kwh or what?

MikeR71

Ok I am sure this has been covered here before, but I need to ask again.

I am doing a comparison to find the cheapest deal and am confused about what unit to report for gas. I have a m3 meter. Last year I used 1750 kwh m3. When I enter my usage on the comparison website, should I enter this or the converted calorific value?

This is so stupid because most sites assume you know what you are entering but could end up giving entirely wrong estimate. thanks

dogshome

When useing the comparision sites, enter your Annual useage in Kwh.
However I find your declared annual Kwh useage of 1750 a bit worrying as it's very low - Each unit on your Metric m3 meter will deliver appx. 11.2 Kwh, so your 1750 Kwh works out to roughly 156 meter units over the year - are the Start and End meter reading for the year correct ?

penrhyn

I suspect 1750 is the number of metric units the OP has used over the year, giving an annual usage of around 19,500Kwh.
Of course I could be wrong.

MikeR71

Just to confirm, yes, 1750 is what's on my meter in m3. Basically it's a 5 digit counter, where the left number is 0 then there is 4 digits and the coma, after which there is two more units. Like this:
08116,14
I was told by the energy company to report the main 4 digits after 0 and ignore the two after the coma.

I have been entering this in the scottish power site regularly and it works out my usage. But now I want to compare to find a better deal and was wondering what to enter. what's on my meter or convert it first and enter the converted value? Everytime I bring this up people get confused.

dogshome

OK - Your Metric meter read of 1750 meter units a year, works out to appx. 19,600 Kwh a year, so this is the figure you enter into a Switch site

MikeR71

Thanks. dogshome.

penrhyn

M3 stands for cubic metres,. You must have got a bit of a surprise when your gas bills always came out 10 times greater than you estimated.

MikeR71

penrhyn wrote: »

M3 stands for cubic metres,. You must have got a bit of a surprise when your gas bills always came out 10 times greater than you estimated.

Yes that happened years ago. Since then I have realised it's not what the unit price is based on.

macman

There is no such thing as a kWh m3.
A kWh is a unit of energy. A m3 is a unit of volume.
Your bill is in kWh's, and the volume measurement is first converted to energy units.

penrhyn

MikeR71 wrote: »

Yes that happened years ago. Since then I have realised it's not what the unit price is based on.

You did not seem to realise this from your first post. Anyhoo, hopefully your comparisons will be more meaningful now.

societys_child

Online gas UNIT to KWh converter - does it all for you . .