Don't understand my electricity bill!

macman

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

I have recently moved out of the parental home and me and my boyfriend have got a place together.

We're super concerned about our electricity though.

We had a bill of £158 for just 39 days electricity.
We don't have gas to the property.

I'm not the only one that thinks that is a bizarre amount of electric right?

We realised we'd left the water on the whole time, and now we just turn the water on an hour or so before we need it, to warm it up. We also completely shut off one of the storage heaters, and turn off all the switches when we aren't using them. We also switched to energy efficient light bulbs. When we first moved in the storage heater didn't work, so we were using an electric heater fan for a week or so. We don't use that anymore.

I am due to give British Gas another reading in a couple of days so I am seriously hoping that our next bill is significantly lower!

Better advice can be given if you quote your actual kWh consumption on each E7 tier. Quoting £'s is fairly meaningless. but given the cold weather in early December, your bill is not unduly high. Electric heating of any kind is very expensive compared to all the alternatives.

LittleMissAspie

grahamc2003 wrote: »

If your dryer is inside your house, make sure it's a condensing dryer,

Look on the bright side - you don't need a gas service every year, which is costly and can be inconvenient.

They are likely renting.

OP, unfortunately electric heating is much more expensive than gas heating and in my opinion your original estimates of £30 each were on the low side too.

Try to find out what your E7 times are (by checking the meter) and use your washing machine overnight, and if you are early risers you might be able to have your morning showers on cheap rate too. It hasn't been too cold this winter yet - you may be able to get away with no heating in the morning and just put your fan heater on for 10 minutes when you get out of the shower to warm you up, that's what I do.

MusicalLawyer

Our condenser dryer takes SO long to dry clothes when we've washed them, so that is why we have them on the clothes horse in the bedroom. We don't use any heating in any other rooms in the house. We have an electric fire place in the lounge, which we have unplugged so we can't use it.

From our recent meter reading i can see that in 28 days we have used 385kWh during the day rate, and 288kWh during the night rate. Which per day works out roughly to 13.75kWh during the day, 10.2kWh during the night.

We're going to try some of the suggestions put forward of doing our washing at night, as we tend to go to bed very late anyway.
Out storage heater in the bedroom is on Full Input, and No Output, so the heat comes out gradually during the day to warm the clothes. We're going to turn the Input down to see if that helps.

As of tonight we're going to check the meter readings every day.

HappyMJ

What do you use to keep your lounge warm? What's the temperature of the room? I would not use the storage heater in the bedroom at all. If you can I would swap the roles of the two rooms around so you have the electric fire in the bedroom and the storage heater in the lounge. The 1 bed flats near me can be set out like this either room can be a bedroom or a lounge.

You must be using some form of heating or have a lot of wasteful electrical equipment during the day as your usage is very high at around 800W per hour and at night you are using 1.44kW per hour.

Do you have somewhere you can hang the washing outside? It will cool your house if you dry them inside apart from adding a lot of humidity to the house possibly causing condensationa nd damp issues.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

it seems to be whatever is being used during the day that is bumping it up, 13.75 day units will be about £2, the 10.2 night units about 60p.

What price are your units?

Is there maybe something on you are not aware of?

Torry_Quine

You shouldn't need the storage heater on full, it isn't that cold. Mine is rarely full and that's in the living room so I can't imagine how warm it must be getting in the bedroom.

grahamc2003

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

Our condenser dryer takes SO long to dry clothes when we've washed them, so that is why we have them on the clothes horse in the bedroom. .

Our newish condenser dryer takes about an hour and a quarter to dry a full washing machine load with a 800rpm spin. It uses 2.1kWh to dry the clothes to the driest setting (which is just dry enough imo). If yours takes a lot longer, then it may be bust - possibly the heating element may have blown, or simply the the filters haven't been cleaned every dry (this is critical!), or the condenser hasn't been washed every few dries. Working correctly, and set to come on about 06:00, it should cost you about 13p for a dry, and warm the room it's in ready for you to get up.

As numerous others have said, drying on a horse is a really bad counter-productive idea on several levels.

Your night unit usage means your bedroom storage heater is a small one (probably 1.2kW), so not much of a problem there (although I wouldn't even have than on). Your day usage is your problem - sure someone doesn't have an electric heater on somewhere, or the immersion is on all the time with a leaky hot water tap somewhere, or the oven/hob is on a lot?

MusicalLawyer

There is usually only me at home during the day, in our one bed flat.
I have realised today that I also have my laptop charging during the day, and my phone is on charge all night + some of the day time rate. I am going to buy some timers so I can charge Laptop and phone during the night time over the cheaper period. So that should cut down the day time a little bit.

I used to use the fireplace in the lounge to keep warm, but over the past week I've not used it, and am not going to use it at all. The only heating which is on, is on of a night time, which is my storage heater, which I have turned down to half way, to see how we go with it tonight.

This is what i've done to try and bring the bill down;
- Turn the storage heater on to half Input. (From full input)
- Unplug ALL game consoles, and ONLY plug in the one we're using (they were all plugged in to an extension lead)
- Use the Washing machine at the night rate
- Charge laptop during the night - will buy a timer
- Continue to charge mobile phones during the night, but put on to a timer so it isn't on all night long

... I now need to find out when my night rate starts, as I couldn't see anything on my meter about that.

HappyMJ

You will not recover the cost of the timer any time soon if the only item you are charging is a laptop and a phone or two. They are far too low powered to see any savings. It would cost £1.50 to buy a timer and would save about 20p per year.

misswansea

I love my electricity monitor
My electricity supplier sent it to me on a free offer, but if you can also buy them or perhaps see if you can borrow one from a friend for a few weeks.

It shows you how much electricity you are using at the moment- so you can turn things on and off and see how much difference it makes, also i always give mine a quick check before going out or to bed to make sure i haven't left anything expensive on. The one i have also keeps a record of how much i've used in the past day/week/month so i can see how i'm doing easily.