Southern Electricity and bill of £474 from Oct to Jan [3 months]

johnlewis179

I just received my electricity bill for the period from 11th Oct to 24th Oct and it has come up to £474. This winter we havent used the heater much instead we have bought a heating fan that we run when the house gets cold and have kept the boiler on timer so that it runs only 2 twice a day. Is it possible that the meter is over charging us for some reason? Is there any way to find out?

We always get high electricity bill but have been thinking its due to use but this time we havent used much electricity. If I speak to the company they say there is nothing wrong with the meter and its normal usage.

Any advice on how to investigate what the problem is? Is there any device that can be fitted that would help identify any problem?

Yolina

How many kWh have you used and are the readings actual or estimated?

johnlewis179

Hi There,
The reading is actual and my day consumption has come to 2759 units and night consumption has come to 562 units. I think this is the kWh. My day units are charged at 14.75p per unit and night units are at 6.43p per unit.

Thank you for any help!!!

Yolina

If you're on an E7 tariff and been running a fan heater outside of the cheap hours then yes your bill will be a bit :eek: I think than you need to use something like at least 35 or 40% of your electricity during the night rate for E7 to work out your favour (someone will confirm, I'm sure!)
I'm a bit confused because you mention a boiler too, is that gas? And how is your hot water heated?

johnlewis179

Hi There,
Its an electric boiler. Initially it used to work all the time and then I put it on a timer hoping that that would reduce the bill but sadly no change. yes you are right, we do use the fan during the day and that might be contributing to the bill.

But overall, does the bill look about right for my house hold? We have following that run as below
Fridge - all the time
Flat screen TV - 5 hrs
Laptop: 3-4 hrs
Fan: 5-6 hrs
Electric hob with hot plate: 4 hrs
Kettle: 2-3 times a day
Lights: we have energy saving white bulbs and 2 of them are on for almost 5-6 hrs

Wickedkitten

From oct. to oct? I've just done our readings earlier today and we used a combined total of 6740 kwh last year. How many KW is your fan heater?

macman

As above, you should not be on an E7 tariff, because you are only using 17% of your units on night rate. Typically you need to be using 33% to make it pay.
And if you run a fan heater for 6 hours a day then of course you are paying a premium rate for all those hours. 6 hours per day is about £52pm (assuming 14p per kWh) for that one item alone, if it's a 2kw heater.
If your electric heating runs on E7 cheap rate then use it-it's a third of the cost..
What your kettle/TV/laptop/lights use is irrelevant. What costs is heating and hot water.

Yolina

Talking about hot water... Is the immersion heater set up to use the E7 rates or is that on 24/7 eating expensive daytime rate electricity in the process?

dogshome

Hmmm - 2759 Day Units with only 562 Night Units?
It's possible that your supplier is billing these the wrong way round - Day for Night & Night for Day

Put kettle on in the middle of the day to see which meter is recording the use, is it the one that was billed as 2759? Also make a check in the wee small hours to see which meter is recording that use.

If the meter movements don't co-incide with the billing get onto Eon

johnlewis179

Thank you for all your replies. I think I have some leads to investigate now. Thank you again!!!

johnlewis179

I have been looking to switch my energy supplier due to the high bill but I am still not sure how it will help me if my current consumption remains as is or is reduced slightly. With my current supplier, I pay 14p per kWh as the day rate.

If I see other energy suppliers, they charge a flat rate of more than 15p per kWh which is more than my current supplier, but when I go to comparison sites, they indicate I could save around 300+ pounds per year. I am not understanding how they are deriving this figure.

Can you please let me know whether I have understood this correctly or is there some other calculation in place?