Electricity bill seems very high

marcus_h

Thanks for all the input. Having the landlord, who built the place, come over later. As for as the estimated bill, they seem to alternate. They always used to be read at the previous property (same supplier, which I brought with me).

But your responses have made me look very closely at the bills. Here is how they break down:


Mar 09 – Sept 09: 13246 – 14515 (E) = 1269

Sept 09 - Mar 10: 14515(E) – 18729 = 4214 (so, in 12 months, 5500)

Mar 10 – Sept 10: 18729 – 20820 = 2091

Sept 10 – Mar 11: 20820 – 23285(E) (and currently 28500) So about 8000 in last 12 months, 9771 in 18 mths :eek:

So it has all gone wrong in the last year.

jalexa

marcus_h wrote: »

Mar 11: 20820 – 23285(E) BUT really 28500

Now we're talking, but I don't understand the quote. Have I missed something?

Now get a handle on your consumption by taking daily readings for a week, weekly readings for a month, then regular monthly readings.


Something in explanation or elimination, the last two winters, and in particular the last winter, have been particularly severe. Do you use supplementary electrical heating in winter? Or perhaps a better question, do you have portable electric heaters in the house? In a greenhouse, outbuilding or garage?

furndire

It is possible to have a faulty meter - mine only came to light because we had solar panels fitted - it was running very fast. I was always being convinced that we were heavy users. Is it a Siemens S2AS-100, or Siemens S1AS-100 by any chance?

marcus_h

Jalexa - thanks for that. I realised I had miscalculated - now edited with correct figures. Nonetheless, about 8000 kw/hs in last year.

They certainly were cold winters. We have one little heater that we used for our son in winter, but we had it fairly low. We haven't (knowingly) used any supplementary electric heating (having this checked by the landlord to see where all the switches are), nor are there any outbuildings. Dishwasher always on eco, and we very rarely use the drier function on the washer/drier.

I will start monitoring this closely now to see what is causing it.

marcus_h

furndire wrote: »

It is possible to have a faulty meter - mine only came to light because we had solar panels fitted - it was running very fast. I was always being convinced that we were heavy users. Is it a Siemens S2AS-100, or Siemens S1AS-100 by any chance?

It says Ampy on it - is that the manufacturer?

furndire

Sorry don't know, all I know is that mine was one of the above - Siemens was the manufacturer. The problem was they wanted originally £80 to put a check meter in, but then they (Atlantic) decided they would charge me about £40 if the meter wasn't faulty.
I would do start to keep a very regular check on your usage - last thing at night, and first thing in the morning - to find out what your background use is without all the gadgets & gizmos on.

vuvuzela

johndunne wrote: »

Hi Marcus,

If you have an iPhone/iPod/iPad in your home you could try using an app called GreenHome - you can put all of your home's appliances into the app and it'll give you a breakdown of where your electricity is being used, and even gives you suggestions on how to save money. The link for the app is itunes.apple.com/us/app/greenhome/id444543163

Please don't advertise your own software here.

Inner_Zone

marcus_h wrote: »

It says Ampy on it - is that the manufacturer?

Yes, now part of Landis+Gyr.

marcus_h

Have done a check, and the immersion heater is definitely not on. There is nothing obvious as to why our usage is so high, and why it has climbed so much recently. So I think we will get an engineer out as the next step.

keith1950

So I think we will get an engineer out as the next step.

Hi, do you mean that you will try to get them to change the meter or that you are going to pay an independant engineer to check things out.

If so, you can expect to pay at least £30/hour for doing basically the same things that you can check yourself.

Before spending any money you need to monitor your useage daily and see if there is any pattern to this extra useage by taking readings daily.

Use an energy monitor, which is not 100% accurate, but can give an indication of how much individual appliances are using by switching them off one by one. I found that my 'background' useage was around 170 watts and the only things left on were the fridge/freezers.

On some immersions there are two switches, one upstairs and one down, they could have been wired incorrectly so that it then only needs one on to switch on the immersion !!

On average I use around 7 kwh per day which means my costs are under £1/day.With a monitor it shows you your daily/weekly and monthly useage in kwh. It also shows actual current useage/actual current cost/time/temp and graphs of the last day/evening and night.

For probably less than the cost of paying an engineer for one hour you could get a decent monitor.