High usage - help!

gunsandbanjos

My electricity bills seem staggeringly high!

On top of Scottish power taking forever to sort out my problem (threatened them with going to the ombudsman) before they got their act together.
My direct debit is now up to £125 per month:eek:

Now to put this into perspective i tried to switch to another company and the highest their online service would let me put was £45 per month.

I live in a 2 bedroom TINY flat. There is no heating, we had storage heaters but took them out years ago. We use one Delonghi heater for the whole flat.

In my bedroom there is nothing electrical plugged in.

In my daughters room there is a computer but it gets used maybe once or twice a week tops, when not in use it gets turned off at the plug.

Nothing plugged in in the hallway.

Have 1 TV, 1 computer and the usual fridge/oven/dishwasher etc I do use a tumble dryer but it is quite new and A rated.

Where am i going wrong?

Just checked my most recent bill and am quite confused to say the least, unfortunately the issue we have with SP is making my bill more complicated, but as far as i can see my usage for
14/12/11 to 01/02/12 is 2439 KWh :eek:
02/02/12 to 02/03/12 is 1404 KWh :eek:

Yolina

What's the kWh rating on your radiator and how long it is on for? I guess you have an immersion heater for hot water - if so, is it on 24/7?

macman

Your usage doesn't seem that high for some of the coldest weeks of the winter-that's an average of about 55kWh per day, or £6.60. That should fall dramaitcally once the heating goes off. Heating by standard electricity alone (rather than E7) is very expensive-why did you take the storage heaters out?
I presume that when you did that, you switched to a single rate tariff-if not you are paying a premium rate for all your peak rate consumption on an E7 tariff.
You don't mention how you heat your hot water-that is the other big ticket item (and the tumble drier- whether A rated or not). Forget the computer.
What rating is the electric heater and how many hours per day is it on for?
Do you have debt on the account that makes up a part of the £125 DD? A DD of £125 doesn't mean that you are actual using that much per month.
PS: check the immersion as advised by Yolina-it's the usual culprit.

gunsandbanjos

No idea on KWh of radiator, how do I check?
Immersion again not sure. It seems to heat water overnight, we have a 'boost' button but never use it.

Took storage heaters out as we never used them and they were ugly!

No debt on account.

jalexa

gunsandbanjos wrote: »

Just checked my most recent bill and am quite confused to say the least, unfortunately the issue we have with SP is making my bill more complicated, but as far as i can see my usage for
14/12/11 to 01/02/12 is 2439 KWh :eek:
02/02/12 to 02/03/12 is 1404 KWh :eek:

Not half as much as I am confused:eek:.

You might get more meaningful help if you posted about "the issue".

You have quoted monthly (or 6 weekly) consumptions but not a cheap rate/day rate split. How many meter registers do you have? What is the *exact* tariff name on the bill?

Yolina

There should be a label of sorts with the rating somewhere on the radiator. As for the immersion, I'm going to hazard a guess... But I'm thinking that if was originally part of a storage heaters / E7 set-up then it would probably have been wired into the E7 circuit to only heat up during the cheap hours. Given that you've removed the storage heaters, I have no idea what might have happened with the immersion. If there's no timer for the hot water to be found anywhere, then you might want to consider having one fitted as really you're unlikely to need to have it on for more than a couple of hours a day (it's trial and error, depending on the size of the tank and how much hot water you use - I'm on gas with an old boiler and get away with 30 minutes of heating the water a day, obviously needs to be on more if I've got friends or family staying)

gunsandbanjos

jalexa wrote: »

Not half as much as I am confused:eek:.

You might get more meaningful help if you posted about "the issue".

You have quoted monthly (or 6 weekly) consumptions but not a cheap rate/day rate split. How many meter registers do you have? What is the *exact* tariff name on the bill?

I had 2 meters, 1 was taken out as we don't use heaters anymore. Told Scottish power about it on the 9th sept 2011 yet they are still charging us as if we have it using estimated bills. Have spoken to them countless times and each time I'm promised that they'll sort it but they haven't yet.

Current bill( last week) still has both meters registered and charging us.
Meter we no longer have 5.970p per KWh
Current meter 11.625p per KWh

Capped price energy sept 2012 is my deal.

gunsandbanjos

According to go compare when I put in my bills for the year I'm using over 11000 KWhs of electricity per year!

I think that's quite high?

jalexa

gunsandbanjos wrote: »

I had 2 meters, 1 was taken out as we don't use heaters anymore. Told Scottish power about it on the 9th sept 2011 yet they are still charging us as if we have it using estimated bills. Have spoken to them countless times and each time I'm promised that they'll sort it but they haven't yet.

OK, there is several things going on. I'll wait for Yolina to explain further about the water heating.

Regarding Scottish Power and "countless times", you should have raised a formal complaint, in writing or by email, on the first occasion that they failed to deal with the issue 100% to your satisfaction. That after 8 weeks you would have been entitled to ask the Energy Ombudsman to investigate the problem. If you have not yet raised a formal complaint, do it now.

In your first post you said that Scottish Power had "got their act together" (after a threat of the Ombudsman) but it does not seem so to me.

BTW, who did you contact to get the "heating meter" removed?

OK, your 7:53 post reminded me of a couple of comments I wanted to make. When I tried TheEnergyShop I had no difficulty entering £125/month, and I assume to give you 11,000 kWhrs GoCompare must have accepted £125/month.

Until you have clarified whether readings are estimated or actual, and discounted the "cheap rate" estimated non-consumption, its pointless talking about "11,000kWhrs", but FWIW, 16,500 gas and 3,300 electric is "average" for a gas heated and gas water heated house. So 11,000 electric is not necessarily excessive, though I suspect it is a lot for the poor standard of heating from a single heater.

Yolina

I have no idea whatsoever what might be happening with the water heating :rotfl: I guess *if* it was originally connected to the meter that was removed and got rewired into the remaining meter, it could well be on 24/7. OP: I really think you need to find out how your immersion is set up, otherwise we're all just guessing really.

gunsandbanjos

jalexa wrote: »

OK, there is several things going on. I'll wait for Yolina to explain further about the water heating.

Regarding Scottish Power and "countless times", you should have raised a formal complaint, in writing or by email, on the first occasion that they failed to deal with the issue 100% to your satisfaction. That after 8 weeks you would have been entitled to ask the Energy Ombudsman to investigate the problem. In your first post you said that Scottish Power had "got their act together" but it does not seem so to me.

BTW, who did you contact to get the "heating meter" removed?

Husband spoke to SP today and supervisor said it would be sorted by Friday. I know I should have raised a formal complaint but I'm not very sure about these things:o

The removal of meter is another saga!

Originally paid SP for an engineer to come and remove it. Engineer comes out, says 'I can't do that love, you need an electrician'.
I get an electrician to do it, phone SP, give them final reading etc. So they know what's going on, ask if they need me to do anything else and they say no that's fine.

Try and switch suppliers but get rejected as no one else will touch you with 2 meters. Phone SP and they say sorry we'll sort that.
They don't sort it and so I phone again and SP get arsey saying I should never have taken meter out, only they can do it etc. Well it was their engineer who told me I needed an electrician to do it.
Anyway, they send out a "revenue protection officer" to check I'm not diddling them out of money, if I was pulling a fast one I wouldn't be paying you over £100 a month for my teeny flat.

Revenue guy says all is in order will get 2nd meter removed from database, well that was on 14th December, have spoken to SP several times since and they keep saying they'll do it and they dont:mad:
So here I am, still with SP and really hacked off.