£729 electric bill for 5 months??

liza883

Hi, we moved gas and electric supplier in Oct to Npowers Fixed economy 7 rate. We were in credit with Atlantic and paid £28 a month for electric.
The first statement has come in from Npower and I just dont understand how it can be so high. We have a 2 bedroomed house, we are in in the day but i still dont get it.
It looks like they have used the night reading as the day reading and vice versa, is that even possible?
Our reading are: Night 1182 then 1760
Day: 5053 then 9045.
Any help appreciated.
Liza

HappyMJ

It is possible so you need to check the readings for yourself.

Night 578kWh
Day 3992kWh

What do you use for heating? Hot water? I would imagine storage heating with water heated at night with some peak rate heating so it could be around the wrong way.

liza883

Hi, we have central heating run on gas, the same with the water. I dont really understand meter readings so thats not helping me. I just cant see how a bill can be so hight for a 3 person household.

dogshome

Hi liza883 - With Gas Hot Water & Heating, you are at a real disadvantage with an ECO7 meter unless you really work to get the most out of the Cheap Elec. overnight - which with only 578 Night units used in 6 months you are not doing at present

Two things are working against you
1) ECO 7 offers cheap power overnight, but you pay a premium for what you use in the Day
2) N'power have a strange way of billing the Premium Priced units that pay for your standing charges - They load them up on the Winter bills and charge less of them in Summer.

If you ask, N'power will probably charge your Elec. as though you had a 'Standard' meter by adding the Night&Day readings together

Provided you don't have a Combi boiler, but do have an insulated Hot Water tank, the other option is to use the overnight Elec for all your hot-water and time the Wash machine/Dishwasher and whatever else you can think of, to come on in the early hours using cheap rate power

HappyMJ

liza883 wrote: »

Hi, we have central heating run on gas, the same with the water. I dont really understand meter readings so thats not helping me. I just cant see how a bill can be so hight for a 3 person household.

It is quite high...so what do you use that is making it so high?

Dryers use a lot. Electric heaters of any sort even just a small one in a bathroom or conservatory will use quite a lot. Is the immersion heater on a hot water cylinder left on?

The meter readings are around the right way if you use gas for heating and hot water. E7 is designed for electric night storage heating or hot water so you won't see any savings by having it.

You have less than 15% night usage so it is unlikely you will save much if anything on E7. It should be 20-25% just to break even (the hassle factor of using things at night makes it not worth the effort) and over 35% to start saving serious money.

macman

As above, it's crazy being on an E7 tariff and then using less than 15% on night rate. Just throwing money away. Switch to a single rate tariff ASAP.
However that doesn't explain why you are using more electricity in 5m than the average household uses in a year.

Terrylw1

Can you explain the transposition as your first post just shows them following on? Transposition can create large debts in error.

DVardysShadow

liza883 wrote: »

I dont really understand meter readings so thats not helping me.

What do you not understand? You will not make real progress with this problem until you do understand.

[Deleted User]

the readings seem very odd,the digital meters usually show rate 1,rate 2 and a T for Total.They often transpose them,but try and understand which rate equals which time of the day.disregard the total reading, you just need the rate 1 and rate 2 readings