstrated what the place can use, but are now averaging much less.
Do you know the readings for the £1500 bills?

Fire_Fox

I think you should do an overnight or, better still, a 24 hour reading where nothing is on bar the fridge-freezer (i.e. go out and unplug everything). No microwave clock, no bedside alarms, all of it off. If possible do another test over a few hours with the circuit breaker off (freezer will stay cold if you don't open it) on to see if the meter still goes round.

xxjohnboy

The formula that I am on with EDF is 18.87p for the first 328 units in a quarter and 12.82 for each unit thereafter.

From 03/04/09 to 06/07/09 = 3 months and 3 days
= 1053.7 units
= (328 @ 18.87p = £61.89) + (725.7 @ 12.82p = £93.03)
=£154.92

hmmm it occurs to me that I have actually worked out the bill to be £154.92. Except I just got a bill covering 2nd March to 6th June for about £450. Which means March was a killer.... I need to do some thinking about when it was exactly that we stopped using the hot water. It really is looking more and more like the culprit, even though contractors have checked it out and say it is working fine. ....

just thinking out loud now.. it's helping me to get it clear in my head, as I have been putting this off recently until now....

Cheers

JB

xxjohnboy

so the maths on these would be

74kwh x 90 days = 6660 KWH
(328 @ 18.87p = £61.89) + (6332 @ 12.82p = £811.76)
= £873.65

53KWH x 90 days = 4770KWH
(328 @ 18.87p = £61.89) + (4442 @ 12.82p = £569.46)
= £631.35

paceinternet wrote: »

In March the kwh were 28009 -25266 = 2743 / 37 days = average 74 kwh a day. How much does that cost in £'s ?
11th Feb to 25th Feb was averaging 53 kwh per day.
So you have demonstrated what the place can use, but are now averaging much less.
Do you know the readings for the £1500 bills?