Ideas how to calculate average electricity??

BankFree

Hi,

I live in a bedsit, everything is electric no gas. We are on economy 7 and have storage heaters :-( although up until Jan were managing to keep these switched off and use an economical oil filled radiator on timer. I have just had our bill through and from the 12/10/09 to 03/02/10 we have used:

2422units at Night
1640 units during the day.

This sounds quite a lot.... the only reason I ask is that our friends next door have never had an electricity bill... but there is a seperate meter that says their flat number under the stairs. I wish there was a site you could go to where you could find out if your using far more than the average for your house size/ number of people.

Scarily I am actually going to attempt to calculate this bill now...

BankFree

Oh dear... £350!! I was convinced by only using 1 storage heater when we were desperate (i.e. the snow) our bills would be cheaper!! Roughly calculating per month is £85. I know I'm moaning but when you live in a studio flat and have spent lots of time in 10 layers of jumpers to avoid switching the heating on I was kind of hoping to be pleasantly surprised to open my bill! (had budgeted on it being £200)

JennyR68

handy bill calculator at http://smartmeter.ukpower.co.uk/

your figures average out about 35 a day. Not bad atall for an all electric house over winter.

JennyR68

You can keep a close eye on consumption and keep up to date with anticipated cost at http://www.imeasure.org.uk

BankFree

Ah thankyou, I have just got over the initial shock of it... normally I'm very level headed but because we have been making such a big deal about switching everything off etc I thought it would have made a difference. Just compared it to last years bill and we have only saved 500 units at night which is ridiculous, £25, will defo be leaving storage heaters on now!!

savemoney

Its a bedsit though not a house, it implies one room, so not that great but not that bad either

JennyR68 wrote: »

handy bill calculator at http://smartmeter.ukpower.co.uk/

your figures average out about 35 a day. Not bad atall for an all electric house over winter.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

BankFree wrote: »

economical oil filled radiator on timer.

just my opinion, but never ever thought oil filled were economical, even on a timer, heavy consumption at day rate.

tomstickland

although up until Jan were managing to keep these switched off and use an economical oil filled radiator on timer.

Timed for when? Why would it be more efficient than a storage heater?
Calculate how many day and night units you are using per day.

BankFree

Maybe the oil filled radiator was not such a good idea...it was only on for 4 hours a day though and personally I find storage heaters useless, they are like a modern fire- loads of heat (so it's too hot) in the morning and then freezing my evening. (Yes I have been using the vent adjustments but anyone who has had a storage heater will sympathize.) Thankyou for all your help, I am now just going back to wolly jumpers in the evening and good old fashioned storage heaters.

Oh and thankyou Jenny R68 very helpful websites, A am now updating my weekly fuel usage so I can keep track of it...

tomstickland

So you were running your radiator in the daytime.
In that case there's no point in having an Economy 7 tariff. They're more expensive overall unless you have a significant night time load.

Overnight electricity costs around a quarter of the cost of daytime electricity. For me it's something like 3p a unit overnight versus 12p during the day.

You should read your meter every few days so you can then work out the average use per day of night and daytime units. That then allows a proper picture of how much you are using and then you can also do a proper price comparison.

An energy saving bulb of 15W is 0.015 units per hour, so it costs virtually nothing to use.
A 2Kw heater though, costs 2 units per hour, so 4 hours use is 8 units, which might be almost a pound per day.

BankFree

The dreaded 'oil filled radiator' has three settings and a thermostat, we were using it on the first setting... I am be wrong but would that mean it wasn't using the full 2Kw? It seemed much better as when we weren't here it was off and (unlike the storage heater) when it did come on flat warmed up very quickly and when it was at an average temperature the thermostat would kick in...
Looking back I suppose I should have switched my electricity as you correctly pointed out I was using more during the day, although still have the water tank filling up at night so probably not much difference even if I had changed...
Don't think there is much else I can do while we are still renting as the main problem is no double glazing :-( did resort to trying clingfilm over windows but found it quite unhygienic as condensation was getting trapped...