Electricity bill gone from £27 per month to £95!!

NoreenOMS

Hi all,!

Just after!some!advice. Myself and my husband moved into a 2 bedroom rented flat Aug 2011. The flat has storage heaters. One in the hallway, one in the living room and one in the main bedroom.!With our son's room not having!permanent!heating, in winter we use a portable heater.!When our bill started, it was £27 per month. When we received a further bill 6 months later - I could see from our usage that £27 per month would not cover it, but they did not adjust our direct debit - therefore I have been putting savings away encase they asked for a lump sum at some point!

We have just submitted our latest reading, and the new bill has been emailed to us. "Account activity since last statement" says £199.43 still to pay. Electricity charges for 28/03/2012 -06/09/2012 are £197.98. Once they have added in Vat and taken a discount off for direct debit - our new account balance is £394.84. They have!estimated!our!usage for 07/09/2012 - 06/09/2013 to to be £721. This on top of the account balance works out roughly to £93 - hence the new direct debit being £95. We do not have gas.!

I am after some advice on how to bring our bills down. We have an 11 month old son and I was on maternity from September 2011 -!February!2012 and husband on paternity from March 2012 - June 2012. Family have been looking after our son since - some days at our home - therefore of course the!electricity!has been used more than normal. !He will be starting childcare in October - so there will be approx 6 hours a day Monday-Friday where no one is home, so hoping that bring our usage down.. but what else can we do?

How much of a difference do things like having TV on standby effect bills? I am also concerned that we do not use the storage heaters effectively - obviously not used them for several months, but in the winter we were guessing a lot in terms of the settings - the letting company refused to show us how they work, and we had to rely on the little we could see on google. Does anyone have storage heaters, and could offer advice?!

Thanks

good_advice

NoreenOMS wrote: »

Hi all,!

Just after!some!advice. Myself and my husband moved into a 2 bedroom rented flat Aug 2011. The flat has storage heaters. One in the hallway, one in the living room and one in the main bedroom.!With our son's room not having!permanent!heating, in winter we use a portable heater.!When our bill started, it was £27 per month. When we received a further bill 6 months later - I could see from our usage that £27 per month would not cover it, but they did not adjust our direct debit - therefore I have been putting savings away encase they asked for a lump sum at some point!

We have just submitted our latest reading, and the new bill has been emailed to us. "Account activity since last statement" says £199.43 still to pay. Electricity charges for 28/03/2012 -06/09/2012 are £197.98. Once they have added in Vat and taken a discount off for direct debit - our new account balance is £394.84. They have!estimated!our!usage for 07/09/2012 - 06/09/2013 to to be £721. This on top of the account balance works out roughly to £93 - hence the new direct debit being £95. We do not have gas.!

I am after some advice on how to bring our bills down. We have an 11 month old son and I was on maternity from September 2011 -!February!2012 and husband on paternity from March 2012 - June 2012. Family have been looking after our son since - some days at our home - therefore of course the!electricity!has been used more than normal. !He will be starting childcare in October - so there will be approx 6 hours a day Monday-Friday where no one is home, so hoping that bring our usage down.. but what else can we do?

How much of a difference do things like having TV on standby effect bills? I am also concerned that we do not use the storage heaters effectively - obviously not used them for several months, but in the winter we were guessing a lot in terms of the settings - the letting company refused to show us how they work, and we had to rely on the little we could see on google. Does anyone have storage heaters, and could offer advice?!

Thanks

Hiya, I think when you knew the money paid was not enough to cover the bill you should have acted by calling the power company. That said and moving on can you not offer to pay the outstanding dept with the savings you put by?
No dept would bring the DD down.

NoreenOMS

Sorry, maybe my post was confusing. I am not looking to get out of paying the bill- it is what it is. I didn't realise you could choose to increase the monthly direct debit? I have been putting £50 a month to one side in a savings account encase they asked for a lump sum on top of paying thd direct debit - I remembered seeing something about if you go into debt on the bill by £250 or more they will ask for a lumb sum- but they haven't done that- just increased the bill which is fine by me.

However my point is a large part of the new direct debit is based on what they expect us to use based on the last year- so just looking for some tips to reduce our usage..

rogerblack

Putting away each month is a good plan - if you've got an interest bearing account.
(as long as you are reporting accurate readings! If a fuel price rise happens - this will completely wipe out the money you make due to interest.)

Storage heaters are almost certainly the largest bit.
I assume you're on economy 7?
what is the breakdown of day and night units used over the period?

Richie-from-the-Boro

Lifestyle & storage capacity is everything with E7. Both out all day in the winter and a family that uses showers you should be 40-60% [ish] split. The same household with a home all day and two full baths a day can easily reverse the 40-60% split. So there are 4 ways you can influence your cost storage and lifestyle we have covered tariff and insulation can have an effect, insulation is obvious I'll leave that to you, tariff can vary enormously even if in this case there are few suppliers of the E7 / E10 product.

If you post your day & night kWh and tariff name / supplier use for the last two or more quarters we will calculate whether there are better opportunities for you elsewhere. I suspect as is usually the case, that the use of additional heater used outside the night-time hours caused your problem.

