Please Help Elec bill gone through the roof

Jonnytwotimes

Ok first up when it comes to anything like this I a complete dunce. My partner takes charge of the bills as she is a finance professional.

For the past year we have been using what seems way more than the average house in terms of electricity.

After OH just got a new elec bill with a prediction on it for the next 12 months BG said we are using 2 and a half times more than similar households, over £120 a month :eek:

She was on the phone with them for quite a while and the best they could come up with was that an appliance may be faulty. Could one faulty appliance really cost us that much money ?

They said we could take out some sort of service where somebody will come and test 5 appliances, so that means we have to choose 5 and what happens if the faulty one is not within that 5 so that seems a bit pointless.

Has anybody experienced this before. Can you offer advice. How can I solve this cheaply. Should I just get an electrician.

For the record I do not believe we are actually using that much elec. We are a small 2 bed house, rear projection tv, telephone, microwave etc usual stuff. No dryer or dishwasher. No tv in the bedrooms.

Please help as the elec bill is crippling us.

oasismark

Do you have one of those smart meters?

You can get em free from most suppliers,

Get one of those and go round the house switching everything on and off, see which shoots up the usage.

alleycat`

Usual culprits are:-

All electric heating? Or generally anything that uses electric for heating.
(you not mentioning gas makes me wonder on the heating).

Immersion on the hot water tank on all the time?

10.5Kw shower and a person that takes a fair while in there every day?

Using a smart meter and turning stuff on and off is a good way to look at it.

rogerblack

Jonnytwotimes wrote: »

we are using 2 and a half times more than similar households, over £120 a month

120 a month is about 4/day.
4/day is perhaps 28 units/day.

This means that if it's one appliance using - say - half that - it will be outputting the same amount of heat as half a 1kw heater.
It will be quite warm!

Jonnytwotimes

Thanks for helping me tackle this. Now this is where as a bloke I get embarrassingly clueless. The boiler man came to fix the boiler the other day. He told us to switch the immersion on the hot water tank off as it can get quite expensive. Im sorry to say as far as I can remember this has always been left on. Is this my problem ?

Our heating is gas and we have an old style boiler in the kitchen and we flick the switch when we want heat, also no electric shower. I googled smart meter and there is no info on how to acquire one only that they are being rolled out. I think I need to call BG and see about getting one. After the length of time on the phone Im surprised they did not mention this or any of your suggestions above which seem more plausible than a rogue appliance. If I have no luck with the smart meter is there anything similar that I can buy now ?

NeverInDebt

Immersion heater will use a lot of energy, its basically a tank of hot water heated by electric. As its gets hot it keeps being replenished. So that wont help. If you have a combi boiler there is no need for immersion heater. I have never had on in two houses I have had that have combi boilers. I use around 13kWh per day for a small family

Just monitor your usage taking weekly measurements. Maybe get a energy monitor around £30 easy to attach to electric meter and shows your usage via wireless

meggsy

Energy monitor ...

http://www.britishgas.co.uk/products-and-services/gas-and-electricity/energysmart.html

dogshome

If you have had an Electric Immersion heater on 24/7 for constant hot water, it goes a long way to answering your excessive use of Elec
I guess you are both out at work all day, so it's worth having a timer fitted to the Immersion heater so hot water is cooked up only when you need it, and if the tank is the foam insulated type, you will only need it on once a day.

There are also other checks you should make
1 Look at the meter number printed on your bill and check that it matches the No. on your actual meter - if it doesn't report this to BG
2 Turn off everything electrical, and I mean everything, then check over a period of 20 mins that the meter has stopped moving - If it keeps moving there is a chance you do have an Appliance/Wiring fault, so get a local Sparks in.
3 With everything still off, plug in a Fan heater, (borrow one if need be), that has 1Kwh on it's rating plate - Run it for an hour and check that the meter has registed just one unit of use.
If it uses more repeat the test with a different appliance and if the result is the same report this to BG

Although there is nothing in your post to indicate it - Do you have an ECO7 meter ? - Look at your bills for any mention of DAY rate charges & NIGHT rate charges and if there are report back

alleycat`

Jonnytwotimes wrote: »

Thanks for helping me tackle this. Now this is where as a bloke I get embarrassingly clueless. The boiler man came to fix the boiler the other day. He told us to switch the immersion on the hot water tank off as it can get quite expensive. Im sorry to say as far as I can remember this has always been left on. Is this my problem ?

An Immersion is (in simple terms) the equivalent of a Kettle.
It heats up the tank of water to a set temperature (based on a thermostat usually) and tries to maintain it at that temp by switching on and off again.

Depending on how much water you use (e.g. a bath) and how well lagged the tank is it can be a very costly exercise to leave it on all the time.

Obviously it won't be as active if the water is left to sit in a well lagged tank as heat loss will be much smaller.

If you have the ability use Gas to heat a tank of water as it is fraction of the costs of using electric.

The immersion is mostly a "boost" type platform or in case of your boiler going on the fritz.

Take a meter reading today and check it in a weeks time.
See if your usage has dropped off (as an average of the last bill) and you'll know if you've found the culprit readily enough.

Jonnytwotimes

Ok you have given me quite a bit to go on which Im gonna get stuck into now. The stupid thing is that since we switched the immersion off the gas is actually heating the water so there was no need for it the first place it appears.

Dogshome I have a fan heater so will be taking your advice and also with regards to the bill.

Thanks

macman

It's bound to be down to your immersion heater. You've been constantly reheating your hot water tank by electricity at 3.5 times the cost of doing it by gas. For example, at night, if you run off some hot water before bed, and the heating has already gone off on the timer, the immersion 'stat will heat that back up to temp and keep it warm all night (as it gradually loses heat) until the boiler take over again in the morning. Then the same again all day long-if the boiler is off, then the immersion will be taking over. All an immersion should need is an hour or so in the morning and maybe a boost at night-not 24/7!
The immersion is intended to be just a back up to the boiler-it probably predates the gas CH install.
You say you 'don't use much electricity', but you haven't actually given us any figures. Post your annual or last bill's kWh consumption and better advice can be give. Quoting £120 pm doesn't really tell us anything, as it doesn't tell us your actual usage.
And get the tank lagged immedately if not already done.