Am I heating ALL of Wales!!!!

emmylu

Have moved into rented house end of October 2006 and received my first bill up to 18th Jan 2007 and it is for £530.00!!!! When I irst moved in and gave meter readings they said DD would bne £61.50 a month - thought that sounds great. Scottish Power have been out and meter ok apart from I thought I was on economy 7 but am actually on something called twin heat A! Apparently I have cheap rate 4.064p from 3am to 7am and then 1.30pm till 4.30pm. After that am charged at 10.740p. Have storage heaters (8 various sizes) not sure if they are working efficiently or if they are set right. I keep turning the knobs down and son keeps turning them up! Water heated by Horstmann quartz thingy. Have calculated my usage since 18th Jan to 21st Feb as 3,131 units, thats about 95 units a day! Would appear my cheap rate usage is 80% of the bill. Other items are, washing machine on once a day, small freezer, fridge, tv, computer, oven on once a day, microwave several times a day. dryer used only for emergency items (i.e. daughter prior to going out who decides she has to wear something that isn't washed!)

Scottish Power want to increase DD from £61.50 to £180 a month!!! ha. Work part time on minimum wage plus WTC. At this rate will be turning everything off, using candles and will burn furniture in fireplace for heat!!! Will then send kids down the mine to nick coal and forage in forest for wood!!! Help!

In my last rented property had a prepayment meter and was putting about £35-£40 a week in that in winter and only had 3 storage heaters working plus an open coal fire. Even in summer with no heating it was still £15 a week!
(Plus gonna have an excess bill from this as they now say electricity prepayment meter was not set right in Jan 2005 and even though they had been out and checked it, they didn't increase the settings to take into account rate increases!!!)

Do ya think its just me and I'm a wasteful electricity harlot!!!! :eek:

If anyone has any advice would be grateful before I unplug all devices which will unfortunately include my beloved computer!




P.S. posted this on the end of someone else's thread first my mistake, so apologies but please forgive first timer thanks

Cardew

If you are using 95 units a day, and 80% are on cheap rate, the ratio of cheap to expensive electricity is excellent and it would appear that the storage heaters(and water heater) are correctly using cheap rate electricity.

95 units a day at your ratio/prices is £5 a day. Your end of Oct – 18 Jan bill works out at approx £6.50 a day.

It seems pretty certain that your high consumption is down to the Storage heaters and having 8 of them it is not surprising that you use a huge amount of electricity. To use 626kWh(20% of 3131) on normal rates in 5 weeks is on the high side, but not excessive.

The only suggestion I can make is to reduce your use of those heaters – and stop your son turning them up!

emmylu

Thanks for your advice, when you break it down like that it doesn't seem that bad but still a hell of a lot of money to pay for electric. According to something I saw on another page the definition of fuel poverty is

"A household which needs to spend more than 10% of its income on energy for heating, hot water, cooking, lighting and electrical appliances. An adequate standard of warmth is generally defined as 21°c in the living room and 18°c in other occupied rooms. "

On this basis, I definitely have fuel poverty. 20% of my income is now used for heating, hot water etc!

Roll on summer - think I'll look for a nice small caravan to rent!

diamond_dave

Just had to add this- my elderly but very energetic neighbour who is almost never at home lives in a 3 bed room bungalow in Cornwall & uses 38,500 Kwh of gas a year - her combined bills are about £1400 p.a. I use 12800 Kwh and live in an old large house. I have tried to get to the bottom of this problem but no one seems able to help her. Even the local energy advice people were of no use.

seven-day-weekend

Maybe if you are on a small income and if what Cardew says is correct (and I think he is quite knowledgeable about these matters), maybe the best thing to do is to put the £6.50 away every day in a Piggy Bank . Then you'll have the money for the bill.

Also....do you need all the storage heaters on? Maybe you could turn one or two off.

FYI, the combined bills (gas/elec) for my house in the UK From 16 November-22 February is £543.23.

MissMoneypenny

A friend of mine used this site to follow links to get a cheaper utility provider. She was told that Scottish Power would be cheaper, but when her bills came in from Scottish Power they were miles higher than her previous supplier (still in the same house). When she looked, SP were charging so much per day just to use their service! She questioned this with them, but they said said she would have to pay them. She paid and is going to change supplier.