- the supplier, SP is as good or better than the other few E7 suppliers
- the tariff E7 is a cheaper tariff than the luxury E10
- however a pensioner home alone all day and using a bath can be marginally better on E10
- the usual DD / paperless / online readings etc get the best tariff advantage
- 30 years or 50 years old - replacement is only ever a cosmetic rather than efficiency choice
- bog standard creda / sunhouse / dimplex clay brick is always the cheapest but is also cost effective
- frequent monthly meter readings submitted to your supplier help


(1) Make sure you have enough storage - that is capacity to store cheap stuff to avoid having to switch on supplementary expensive fan heaters or whatever in a cold spell.

(2) Ditto cheap water storage - a big enough store of well insulated cheap hot water.

(3) You will always need an alternative quick heat such as convector / electric fire / whatever with night store systems.

(4) Treat the storage capacity as you would a bank account, you can have sufficient storage to always have enough cheap [5p] electric heat & water in store or - you can have slightly undersized storage that means to constantly / frequently need to pay 3 times the price for the non-cheap stuff.

For example changing out a 2.5kWh for a 3.4kWh means you will always be able to 'bank' enough cheap stuff in the bad weather and avoid if not altogether at least the number of times you will need to switch on supplementary expensive heating.

(5) Assuming a normal sized lounge / living area always have a 3.4kWh rated storage, if its a massive living area I would have a second supplementary 0.8 or 1.4 somewhere in the room its cheaper in the long run.

NOTE 01: If you put these two letters in the 'search this forum box' > E7 < you will find dozens of posts on the subject that will help your understanding, then come back here with more questions.

NOTE 02: Your 'how they work' question is simple have sufficient storage of the cheap water & heat by setting the 'stat' high enough .. .. do that and you will be able to resist opening the 'flap' [damper] for a 'quick' belt of extra heat. In short stat high enough .. .. damper closed.

Man_Overboard_2

NoreenOMS wrote: »

just looking for some tips to reduce our usage..

wear more clothes, take fewer showers, occupy fewer rooms

good_advice

Noreen - where do you get"increase the DD" from my post. I said pay off the dept owed in LUMP SUM FROM THE SAVINGS.
That is what I would do and start again with DD that is current to your use. You can pay a lump sum by card over the phone if you are an online customer pay over the computer.

To bring your fuel costs down use less. Unplug often and batch cook. Take care not to have the heating on all the time.

macman

Space heating and hot water (plus big ticket white goods such as tumble driers) are the power-hungry electrical items, forget worrying about TV's on standby, hair curlers, lightbulbs etc.

Naf

If you don't tend to be home during the day, it's well worth doing the maths to see if you'd be better off just using some convector heaters in the rooms you use. A storage heater charges overnight, but then cools down all day, even on its lowest setting it is still releasing heat and if you're out all day that's completely wasted. By the evening my heaters have little or nothing left even in March/April - winter will be much worse. I worked out that it's much cheaper to run a convector heater (I got an excellent 3kw Dimplex with a fan blower on the side which works absolutely amazing) for a few hours a day than it is to charge the storage heater overnight. And the heater I got really heats fast!
Modern TVs will use less than £1 a year on standby, but a PC could use considerably more if left on constantly.
Consider free solar panels: these could reduce your daytime costs, and there are still free insulation (loft & cavity wall) offers about (Tesco offering up to £200 cash back to get them fitted).
If you don't already, make sure your washing machine, dishwasher & tumble dryer (if you must use one) run overnight: timer switches manage this just fine.
Unplug mobile phone chargers when fully charged and not in use.
In the kitchen we bought an egg boiler and a steamer; they use less energy overall than having to boil a pan of water (not to mention faster). My in-laws find it cheaper to run a small worktop oven rather than the big one in the cooker (although this will depend on how much/big you cook, and you might save more by coking larger amounts every other day in a large oven than smaller amounts daily in a small one).
Keep freezers & fridges as full as possible and they are cheaper to run.

None of these will make a huge impact, and will be completely dwarfed by your heating bill. But every little helps.

amiehall

All good advice, I would just point out that while freezers are cheaper to run when full, fridges are more efficient when empty as it lets the air circulate. So stuff the freezer full of newspaper by all means but keep the fridge nice and clear.

Richmc

amiehall wrote: »

All good advice, I would just point out that while freezers are cheaper to run when full, fridges are more efficient when empty as it lets the air circulate. So stuff the freezer full of newspaper by all means but keep the fridge nice and clear.

Rather than newspaper, fill the spare space with loaves of bread, and don't leave the fridge door open whilst putting milk on your cornflakes etc. thats not just cold air pouring out of the fridge, thats your cash!

Re convectors, Argos do a nice 2KW one that has 3 power settings for £20.

I have a policy of closely monitoring my bills month by month and TELLING my supplier what my DD will be with the threat of going to a different supplier.

What it sounds like has happened to you is your supplier has taken the oportunity grasp at your unusually high tempory useage to up your payments and put YOUR cash in THEIR bank. This is as unaceptable basing your DD on an estimated bill, work out what you belive your payments should be based on a past years bills, pay off any excess you may owe and TELL them what you will pay, you can always continue to put some cash aside in case you get it wrong.