Electricity usage?

gin

We are a family of six in a three bed end terrace with a loft room. According to SWALEC, we are using £80-£120 of electricity per month, and have built up arrears of £500 as our dd was too low.

Please can I ask, is such a high usage normal? I admit to using the washing machine two or three times a day (on the economy setting), the tumble drier for 30 mins tops a day, and the oven is electric and is on for an hour most days.

Gas heating and hot water, gas hob, energy saving light-bulbs in most fittings, a computer and a laptop and two TVs etc.

I have to ring SWALEC to talk to their debt specialist department tomorrow as we cannot afford the £250 repayment they want now.

Thanks for all your help in advance.:beer:

jd87

Sorry but it sounds like perfectly reasonable usage for a family of six.

Robert2009

Sorry but it sounds like perfectly reasonable usage for a family of six

How much in kWh are you actually using each month as £120 works out at about 37 kWh a day, at least at my prices.

That doesn't sound reasonable to me not with gas heating and hot water.

molerat

Agree with Robert2009, I would expect around half that useage, maybe £60 - £70 per month max giving you over 20kWh a day for a big high use family (unless you are growing something in the attic :cool:), give us some actual meter readings, not estimates.

MoneySavingMother

Were a family of 3 and use no more than £40 worth of electricity a month but i suppose it all depends on the amount you use. I thought we used quite a bit but obviously not.

Its always worth double checking your prices are correct.

karenbarnett

Try www. eonenergyfit. com/ mice
They are testing how energy efficient you can be - its a great little survey - then if you sign up, they tell you how to become more energy efficient.
no obligations...

dogshome

Hi gin - I'm afraid that it's down to you to do the homework on your past Elec bills to either justify or challange SWALEC's assessment of your annual power use, which they may have based on Estimated meter readings

Go back thro' past bills to assess what your annual consumption is in Kwh ( Meter units), and to do this properly you must be looking at bills that have been read by the Meter Reader, not those that have been Estimated, then armed with this you can apply the figures to your tariff to see what the annual cost is

gin

Thanks for all your replies. I moved in here a year ago exactly, so it is easy to work out annual usage! SWALEC's figures are correct in our usage, I'm just puzzled how we could be using so much electricity - the difference between the meter reading when we moved in and today is 8858.

When we moved I went for the cheapest deal, time to look again I guess.

molerat

On my current tarriff that would be £65 pm and £68 pm on the cheapest available tarriff so £80-120 is a bit ott. You need to change to their cheapest rate + £50 pm to pay bak the debt over 1 year, the same amount of time it took to build up. Be firm with them.

chris1973

Are the TV's, Plasma, LCD or Old Style CRT?

Any Playstations / Xboxes running full pelt every evening and all weekend?

Any outside lighting / floodlights?

macman

Your electricity consumption is about twice the norm for a 3 b/r house (say 4,500kWh), however you have a large family and a loft conversion, so 6,000kWh would probably be a reasonable figure. the washing m/c 3 times a day and especially the tumble drier will be major users, other than that you need to look at any other large current users.
Do you by any chance have a back-up immersion heater that has been left on?
Are you already on the cheapest SWALEC tariff (normally a discounted online one)? You won't be able to switch until you have cleared the debt.