Am i paying too much?

chris_h16

Hi all

We are with edf and are currently paying £50 a month on electric and £70 on gas a month.

We had a debt of £54 on gas and £3 on electric just before we got our bills at the weekend. Our bills now stand at gas: £156 and electric: £131

I've worked out that by the end of the summer we'll be in credit, so can't we get them to lower it by £10 a month or something?

We phoend and asked and they said something about we still owed them money somehow.

macman

Are your bills based on actual or estimated readings?
What you pay on DD is completely irrelevant. It's your kWh consumption that matters. You're supposed to build up credit in the summer in order that you don't go heavily into debt in the winter.
If you are in debt by £300 at the start of winter then you'll be very much more in debt by the start of summer. You should be in credit right now, so you should be paying more, not less.
But without knowing your consumption, it's not possible to calculate it.

chris_h16

I gave them meter readings, some in between they have down as estimated though.

I've added screenshots of usuage

macman

The 'E" readings are where the price has changed mid-billing period and they have estimated your consumption at the date of the change.
No, what you need to work out is your annual usage in kWh-3m worth is no use, as it doesn't reflect average usage over the year-you'll use the vast majority of your annual gas consumption over the winter months. Either go back over the last 4 bills and deduct the readings, or call your supplier and they will tell you the kWh figs.
I notice that you are on EDF Standard electricity tariff-why? Standard is the most expensive tariff with any supplier.

McKneff

I would get onto EDF and change to online saver 7.
Standard tariff is the most expensive one to be on.

chris_h16

I understand i need the full years consumption that would be ok for electric but for gas we have just got a combi boiler put in at the end of September so that going to make a difference, we can see in just that last gas bill it is a lot less.

Regarding tariffs, i understand there are different tariffs but what makes say that online saver 7 cheaper? Why do they have different tariffs?

chris_h16

I've sent an email to them asking to switch tariff, i've looked on their website and they state themselves its the cheapest, so hopefully they'll switch us

chris_h16

I've added the kWh of electric from the past four bills and its 3775

Gas wise is harder as we had a really old inefficient boiler, the gas man said that we were getting £6.50 worth of gas per every £10 we were spending on our bill. The last quarter with the new boiler is 2683 and the rest of the year was 10321 so if you say with the new combi that 10321 would be about 8000 so less than 11000 for gas

macman

chris_h16 wrote: »

I've added the kWh of electric from the past four bills and its 3775

Gas wise is harder as we had a really old inefficient boiler, the gas man said that we were getting £6.50 worth of gas per every £10 we were spending on our bill. The last quarter with the new boiler is 2683 and the rest of the year was 10321 so if you say with the new combi that 10321 would be about 8000 so less than 11000 for gas

3,775 kWh annual electricity usage is around average for a 3 b/r house with gas CH and DHW.
11-13.000 kWh annual gas usage is extemely low-the average would be around 25,000kWh.
The cheapest EDF dual fuel tariff is currently Online Saver 7, but anything is cheaper than Standard.
I suggest that you put the figures into a comp site to check.

chris_h16

Hi
Thanks for that, very interesting.

Why do you think our gas is so low then, i don't think we underuse it.
We used to have it on for about 2 hours on a morning then from about 4pm til about 8pm and then odd spots during the day or after 8pm.

We now have it set to 14 degrees during the night and day and 19 on a morning at 6am til 8am. At 4pm we have it set for 18.5 degrees then 19.5 degrees from 6pm i think until 8:30pm when it reverts back to 14.

Do you think this ties in with our kWh?

macman

Your hours are fairly short (6 hours) and you're using it at a relatively low setting. Just turning it up 1C would probably use another 10%. But it still seems low-how big is your house? Well insulated?
I'm presuming that you have gas DHW and cooking?
Maybe worth just double checking your gas consumption figs for the last year. Tip-you don't need to total over 4 bills, just take the last bill closing reading, and the reading from a year prior, subtract the latter from the former, and that's your year's consumption in cu ft or cu m. Convert to kWh and that's your year's usage.