Don't understand my electricity bill!

MusicalLawyer

I tell you one thing is for sure, this electricity business is making me want to go out more, may be I'll go for some long walks.. just so I can't use any electric! Haha. That'll help with my weight loss for sure!

ic

£4 a day for your heating, lighting and all appliances sounds reasonable in winter. Get on a direct debit payment plan and you'll be able to spread the cost of the winter months throughout the year - after all in summer your usage will be dramatically lower. I pay £2.68 a day, though that is averaged out over the whole year.

MusicalLawyer

I have found my bill online and it says that they estimated me to use 15kWh per day, with the first 2kwh being charged at 27.462p per KWh, and the next 13 to be charged at 15.152p per Kwh. My night rate is 5.762p per kWh.

I don't really know what this means, but someone asked previously what my pence per kWh was.

My DD was £40 per month, but we're in debit by about £120. I've upped it to £60 per month, and I am hoping I will be able to reduce the DD amounts when the debit has cleared and we hit summer.

MusicalLawyer

If my maths is correct my average per day means i use £2.32 of electricity during the day, per day, and 58p of electricity per night.

This doesn't seem all that bad to me - but over a period of a month it looks very high!

I'm going to invest in one of those meters so i can see how much things are using.
I tend to have about 3 - 4 cups of tea per day, so maybe I should cut down!

HappyMJ

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

I have found my bill online and it says that they estimated me to use 15kWh per day, with the first 2kwh being charged at 27.462p per KWh, and the next 13 to be charged at 15.152p per Kwh. My night rate is 5.762p per kWh.

I don't really know what this means, but someone asked previously what my pence per kWh was.

My DD was £40 per month, but we're in debit by about £120. I've upped it to £60 per month, and I am hoping I will be able to reduce the DD amounts when the debit has cleared and we hit summer.

British Gas standard plan then. You need to add VAT to those prices.

It's one of the most expensive tariffs available for an electric only property.

If you switched to.....let's say...ScottishPower then you could pay
[STRIKE]27.462[/STRIKE] 24.538 (900 per year instead of 720)
[STRIKE]15.152[/STRIKE] 11.159
[STRIKE]5.762[/STRIKE] 5.819

Effective standing charge with BG is 24.3p and 33p with SP meaning you need to use at least 1,695kWh per year on the day rate to save with SP.

The calculator tells me you could save at least £45 per year by switching. There are cheaper options if you wish to fix your prices and wish to manage your account online (£15 less). You could save a further 6% (£40) by fixing with ScottishPower on the Discounted Energy October 2013 tariff which is the cheapest tariff available.

MusicalLawyer

I currently manage my account online with BG and pay a fixed price of £40pm, just upped to £60 a few days ago.

What is the cheapest option available to me then? And how do I even switch?

I'm so new at all this, so I'm rubbish at it all!

MusicalLawyer

I did a comparison on USwitch, and it told be I could save something like £200 per year so i just switched!

HappyMJ

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

I did a comparison on USwitch, and it told be I could save something like £200 per year so i just switched!

You won't save that much on usage of an average of 15kWh per day. Or £60 a month. What figures did you use when you compared?

The best saving I found was £105 on the October 2013 tariff.

vuvuzela

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

I'm so new at all this, so I'm rubbish at it all!

I have to say, you're definitely not rubbish - you're monitoring your consumption, asking for advice and taking action when needed. There are loads of people who would have put their heads in the sand and only come on here when they got a £1.5K catch-up bill for underpaying...

MusicalLawyer

In U Switch it asked me for my monthly bill amount, then what % is night time usage.

As long as i make a saving I don't mind. I know i will make a little saving on next months bill because of the little things i have done to save energy - unplugging things and turning things off. I know it won't make a HUGE difference... but a saving is a saving none the less.