Problems with huge EDF energy bill - advice needed please!

beccadan

I would be grateful if anyone could offer advice on tackling our huge electricty bills.
After a couple of years of receiving estimated bills and paying a monthly direct debit of £60 a month to EDF energy we had an actual reading taken and were issued with an eyewatering bill for £1800 and a request that our monthly diect debit be increased to £140 a month. We were shocked but thought that we had been under paying for quite a long time and assumed it was accurate.
We have now just received our next quarterly bill based on an actual reading for 22nd Oct until 14th January for £626.27.
There are just two of us who live in a small semi detatched house. We only use electricity. We have our upstairs heating and hotwater on 3 hours a day and downstairs have underfloor heating on 4 hours per day - these are all run on timers.
We also have a log burning stove that we use in the evenings. We have no abnormal household appliances and all our lighting is with energy saving lightbulbs.
We have phoned EDF about this bill and they were far from helpful with advice and suggested recording our daily energy consumption.
They also said we could have the electricity meter checked but it would be at our own expence if no fault was found.
We have started recording our usage and so far have used 64 units in the first day.
Our house is frankly cold as we are terrified of what the next bill will bring and we are very careful about closing doors and switching lights off.
I am also 7 months pregnant and fear bringing a child into this cold house where we cannot afford the heating bills.
I thank you for reading this long post and would be very grateful if anyone has any advice for us
Rebecca

savemoney

Heating you home with electric is very expensive way to do it, also you mention hot water I assume this is a immersion heater again expensive way to heat hot water compared with gas boiler

It looks like you been under paying for some time although in fairness you have used a lot of this during the worse time of the year which has been exceptionally very cold especially in December

Even taken into account £140 whilst more than I pay around £84 a month i do have some credit on my account and I use gas to heat which is a lot cheaper than using electric to heat rooms and water

squack

you could probably do with switching to another supplier. I assume that as electricity-only you are on an economy 7 type tariff? this would let you heat your hot water cylinder more cheaply at night

savemoney

In comparison we use around 16kw a day usage on electric but use gas to heat, no immersion due to using a combi boiler. You will use a lot more than 16kw due to using electric for heat and immersion heater. Check to see if you are on a night tariff for storing electric for storage heaters on economy 7 as you get cheaper rates for using electric at certain times of the day, houses that have these have two electric meters, I believe they do charge more for electric in peak times

Premier_2

I don't wish to worry you, but to have accrued a debt of £1800 in 2 years whilst paying £60 per month means you actually consumed £135 per month of electricity.

I'm surprised that they only increased the DD to £140, as that means you are only paying off £5 per month even if you used the same amount of electricity ... and bearing in mind this recent winter has been exceptionally cold for a long period, I suspect you may have used more.

Even if you haven't, paying off £1800 at £5 a month is going to take 30 years!
And I suspect the energy company won't be happy waiting that long for their money...

Edit:
You need to look at what is consuming 64 kWh per day as that is a lot of electricity. e.g. say you have 3 heaters upstairs, each rated at 2 kW and on for 3 hours - that's only 18kWh assuming they don't cut out on a thermostat.
Hot water, assuming you don't use it whilst it is heating, will probably heat up to temp in 1 hour so say 3kW
Not sure how much the underfloor heating uses - that's something you need to check on.

But ignoring the underfloor heating, that's still 2/3 of your consumption not accounted for (i.e. 40kWh per day)

Perhaps invest in an OWL monitor or similar and see what is using your electricity & when.

beccadan

Thank you both for your replies. I am just arranging to switch to EON which should apparently save £500 per year. When we put our consumption into the comparison site it questioned how high it was and asked if I had put the correct figure in.
Stupidly we are on the standard electricity tariff but with this taken into account can our bill still be correct at £210 per month? Our hot water is heated by an amptec electric boiler which I was led to believe was a fairly energy efficient way of heating water.
Rebecca [SIZE=+1]
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beccadan

Sorry perhaps I wasn't clear in my previuous post - I settled the £1800 in full and then increased my direct debit payments to £140. This is why I am so shocked that the bills have gone up again. Surely 64 units in 1 day is not realistic for a small house with 2 people in.
Thank you all once again.

Sweey_as_a_nut

Beccadan, you be careful when you go to a website like youswitch.
You put in how much you pay in money on all them sites, and they will undercut, according to them, as they make money out of it.

And the company you change to, will let you carry on with that level of payment for quite a while, until one day you'll find that up goes your direct debit to cover the amount you have been under paying. And if you go on the phone to complain they will tell you that youswitch websites as nothing to do with them or what they offer.

You need to have about a years worth of bills to hand, and enter the exact amount you burnt. Then you should have a fair result as to how much you will be paying another firm.

KimYeovil

If you had changed to one of EDF's cheaper tariffs then that £626 bill could have only cost £450. £150 per month is not too extreme for an all-electricity home.

Say 5 kWh for background stuff (fridge, tv, radio, computer, lights), 5 kWh for showers, 10 kWh (at least) for cooking - that leaves only 44 kWh for two floors of heating - so that's five and half kilowatthours each hour - doesn't sound excessive.

JennyR68

I'm an all electric house, was using 64 units a day during cold snap, down to 57 a day last week. But that is with heating on 24/7 for us. How many heaters do you have? and what wattage?

The 64 a day use works out less than £40 a week on EDF for me, so if had carried on at that level would have been £160ish a month.

beccadan

Sweey_as_a_nut wrote: »

Beccadan, you be careful when you go to a website like youswitch.
You put in how much you pay in money on all them sites, and they will undercut, according to them, as they make money out of it.

And the company you change to, will let you carry on with that level of payment for quite a while, until one day you'll find that up goes your direct debit to cover the amount you have been under paying. And if you go on the phone to complain they will tell you that youswitch websites as nothing to do with them or what they offer.

You need to have about a years worth of bills to hand, and enter the exact amount you burnt. Then you should have a fair result as to how much you will be paying another firm.

I went through energyhelpline.com because MSE said that it was the top energy comparison website. Is this site okay to use? I estimated that annually my bills were £2000 and it said that I would pay £1500 with EON.
Thank you for your help - I'm getting so confused