How much should I be paying for gas and elec? please help

cov_lad

Hi there

I have just brought a house, its an average sized 3 bed mid-terrence house with only me living in it.
There is gas fired central heating I keep the house at about 18 degree when I'm there during the winter.
I would say I'm an average user of elec. Cooking is gas hob and elec oven.

When I moved in the pervious owner used Scottish Power and I am on their standard tarriff paying by monthly DD.
They have setup my payments as £80 for Gas and £35 for Elec and they wouldn't reduce them below that.
My old place was a one bed house with fully gas cooker and I paid £20 for gas and £28 for elec.

Peoples opinions on this would be good as gas seemed very very high to me

dogshome

Hi cove-lad - Your D/debits total of £1360 a year is pretty steep, even assuming that Scot. Power are accurately basing thier figures on what the previous owner used, it's a lot of fuel going into a 3 bed terrace house occupied by just one person, but there too many variables, (insulation standards, life style & boiler efficiency), to get a quick accurate answer.

The £35 a month for Electric looks about right, (around 4500Kw a year), for single occupancy
The Gas though seems high, in fact it's roughly twice as much as I'd expect for a reasonably insulated house with the occupant out at work on week-days

Perhaps your best bet is to read the meters 90 days after moving in and work what you have used.
To get a rough annual figure for the electric, multilply this figure by 2 for winter use and note it down, then subtract 18% from it for Summer use and add the 2 figures together
For the gas, double the use to take care the winter, then take 75% off it to account for summer and add the two figures together

As soon as you have these figures run them through the comparision sites for a better deal

Fire_Fox

Change off the expensive standard tariff for a start, read the meter and run your usage figures in KWH through a price comparison site.

Scottish_Power

Hi Cov_lad

The best advise I can give you is to set up an online account with ScottishPower as soon as you can which will allow you to monitor your consumption more accurately. This is provided you have internet access and you are able to read your own gas and electricity meters.

If you update meter readings regularly once the account is created, this will start to record the level of gas and electricity you consume. As we are in the middle of winter, I would expect your gas consumption to be pretty high, however if your meter readings show that your gas consumption is not even as much as your original Direct Debit (£80.00) then it is highly unlikely that you need your payments set at this amount when you will use far less during the summer months.

I would contact us as soon as possible (even send an email) with your current meter readings and ask that they review the usage so far and check whether the Direct Debit amount can be lowered as you do not believe that you will use this amount.

Hope this helps.

Let me know if you have any further issues.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower