£1156 bill from March to September?

chris1973

what should those direct debits have been in the first place? surely anything substantially higher than that is just ridiculous considering our situation

This is easy enough to work out for yourself. Just take a meter reading everyday and work out what you are actually using on a daily basis.

Do this for a couple of weeks.

Of course with Electric Heating you wont yet be up to your peak demand as its not Winter yet, but at least it will give you an idea of your average daily usage outside of the winter months.

grahamc2003

Repoocekim wrote: »

Also if we have been paying £85 a month for nearly 18 months and have still managed to get into arrears by being undercharged, what should those direct debits have been in the first place? .

You say your catchup bill is £1156, built up over 18 months, so your average deficit is £64pm, so your dd for your usage should have been around £85 plus £64, making about £150pm.

As has been pointed out, electricity has risen a lot in the last 18 months, and quite a bit in the last few weeks. So looking forward, your usage looks like it's going to be something like £200.

The dd in the future will be set to cover your expected usage, plus an amount to clear the debt. If they'd want their money back over a year, then it looks like your dd will rise to something in the region of £300pm.

It does seem to me that your usage is high, but certainly not impossible if you are as careful with your electric heating and tariff as you are with your PCs.

chris1973

Also speaking to friends who live in the local area who tell me they are paying between £25-40 for electric and almost the same for gas, we thought £85 pounds a month seemed about right.

Are your friends also using Electric Boilers and Heating though?. Seriously these are the type of appliances which will run up a huge bill in a relatively short space of time, unless you are thrifty with their usage.

Taking the actual meter reads yourself, as I suggested on the other post, will of course show your average daily usage, and I expect you'll be pretty surprised at how high it is. Although expect it to increase significantly when you start using the heating every day or we have a cold snap.

(after all many people leave computers switched on, despite what you may think about fire hazards, devices such as these are designed to be left on for long periods without bursting into flames)

Sorry I disagree. But don't take my word for it, ask any Fire Brigade about how many housefires are caused by unattended electrical appliances being left switched on, you'll find a large percentage of them are the ignition source including both Laptops and PC's. I work in Electronics, and you'd be shocked at just how many everyday things like phone chargers dont have any actual internal fusing or overload / thermal protection devices inside them, meaning the only protection for them is the 30A fuse / 32A RCD protecting the Ring Main circuit, and you can overheat a plastic case and start a fire well before that blows / trips, if a component should fail inside them or it simply overheats.

Unless you are running a dedicated Server, which is designed and built to run continuously then most average domestic or light commercial PC's are not made to run 24/7, PC's are made cheaply in a competitive market, and corners are cut on costs, especially power supply units. Take a look on Ebay, you can see Power Supply units for under £10, do you really think to make and sell (for a profit) a product for £10, that these are over-specced continuously rated units, crammed full of protection devices?.

Cheap plastic fans in Power Supply units can fail at any time, leading to the unit overheating, which was actually the cause in mine which I refer to before, the fan failed, and eventually the overheating components inside ignited the layer of dust covering them (which had built up over time, and had been drawn in by the fan), fortunately I was using the PC at the time and was able to extinguish it quickly.

Several actual house Fires have also been attributed to PC's and Laptops and reported in the national press, to quote the Fire Brigade directly from one such report

"Unfortunately, laptops can overheat, especially if left plugged in for any length of time. It is best to charge your laptop whilst using it, and then switch it off when you've finished."

Doshwaster

chris1973 wrote: »

This is easy enough to work out for yourself. Just take a meter reading everyday and work out what you are actually using on a daily basis.

I don't go as far as taking a meter reading every day but I do so about once a week. Keeping a spreadsheet of meter readings helps keep track of energy usage.

kingkano

I sympathise with you, we had a similar problem in our first flat with Powergen (now EON). I gave them reading after reading but they never generated a bill (things werent so online then) for 18 months!! I complained many times, and finally one day they generated a bill after a meter reader visited and we were way behind.

You have got lots of good advice here already. Might be time to review your usage patterns and cut back where possible.

I would suggest looking into changing your plan with EDF at a minimum. Your catchup bill seems to have been bill at around 17p/kwh which seems pretty high to me? Atleast a better rate will mean going forward it gets a bit cheaper for you.

You should also call them quickly and discuss how you can clear the arrears if it will be difficult to pay.

BTW as an aside, the low numbers sound like your meter started near 0 when you moved in? So you know you've used circa 13000kw/h in 18mths making it easy to calculate what your DD should have been and what to expect for the future (minus any change in habits).

pimento

We have 200+ PCs and six servers in our building at work and they all stay on 24/7. In the 15 years I've worked there, we have never had a PC catch fire.

Our electricty bill would probably make your eyes water though.

chris1973

We have 200+ PCs and six servers in our building at work and they all stay on 24/7

I'm sure they also have extremely good fire detection systems and nobody actually asleep in the building whilst they were unattended, lessening the risk to life *if* the worst should happen.

I once visited a Datacentre, again with racks of servers all running 24/7, the investment in HVAC systems to keep the equipment cool was huge, as were the highly evident fire suppression and detection systems.

There are many smokers who will never start a housefire through a discarded cigarette, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, or that the risks are increased.

Personally, if the general advice from the Fire Brigade is that unattended electrical appliances pose a risk of fire and that they should be switched off when not in use, then I will reduce the number of unattended electrical appliances needlessly running as far as practically possible, in order to reduce that risk, and will probably also be just a little bit better off financially as a result in the energy saved. But thats just me

DVardysShadow

grahamc2003 wrote: »

As has been pointed out, electricity has risen a lot in the last 18 months, and quite a bit in the last few weeks. So looking forward, your usage looks like it's going to be something like £200.

Important point here. The catchup bill is probably at the latest tariff. OP should check firstly that the very first bill started with an actual reading [if not, then another lesson to learn] and secondly, should ask for all bills to be reapportioned over the period in the property.

oldskoo1

How do you know you aren't paying for the part of the tenants bill before you moved in.

Check you gave a meter reading when you moved in and find out when the last actual reading was entered.

You could work out your consumption over a week and scale it up and figure out roughly how much you should have used in the 18 months and see how far off you are.

To do this you need to run as normal and take meter readings at the start and end of the week. Factor in heating, get the unit cost and the energy consumed by the rads + the typical time when the heating is on (remembering the rads turn on and off). Work it all out and see.

As for PC's catching fire? Whilst it is pretty wasteful leaving them on, PC's will shut down if they reach a certain temperature. I had a PSU fry once. The socket turned black but the power was immediately cut. That was in a server rack at work. Also on 24/7.


You should expect a bill of around £1,300 - £1,500 p/a - all electric. There are 4 of us in a 4 bed detached, new-ish build. All double glazed windows/doors, heating on 24/7 in winter but lowish, strict about turning off power when un-used and our projected bill for the following year on our current tariff will be around £860. Currently paying £66 p/m for both which i'm sure will increase slightly. But if you try you can reduce your bills.

And just to clarify, whilst having everything off is perhaps a safety advantage, although i don't turn them off for this reason, the only things left on in our house are the phone and the fridge. Even the broadband router goes off. Chargers, tvs, freeview box (unless its recording), dvd players, everything goes off.

spiro

Agree with all of the above plus you need to add in the coldest winter in 100 years plus having a very young baby which probably resulted in the heating being on more and £1800 for a year is not beyond the realms of possiblity.