Electricity bill of £165pm for a one bedroom flat?

Sandwich

My sister was round last week and was telling me that she pays £165pm for the electricity at her small, one bedroom flat. I couldn't believe it! That's too much, surely? I have a flat of around the same size and I only pay £65pm for gas and electric combined. What do you guys think? Has there been a mistake on her bill or am I just being undercharged?

Premier_2

What does the meter say has been consumed? (both yours and your sisters)

Are the readings on the bill actual or estimated? (both yours and your sisters)

Is your sister repaying any accrued debt?

Sandwich

Premier wrote: »

What does the meter say has been consumed? (both yours and your sisters)

Are the readings on the bill actual or estimated? (both yours and your sisters)

Is your sister repaying any accrued debt?

I'm afraid I don't have any meter readings, but I can tell you for sure that she's not re-paying any accrued debt. The thing is, I just don't see how I can be paying £65 for gas and electric, and she pays £165 for electric (no gas), when we both have the same size flats, and she doesn't use nearly as much electricity as me! She does live with her fiance, so you'd expect a little extra usage, but they both work and are out during the day, whereas I work from home and use electricity all day.

dogshome

Hi Sandwich - I'm afraid that comparing your sisters All Electric flat to your Gas & Electric flat is comparing Chalk and Cheese.
Gas Heating & H/Water is the cheapest option there is, whereas All Electric is the dearest

If your sister has Storage Radiators fed thro' an ECO7 meter in a 2 bed flat, her bills will be in the region of £1200 a year and that is on an Online Tariff with D/Debit payment.
However her £165 a month is £1980 a year, which is very high even for ECO 7 - Best bet is for her to post her readings for some direct advice

JasX

dogshome is spot on, you are quite fortunate having gas+electric and £65pm seems reasonable -tho could perhaps be improved a little..

All electric for a 2 bed i'd suspect averaging around £100pm with everything setup fairly efficiently, your sister is way above that so would do well to interrogate her electric heating setup (water and central) and cut down on the timers and thermostat temperatures where she can.... and invest in good insulation if thats lacking

Sandwich

The thing that makes it even worse though is that her heating system is broke, so she doesn't even use that.

dogshome

Hi Sandwich - The heating system is broken ?
ECO7 Meters Heat the Storage radiators and cook up Hot water over Night on cheap rate Electricity, but the power you use during the Day costs more than the power supplied to people with 'Standard' meters.
If your sister is using expensive daytime power to heat her hot water, it would partly explain her £165 monthly payments.

If she rents her flat it's up to the L/lord to fix the heating, and as winter is fast approaching, fix it damned quick

yellowsaver

Hi Sandwich
I live in a small 1 bedroom flat too. No gas, all electric with one of those big storage heaters for water which is on a timer to charge before use. I don't use the heaters and I pay around £50pm on electricity.

I used to pay around £100 plus but found out it was down to my storage heater not being on a timer.

£165 seems like a shocking amount :eek:

KimYeovil

yellowsaver wrote: »

£165 seems like a shocking amount :eek:

If you are not using any heating then £50 seems like a shocking amount.

maxmycardagain

id book a few days away after reading the meter and knock everything off, and read it again when i come back.....

just in case upstairs (or downstairs, or both) is being fed off your meter

skint-student-nurse

i agree, £165 seems very high. We use around £40 pcm of electric (we have no gas) but we are stuck on a pre-pay meter so we could do better and this is based on a 2 bed flat and we are starting to use the heaters. What we found that uses a lot of electricity is the water heater being left on and also having the night storage heaters on. One of our previous tenants left the night storage heaters on all the time and ended up paying £140 ish a month.