Astonished by Powergen bills :0(

space_rider

I moved house and discovered that the immersion heater had been left on all the time. I had asked the previous owner what the switch was and he didn`t know. After a week I asked a neighbour and she said that hers is off so I turned mine off. It would have been so easy to blame the electric company "powergen" but at the end of the day the companies are responsible for sending you a bill for the units you use but they can`t be held responsible for what you use unless the meter is faulty which is rare. When I did see the previous owner a few weeks later I told him and he said no wonder his electric bills were so high. He thought he was using gas for hot water but wondered why when they went away the water was so hot when they came back. He had lived in the house for 5 years!

christabell

Dear Bound Angel,
1.Have you tried using the manufacturer's handbook to ensure you are operating the storage heater correctly?
2. Have you or your OH any electician friends who would check out the unit to see if it is working correctly,
3. If they are old consider replacing the units to new ones?
4. Are Storage Heaters in all of your rooms, or are you using perhaps a convector heater, which are heavy on the juice?
5. Why not try the Dimplex or Creda sites (who both manufacture storage heaters) and see if the heaters you have are suitable for the size of your room?
The fault may not be your electricity supplier ( as said previously) however if you really wanted to change supplier Energywatch would help you as they are the regulator.
Good Luck

space_rider

Do you make sure the output is set to 1 when the storage heaters are charging up. If not it will use alot more units. When I had storage heaters on E7 we always made sure that when we went to bed that the heaters were all on no 1 output. you would need to do that for all 10 hours of the charge which is 5 hours at night 3 in afternoon and 2 in the evening. I`m not sure of the times but if your ring powergen they will tell you the approximate times they come on. Do you turn the input down when the weather is milder? How old are the storage heaters? Are they overheating? you will see evidence of that if you have a smoky grey colour near the grills. What make are the storage heaters?

When I used them I didn`t find them expensive but we had them put in new and we had dimplex.

You could have the meter changed to E7 but that will only give you 7 hours so you may not be as warm. Years ago when heatwise was being promoted electicians were encouraged to use smaller storage heaters and have heatwise meters installed.

Gal

No longer relevant.

bound_angel

Bit of an update and answering some questions :0)

Our storage heater doesnt have any settings to alter on it - just switches for on/off. Theres one for primary, one for secondary, one to turn the heater off completely and a reset button if theres any problems. We always switch the heater off completely during the day. Its working pretty much as it should, no overheating, no discolouring. Theres no sign of a timer anywhere on it and its not making its usual 'on' noise unless we've switched it on.
Our heatwise rate costs are 16.77 primary, 9.2 secondary, 4.5 afternoon and evening/night.

We've been taking daily readings over the past two weeks and theres definately something wrong. The meter states we've been using about 30-40 units primary/secondary per day but absolutely no afternoon or evening/night units at all.
Im an insomniac :0) Im up a lot during the night so I know Im using electricity. We typically have the heater on, OH on his laptop and me on mine, our washer/dryer is one, Im watching a DVD on a 14" TV, I have a light on, I have our bedroom heater on (I think theyre called convection?). Ive even tried having our washer/dryer on from about 12.00pm until 5am - the primary units shot up, the evening/night units didnt move.
Not a blip on the meter - everything is being charged at the higher rate.

We've been going over the bills for the past two years and there is a lot of odd activity.
On the first big bill (£581) the evening/night units leaped from the previous rates of about 300 units to over 1000 for a quarter. After that theyve dropped to about 2-3 per quarter.
Our previous Primary/Secondary usage was about 2000-2500 per quarter depending on the season, the £613 bill indicates them at 5000.

I really think theres something wrong with the meter - we've managed to convince powergen to come out and look at it, they reckon there might be a loose connection, but it will be sometime at the end of the month before they will come.

Im concerned - what if they dont find a fault in the meter? What could be causing these odd readings that dont seem to have anything to do with when we're using power? If they do find a problem can we ask them to review the odd bills in light of that?

Slightly off note too - we were originally on 'Heatwise No standing charge' until Powergen changed us to standard Heatwise with their price rises. Our original bills however show theyve always charged us a standing charge.

Cardew

bound_angel wrote: »

Bit of an update and answering some questions :0)


We've been taking daily readings over the past two weeks and theres definately something wrong. The meter states we've been using about 30-40 units primary/secondary per day but absolutely no afternoon or evening/night units at all.

We've been going over the bills for the past two years and there is a lot of odd activity.
On the first big bill (£581) the evening/night units leaped from the previous rates of about 300 units to over 1000 for a quarter. After that theyve dropped to about 2-3 per quarter.
Our previous Primary/Secondary usage was about 2000-2500 per quarter depending on the season, the £613 bill indicates them at 5000.

I really think theres something wrong with the meter - we've managed to convince powergen to come out and look at it, they reckon there might be a loose connection, but it will be sometime at the end of the month before they will come.

Im concerned - what if they dont find a fault in the meter? What could be causing these odd readings that dont seem to have anything to do with when we're using power? If they do find a problem can we ask them to review the odd bills in light of that?

Slightly off note too - we were originally on 'Heatwise No standing charge' until Powergen changed us to standard Heatwise with their price rises. Our original bills however show theyve always charged us a standing charge.

There is obviously something wrong with your meter.

Ensure you get your old bills adjusted and compensation given - keep us informed.

space_rider

Are your storage heaters the very old wood coloured ones? It sounds to me that the storage heaters aren`t connected up to the meter properly otherwise you would be using more units in the evening, night and afternoon. Or it could be that the timeswitch on the meter is faulty. But I`m sure the heatwise meter is one of the ones that is controlled by a radio signal. Is this your property or is it rented. very odd.

bound_angel

No our storage heater is fairly new, big hefty white paited metal. These flats were built in 2004 so everything is still quite recent.
We rent privately from a landlord.

space_rider

What`s the make?

bound_angel

PulsaCoil 2000

We've continued taking periodic readings and still no change in the off peak meter reading so far.