£125 pm electric bill help!

vickit83

I have a 2 bed flat, stay at home mum. Southern electric are currently charging me £125 a month for my electricity. I have no gas so everything is electric. Is this normal or way too much, it isnt that i am being overestimated as i check my meter every time i get a bill.

McKneff

youre not being charged £125 a month for your leccy,you are paying £125 towards your actual bill per month for the year.

It depends on your usage,
Have you had an annual statement.
While you may use only £50 a month in Summer, it could be £75 in spring and autumn and £150 in winter.

Mrs_Thrify

Hello and welcome to MSE. :wave:

Your bill is on the high side but then it depends how insulated your home is. How long you have the heating on for and if you are on the cheapest tarif.

vickit83

i have economy 7 heating is storage heaters.

emerald_starcat

Storage heaters use a lot of electic, I had them in my old flat.
I stopped using them and just used an oil filled radiator in the room I was using the most - I lived on my own. My electric bill went from £250 for 3 months down to £80 for 3 months by not using the heaters.

alliballi

Join the club, my electricity is £120 a month just down from £173 only through complaiing. I am all electric to and storage heaters are so dear to run try getting a fire, our flat is a 3 bed and you would think we pay for the street, not sure i agree with Mckeff not being charged for you electric if that is the case why does my DD not go down in summer?

Fire_Fox

Its not fair to compare storage heaters in a whole flat to running a different type of electric heater in one room and then say storage heaters are expensive!! Electric heating is expensive, your usage patterns are expensive.

alliballi

Sorry storage heaters are expensive to run unlike gas you cant turn them off and on when you want, we only have 2 on for a whole 3 bed flat but use fire in living room which is much better. Not sure if you mean my usage patterns are expensive or OP but mine are on bare minimum I can without freezing to death and still get the bills for a whole building it feels like

Fire_Fox

This has been done to death many times before and you can't change the laws of physics!

For every 1KW of electricity you put into a heater you get 1KW back - as night rate electricity is approximately half the price of day rate electricity, with E7 you get twice as much heat for your money. Yes you need to be a little bit organised, adjusting the input and output each morning and night, to get the best value but it is not scientific to compare the cost two storage heaters with one electric fire - you should compare one storage heater with one electric fire AND ensure that they are roughly the same rating.

Quite simply electricity is bl**dy expensive - roughly three times the price of gas per KWH - that is why you feel like you are getting the bills for a whole building not the storage heaters. I have radiant panel heaters and kept the flat at 14C this winter to keep my bills down between £30 and £40 a month.

dopester

vickit83 wrote: »

I have a 2 bed flat, stay at home mum. Southern electric are currently charging me £125 a month for my electricity. I have no gas so everything is electric. Is this normal or way too much, it isnt that i am being overestimated as i check my meter every time i get a bill.

Well we have a 4 bed house and are paying £65pm for electricity, and another £65pm for gas = £130. (Except our gas direct debt will probably soon jump up because we've used just short of 12,000 kwh of gas since December 9th upto today.)

If we disconnected the gas and went all electric, I'd imagine our bills would be... £250 pm for electricity.

So, in general, your £125 pm all-electric, with a stay at home mum occupying the home almost all the time, in a 2 bed flat, doesn't surprise me, and doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.

filbert_nutkins

Hello. Since you say you are giving them meter readings, then this is what you are using, but it does sound like a big expense for a flat. Are you doing everything you can to be careful with the electricity? Energy saving lightbulbs, turning things off at the mains, not leaving chargers plugged in, etc. The words "stay at home mum" combined with "flat" to me suggest someone who probably needs and uses a tumble dryer as well, and they can be massively expensive to run.