Electricity costs creeping up, what is to blame?

spinningsheep

Hi, I live with 2 others and their partners sometimes stay 2-4 nights a week, and I have input our meter reads into the BG website today and to my horror it said we have spent £130 since 03/02/12 when our last bill was generated. Now I appreciate that in a shared house power consumption is difficult to police but what can be causing this? We have a tumble dryer which is on every other day for about 4 hours a time, same with washer on a 30 degree wash, plasma TV and an LCD TV on for about 6 hours a day (each) and the usual mobile phone chargers pugged in. We have an electric oven, used for about 1 hr a day, gas hob. We have no immersion heater. Gas heating too. We have a shower each a day (sometimes 5 of us) totalling about 1 hr and the shower is a Triton electric one.We have 2 chest freezers, a tall fridge freezer and a small under counter fridge. 1 PC on 24/7 but in hibernation most of the time. I KNOW that one housemate uses a 2kw electric heater in her room as she gets cold but only for about 2 hours a day midweek and 8 hours a day at weekends ( i know this is with the heating on too, but she is paper slim and gets very nesh) but I still for the life of me cannot fathom £130 a month seeing as we have gas central heating! I know people with all electric heating that spend nowhere near what we are.

bloss0m

The usually culprits our heating, cooking, showers. Plasma will also use fair bit of energy compared with lcd but not a huge amount. A 2kW heater will costs around 25-30p an hour for example multiple that amount per week it can add up a lot. Showers use 8-10Kwh per hour

Whites goods not use that much. a washer doesnt use that much energy a tumble dryer costs around 50p

spinningsheep

Thanks bloss0m thats what I thought, even with the "power hungry" culprits wouldn't account for the high usage

victor2

Assuming that is the bill for both gas and electric, it doesn't sound too bad for what you describe and the time of year. February had a particularly cold spell at the start of the month.
See what the rating of your tumble dryer is - at an average of 2 hours a day, that will be significant! Electric showers use an awful lot of power too, particularly if 5 people are using it. The 2KW heater on for something like 20 hours a week is going to add up as well.
Read your meters daily for a couple of weeks if you want to get an idea of what things are costing you. Look at your last bill or online to see your tariff details and you can work out the cost relative to your meter readings from that.

spinningsheep

Thanks Victor2, if it was gas and electric I would be over the moon But alas that £130 is ELECTRICITY alone.

Yolina

spinningsheep wrote: »

even with the "power hungry" culprits wouldn't account for the high usage

What was the use in kWh rather than £? It all adds up rather quickly, so given your list of stuff in use, a high consumption wouldn't be particularly surprising.

victor2

spinningsheep wrote: »

Thanks Victor2, if it was gas and electric I would be over the moon But alas that £130 is ELECTRICITY alone.

Ouch! That must hurt a bit.
As I said though, read your meter daily for a while. When 5 people are in the house, take a reading before they all shower and a reading after, if you can.
With something like the heater, time the meter to go through an indicated fraction of a kWh with the heater on and compare it with the heater off. Remember though, if the heater has a thermostat control, it won't actually be heating all the time.