I just can't get my head around my gas/electricity bill

**Juice**

macman wrote: »

Since that reading is only 2 days ago, I suggest you go and read the meter now. I think you'll find it's 10907, plus your 2 days consumption since.
Since you are on a single rate tariff, it makes no difference what time of day you do your washing.
If you have a gas supply, you'll find it much more economical to use gas for heating-it's about a third of the cost per kWh.

Just read the meter and it's at 11946 for electricity and 8188 so don't think it's been misread I take readings every month (the meter reading I've put down are only the billing ones) and it's fairly sequential each month - I haven't taken that much notice up until now because I've not really understood what the kwh equates to in financial terms.

**Juice**

dealsearcher wrote: »

An obvious point to me is that the readings started in mid June and we are now at the end of January. Electric is used for heating. Going from summer to winter your energy use will increase markedly. That is normal.

Is it normal for it to increase so much though?

**Juice**

macman wrote: »

Since that reading is only 2 days ago, I suggest you go and read the meter now. I think you'll find it's 10907, plus your 2 days consumption since.
Since you are on a single rate tariff, it makes no difference what time of day you do your washing.
If you have a gas supply, you'll find it much more economical to use gas for heating-it's about a third of the cost per kWh.

I didn't realise this, I always thought that electricity would be cheaper, especially as it's a fairly small electric fire as opposed to heating the whole house. :mad:

**Juice**

Mattty wrote: »

How long per day would you say the electric fire is on and what is its power rating?

It is likely to be rated at around 2kW. If you have it on for 5 hours a day then that is an extra 70kWh a week. If that was used for 10 weeks that would be an extra 700kWh on top of your usual consumption.

For September/October your consumption was around 300kWh per month. So over the Nov-Jan period you would expect it to be around 900kWh. If you add in the extra 700 kWh for the electric fire that takes it to 1,600kWh.

If your boyfriend was home for 2 weeks could the fire have been on longer. Is it on longer at the weekends?

You might be right here Matty This really messes up our monthly budget but I suppose we've learned the hard way here....

**Juice**

Thanks Amanda, I'll start monitoring it every day - this will highly amuse my boyfriend who already things I'm obsessed with checking the meters (just because I do it once a month to give readings). Any ideas as to why I haven't been billed for 3 months randomly? If it had been at the normal 2 months it would have been easier to get a hold on this a bit earlier? Will the change in tarrif have affected this?

E.ON_Company_Rep_Amanda wrote: »

Great advice here **Juice**, that latest meter reading could possibly be wrong- is easily done for the reason jd87 gave.

First job is double-check your meter and then hopefully it's just a quick call to correct your reading and bill.

We can’t be certain of this though. The new reading will stand out as your earlier bills have for the most part been for summer use. I suggest you pop an extra column on your table for your average use per day.

If the reading’s right at 11907 then you've used an average of 17.42 kWh per day since October, so today's reading would be around 11941. If it's meant to be 10907 that's 6.31 kWh per day, which takes you to around 10920.

Now, in the 60 days your last bill covered for September and October you used 9.92kWh per day. June to September was 7.84kWh per day so it’s unlikely that your use has come down over the winter, even with the mild weather so far.

If the reading does seems right, then worth reading your meter every day for the next week and then give us call to look into your use.

Hope this helps and you get things sorted one way or another, shout up if need any more info

Amanda

**Juice**

Does anyone recommend those electricity monitors like the OWL ones, are they reliable?

dealsearcher

**Juice** wrote: »

Is it normal for it to increase so much though?

For heating yes it is normal.

I am a sad case but I keep a record of my meter readings on a regular basis and have excel spreadsheets for both gas and electric. Excel is good for quickly calculating your bills as long as you have the correct formulae in the cells and enter the correct meter readings. It is also great for drawing pretty graphs.

The gas consumption rises rapidly in the winter months as it is used in the central heating. The electric consumption rises slightly but is only a little higher in the winter, probably with the longer use of lights in the darker winter days.

You can, of course, always check your own meter readings and monitor them over a period of months yourself. You shouldn't rely on the utility company to get your bills right. They should get them right but you shouldn't take their word for it.

macman

**Juice** wrote: »

I didn't realise this, I always thought that electricity would be cheaper, especially as it's a fairly small electric fire as opposed to heating the whole house. :mad:

I said that it's cheaper per kwH.
Obviously a higher rated appliance will use more kWh's. You have to compare like with like.
For the same rating, gas is much cheaper.

**Juice**

Ah right! Currently sat in the house with nothing but laptop and light on, wearing a big jumper :-)

dealsearcher

... and now you are going to have to turn the laptop off. :grouphug: