Don't understand my electricity bill!

macman

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

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.

Don't use your monthly DD figures, they produce inaccurate results. Use your annual kWh figures for each rate (day/night)-which you can get from your bills or your supplier.

HappyMJ

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

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.

What percentage did you use? It's very very hard to exceed the average of 55% as six months of the year it's summer and only 33% or less is used during the night during that time.

MusicalLawyer

I looked at my bill from British Gas, and i was using 43% of my electricity at night this month.

macman

OK. However, to do a proper search on a comp site, you need to know your annual percentage split. As pointed out above, the night usage on E7 will soar in winter once the storage heating goes on. When the heating is off, the only cheap rate consumption will be for your overnight hot water heating. At 43% now at the coldest time of year, I rather doubt if your annual percentage makes E7 viable.

HappyMJ

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

I looked at my bill from British Gas, and i was using 43% of my electricity at night this month.

Maximum savings increase to £120 per year if you picked SP's October 2013 tariff bringing your costs down from £60 per month to £50 per month.

ahmjt

We live in a one-bedroom flat. During 2009-2010 winter my family took an extended holiday overseas and I was by myself for three months (oh how I miss those three months). I had two Dimplex storage heaters running on low temp for the whole time, had Eco 7 tarrif but somehow ended up paying a very high bill (close to 360 for that quarter). Percentage of eco7 night-time usage was lower than 30. So after that I fully ditched the storage heater as don't understand how it works, also changed tarrif from eco7 to standard. Bill-wise 2010-2011 winter was under control, no unexpected high bill, 201102012 is also going good so far (I now give monthly reading online and pay it after that).

So my suggestion is to turn the main switch of for those storage heaters.

HappyMJ

ahmjt wrote: »

We live in a one-bedroom flat. During 2009-2010 winter my family took an extended holiday overseas and I was by myself for three months (oh how I miss those three months). I had two Dimplex storage heaters running on low temp for the whole time, had Eco 7 tarrif but somehow ended up paying a very high bill (close to 360 for that quarter). Percentage of eco7 night-time usage was lower than 30. So after that I fully ditched the storage heater as don't understand how it works, also changed tarrif from eco7 to standard. Bill-wise 2010-2011 winter was under control, no unexpected high bill, 201102012 is also going good so far (I now give monthly reading online and pay it after that).

So my suggestion is to turn the main switch of for those storage heaters.

You paid £4 a day and you think that was a very high bill. January 2010 was very cold. Each of the storage heaters generally cost £1 per night to load up with heat. That would have been 40kWh. At 30% usage at night what else did you use during the day. That would be an extra 80kWh during the day which you could not get for the other £2. Was the 30% at night Kwh usage or cost basis. If it's cost basis then 30% is £1.20 which is possible with two small and inadequate storage heaters set on low input and low output (24kWh each night total) and you spent £2.80 during the day equalling about 15kWh during the day. That's actually 66% at night. You must have had a peak rate heater on or just used a lot of electricity.

The other 30% ratio is 23kWh during the 17 hours of the day which definitely indicates a peak rate heater is being used costing £3.45 and 10kWh at night costing 55p which could easily be used just by the water heater and normal things like the fridge and nothing at all by the storage heating.

It wasn't the storage heaters that were at fault.

marc444_2

cant believe the differences in all your energy prices in this conversation, my house is cold (and damp) all the time, we are all electric, with electric storage heating, which i just cannot afford to run... we have experimeted with the costs of running this heating over the last year after a fierce battle with my provider over huge bills...:mad:

heres a breakdown of my usage overnight for example:

having my appliances and tv's etc on standby and no heating on through the night from 12am - 8am costs us approx £2.....seems resaonable....:)

however, having my appliances and tv's etc on standby through the same duration AND having all my 5 storage heaters on (set to: input 3 output 1) costs us around £16.....not so reasonable....:eek:

before we started these experiments, we had a quarterly bill meter in our home and were not monitoring our usage on a reg basis, like i said earlier we fiercly challenged the huge bills we were recieving and my provider was of no help whatsoever, i reported to the ombudsman, citizens advice bureau, my local MP, a lawyer and the Judge at the Sunday Mail, none of them were any help, seemed they didnt want to get involved in a fight with a energy giant...

after a couple of years of fighting and eventually full refusal to pay for any of my energy until the situation was resolved i got a call from my provider one day stating that they could wipe £3000 off the bill :T leaving my just under £2000 to pay off and pay for current usage, I reluctantly accepted their offer, in my mind the poor administration of my account and attitude i was recieving from frustrated customer service agents as well as the prices i was paying, i should have had the whole lot wiped, i made this clear to them over the phone but they stated that they could only stick to their original offer...

so this left a big bill to pay off and me having to start paying for my current supply after months of refusing to pay in protest, my provider said that the best way to do this was to have a prepay key meter installed that would be set to pay back the arrears at £10 per week, i also asked for an energy monitor and they sent me one, i followed the installation instructions to the letter and the monitor is great for analysing real-time usage of my lights, sockets and appliances......:T

however, the monitor does not seem to register the real-time usage of my storage heating, we have tried turning all our heaters on in peak time for up to half an hour and watch the monitor but it just does not show up, the usage shows up ok on my prepay key meter (like a rocket launch countdown)

a while ago i had some electricians out doing some upgrade work in my home and i gave them a summary of my events with the storage heating and asked them if it would be possible that the wiring or electrics would be to fault as my provider suggested that might be the case, the electricians said it would be impossible and that my energy provider is just trying to pass the buck...

so...im gettin nowhere really, have a young family at home (2 bedroom flat) and when i do stick my heating on to blast the flat with some heat all my rooms are still cold, except the kids bedroom for some reason....

has anyone else experimented with their storage heating in this way?
would love to compare some of your results....

thanks for taking the time to read this, its doing my head in and it feels good to vent off, keeps my fingers warm for a while too

MusicalLawyer

macman wrote: »

OK. However, to do a proper search on a comp site, you need to know your annual percentage split.

I don't know my annual split... I've only lived here for 2 months, and the first bill we got was significantly higher than our second bill. In which we found the cause - simply turning off the boiler.

The comparison site asked for monthly amounts.

Should I have just multiplied my current bill by 12 to get the annual usage? Even though I've made more changed in the last few days?

Also HappyMJ - I picked the SP Discount 2013 online tariff...

macman

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

I don't know my annual split... I've only lived here for 2 months, and the first bill we got was significantly higher than our second bill. In which we found the cause - simply turning off the boiler.

The comparison site asked for monthly amounts.

Should I have just multiplied my current bill by 12 to get the annual usage? Even though I've made more changed in the last few days?

Also HappyMJ - I picked the SP Discount 2013 online tariff...

No, because as already explained, your winter consumption will be vastly higher, albeit more of it on cheap night rate.