Electric only

clairecmitch

We've been in our cottage now for 6 months and have managed to incur £532 worth of electricity charges. We have no gas and are heated by newlec storage heaters. We don't have instructions on how to use them, so don't really understand if we are costing ourselves more than necessary :mad:

Between the 12th oct and 25th nov we used 63kwh day primary units @ 28.185p each, 154kwh secondary units @ 11.473p each and 1345kwh night units @ 5.11p each.

If anyone understands this, can you please advise if this sounds like reasonable use for 2 adults in a 2 bed cottage ?????

Any advice/help is much appreciated.

Madmel

We have a 2 bed cottage which is only heated by storage heaters but as it is let to holiday makers, is not always occupied so I can't easily compare the dates with yours. However, over a 6 week period in early spring this year, we used 946 heating units and 347 day time units. We are on an economy 7 tariff so only 2 tiers of prices. It costs us around £40 per month, but we are billed for this cottage and our own house together, so some maths is involved in working it all out!

DH sets the storage heaters so they come on at 1 am and go off around 6.30 am to take advantage of the off-peak times round here (Devon) The immersion is also set for these hours, but because we get lots of guests wanting baths in the early evening, it is on at peak rate for around half an hour in the afternoon. That is on a *normal* timeswitch, but I'm not sure how to set the heaters. Will try to ask DH when he re-appears.

Hope this helps a little. When I last did a comparison online, we were on the cheapest tariff for our usage with Scottish Power. I suppose it's time to look again....

KimYeovil

217 day units to 1345 night units is an okay ratio so you are fine on the E7 tariff.

5 kWh day units per day is not bad if you have an electric cooker on top of your other "ambient" electric stuff.

And again, £68 of night storage for six weeks is okay if you have made use of the heaters.

What you have to work out is how your storage heaters will cope now that the colder days are here and if you could have used less storage over summer. If you google the make and name of the heaters you should find info to make sure you weren't storing too much heat.

Fire_Fox

You should be able to find the instructions for your storage heaters somewhere on the net for download, have you searched?