Energy Misselling successes

Gerry1

You should always ignore all projections and estimates, but those figure are absolutely crazy.  The gas is far too low and the electricity is absurdly high.  Stop using the shower if it's an instantaneous one (it's OK if the water is heated by gas and there's a pump to increase the flow rate).

Check the actual meter readings on the bills and find out your actual usage in kWh.  Here are the typical values; you are Electricity Profile 1.  Make sure you're not on Economy 7 or other multi-rate electricity tariff and not using any electrical heating (apart from kettles and electric blankets).  Are you absolutely sure the immersion heaters are both switched off?  Any electric radiators or plug in heaters?  Something is very, very wrong.

Sorry to rub it in, but it really is a sobering lesson about what can go wrong if you're not in the driving seat !

Have a look at the electricity meter.  It's likely to have a red LED marked '1000 Imp/ kWh' or similar.  1000 flashes (impulses) or whatever it says and you've clocked up 1kWh costing 14p or whatever.  By switching various circuits / appliances off and counting the number of flashes per minute you can soon get a good idea about what's using the most energy.

MarinaPilar

No immersion heaters or plug in heaters, nothing like that. No fancy gadgets apart from a couple of lap tops.

it did seem crazy to me, thank you for confirming that!

MarinaPilar

I’ll compare figures using that link, thank you 

Gerry1

Do a meter sanity test.  Switch absolutely everything off at the consumer unit (right now would be a good time as it's cold and dark), watch that red LED for five minutes and make sure that it doesn't even flash once.  Then plug in a known high power load such as a 3kW kettle and make sure it flashes about 50 times per minute (3000 flashes in an hour at 1000 imp / kWh = 3kW).

Also make sure that the serial numbers of the meters are the same as those shown on the bills.

MarinaPilar

Will do! This is such good advice, thank you. Will check and report back in the morning!

Gerry1

Apologies if it's a daft question, but are you sure you haven't transposed the gas and electricity costs?  They'd be absolutely fine if they were other way around.

MarinaPilar

You are very much justified in asking the question! But no, amazingly it’s true.

Gerry1

Those costs can be highly misleading because they probably assume you will roll over to their standard (= expensive) tariff.  Ofgem's to blame for that nonsense.

Stick with the facts.  Just see how many genuine kWh you've used in a year, derived from actual meter readings.  Always think and compare in kWh, then number crunch to work out the costs.  Never compare DD amounts, anyone can set a DD at £5 per month and then hike it up when the readings are taken.

MarinaPilar

Ok meter use estimated from dividing the total I have by 7 and multiplying by 12:

Electricity: 10546 kW
Gas: 3204 kW

MarinaPilar

Meter sanity test complete and correct!