NPower sudden increase in usage!

ShawJohn

Hi All,

We started at £28/month on STD tariff in 2008, this turned out to not be enough so was raised through various figures from £55 to £92, however more recently they have increased our DD to £148/month.

Our average usage calculated by myself over a three year period is approximately 15.25kWh per day. This would equate to a regular payment of about £80.00/month.
However Npower have been bouncing the payment figure up and down so that in 12months we have gone from being in the region of £400-CR to being ~£650-DR this has now had the knock on effect that we are unable to change to a lower priced tariff/supplier as we have to pay arrears off first so they say.

My biggest concern is that my 8thFeb2011 bill claims my predicted usage for the next 12 months is ~4700kWh. The next 'Quarterly' bill came on 10thAug2011 claiming that we had used 4648kWh in that six month period alone.

Our house is the same electrically. No new appliances, Gas CH & Hotwater, so only seasonal variation should be caused by lighting.

So how can they claim a sudden increase in usage?

I would like to enclose a copy of a spreadsheet I have put together to show the issues... but can't make it upload. Its at www . phoenite . com / npower . png (Sorry mods for posting a link)

I have no problem paying for what we have used...

Please can anyone advise what I should do next as I cannot afford to keep paying them £148/month.


John

chris1973

What type of lighting do you have?. Any nasty halogen uplighters or those multiple recessed halogen downlighters, still fitted with halogen lamps?

Although highly unlikely to be solely responsible for the recent surge, they can probably explain away the difference between winter and summer.

nPower

Hi ShawJohn,

That does sound like quite a jump in your monthly payments. Would you like me to take a look and see why this is?

If you could send me your account details to forumresponse@npower.com and I'll get onto it straight away.

Best wishes

Sally

macman

But your revised DD of £148 is not all down to increased usage, part of that is to clear the debt-how much is actually for ongoing consumption?
Backup immersion heater switched on 24/7 maybe?

ShawJohn

Another night bashing around in excel has revealled the issue.


We have in fact got 10x 50w GU10 halogens in the kitchen which I hadn't realised were so hungry for electric and since my wife has been on her maternity leave (August 2011) she tells me she's been leaving them on most of the day :mad: I now have some 5w SMD LED's on order, the ones with a 7 year guarantee. :cool:

She also insists on using the tumble dryer all through summer and not the washing line she's had for years :mad: WOMEN...
At leat the 10kWh electric shower has now gone for combi fed mixer.


They weren't the cause of the mega high usage, just a large contributor.


What seems to have happened is that for about 9 months NPower have repeatedly changed our DD amount about and at no time was it enough to cover the historic usage we have had for the last 5 years, this taken with a recent meter reading which was miles higher than all the estimates has meant us playing catchup. And a price increase has been applied

Typical that we are catching up at the new increases prices though!!!

Now my latest graph plots actual known meter readings against date and shows actual usage being pretty constant for electricity since we moving in in Dec 2006. And I can't believe how constant it is!

(The gas one I did also shows nice summer/winter trends too, and a slight reduction in overall use as a result of me double Kingspanning the loft and fitting some new double glazed units & front door - which is nice)

So when you consider that our overall anuall usage is pretty constant why do NPOWER not have the ability to find a regular payment which leaves us paying about £5/month more (to cover price rises) based on these historic figures of 15.25kWh/day average (taken over 5 years).

That way we wouldn't get these nasty suprises a week before our second baby is due (for a home birth).


Would the NPower rep (Sally) posting above have the ability to change our tariff as I can't get the website to allow it and the call center sucks

John


PS. I'm definately turning into my dad!!! Been going round switching stuff off

chris1973

We have in fact got 10x 50w GU10 halogens in the kitchen which I hadn't realised were so hungry for electric

Yes, amazing isn't it. A friend of mine replaced his ancient 2x 60W Pendants with two rows of 3 of those 50W little evils, as the EU were banning 60W lightbulbs in the interest of saving Mother Earth. Since these were still readily available he thought he was doing the right thing by saving energy and the bonus being the thought that he was also saving money.

Effectively, by banning 60W lightbulbs in the interest of saving the planet by reducing energy consuption, ironically they've done the complete opposite and made one householder actually increase his consumption from 120W to 300W. I wonder how many more are also doing the same.

ShawJohn

We went from an ancient brass chandlier with 5x 9w cfl's to 10x 50w GU10's - admittedly light is much better, but never thought they'd make a visible difference to the bill ?!?!
We are part way through renovating a 1924 end terrace and up till new wiring about 18 months since every light in the house was a CFL. We did get sick of the warm up times and poor light levels though. House is much nicer bright, not at the expense of my folding though


Other people be warned. Halogens are a thing of evil, but not all LED's are worth bothering with so an electrician friend tells me, some don't last long, or have odd led's go down, some give off horribe coloured light.

He promises me that these new ones he's getting me are the bees...




Oh, and to everyone who is listening... Check your bills & statements regularly, and keep your own eye on the meters Its strangley satisfying

And thanks to all who posted replies :beer:



Will post back with results of NPower-Sally's enquiries.......

chris1973

We went from an ancient brass chandlier with 5x 9w cfl's to 10x 50w GU10's - admittedly light is much better, but never thought they'd make a visible difference to the bill ?!?!

A lot of difference actually and probably enough to continue with the reduced light output from the CFL's

5x 9W CFL's will use around 45W in total, essentially less than one conventional old fashioned 60w bulb!. You could run the 5x CFL's for approx 20 hours for 1 unit of Electricity.

In comparison, your 10x 50W GU10's were totalling 500W in Electricity usage - the same as an outdoor 500W security floodlight. This would consume 1 unit of Electricity every 2 hours!

So the CFL's ran for 20 hours, for the same cost as running the Halogen GU10's for 2 hours.

You could have uprated the CFL's to 12W or 14W or even 16W, and still have saved a lot of money over running the 10x GU10 50W's and have got increased light output

We did get sick of the warm up times and poor light levels though

Very true, I moved away from cheap supermarket CFL's and unbranded Ebay bargains and now only use 'Megaman' and 'Philips Ecotone' CFL's. I light my entire front room with a 12W and 16W Ecotone using table lamps either end of the room. IMO the light output is just as good and warm as the 60W and 40W conventional bulbs they were bought to replace, and I save about 72W into the bargain.

Warm up time with CFL's is always a problem, but again like LED versions is helped by buying a well known brand, rather than cheap unbranded lamps. That aside, you can afford to leave your kitchen lights on all evening, at still less cost than switching the halogens on/off as you went in / out

Hopefully, the LED's will be ok. I hear a lot of mixed reports on the quality of these, both here and on the IET Electricians discussion forum.

chanz4

thats random, what they done this time or are you a bored newbie?

hopeless_case_2

ShawJohn wrote: »

Another night bashing around in excel has revealled the issue.


We have in fact got 10x 50w GU10 halogens in the kitchen which I hadn't realised were so hungry for electric and since my wife has been on her maternity leave (August 2011) she tells me she's been leaving them on most of the day :mad: I now have some 5w SMD LED's on order, the ones with a 7 year guarantee. :cool:

She also insists on using the tumble dryer all through summer and not the washing line she's had for years :mad: WOMEN...
At leat the 10kWh electric shower has now gone for combi fed mixer.


They weren't the cause of the mega high usage, just a large contributor.


What seems to have happened is that for about 9 months NPower have repeatedly changed our DD amount about and at no time was it enough to cover the historic usage we have had for the last 5 years, this taken with a recent meter reading which was miles higher than all the estimates has meant us playing catchup. And a price increase has been applied

Typical that we are catching up at the new increases prices though!!!

Now my latest graph plots actual known meter readings against date and shows actual usage being pretty constant for electricity since we moving in in Dec 2006. And I can't believe how constant it is!

(The gas one I did also shows nice summer/winter trends too, and a slight reduction in overall use as a result of me double Kingspanning the loft and fitting some new double glazed units & front door - which is nice)

So when you consider that our overall anuall usage is pretty constant why do NPOWER not have the ability to find a regular payment which leaves us paying about £5/month more (to cover price rises) based on these historic figures of 15.25kWh/day average (taken over 5 years).

That way we wouldn't get these nasty suprises a week before our second baby is due (for a home birth).


Would the NPower rep (Sally) posting above have the ability to change our tariff as I can't get the website to allow it and the call center sucks

John


PS. I'm definately turning into my dad!!! Been going round switching stuff off

This is not totally related but where do you get those halogen cheaper electric bulbs from as i did not know they cost so much to run i have 9 in my bedroom!!

hopeless_case_2

omg my halogen lights are on a remote controll dimmer thing and they are switched on/off alot. need to change something