Southern electric - faulty timer

cookies_and_crem

Buzby - the suppliers timer. I didnt even know we had one until yesterday - all of my meters are outside in a communal box. The clock was 7 hours behind, an hour or so wouldn't have bothered me.

Firefox - my home is empty from 8am until 7 pm. We've been through energy saving plenty a time and I don't think we use power excessively. Storage heater outputs are turned down during the day, only 2 are used anyway. As said 2 5 min showers and i don't have a power shower - i have a pump attached to my immersion.

i'vehad the immersion checked for insulation, my loft is also insulated. We cook probably ever other ay and wash and dry about 2 loads of washn a week. This only ever gets do e at the weekend. My comparison with other people has always shown my electric to be higher.

Someone came to check my meter only 2 weeks ago... Mind you - i havent had feedback from his report.

A complaint was raised on my behalf before this was discovered, so I'll have to be patient. I just wanted to ensure that if we owed them thousands they wouldn't claim it as it would have been their error.

Wywth

Ignoring NSH which are usually linked to a low rate only circuit, when do you think you use the most electricity?

3am when most people are asleep and dead to the world?
Or 7am when many people are getting up, putting the lights on, cooking breakfast, boiling the kettle, having a shower, drying/straightening their hair, ...

As I said, anything you have on a timer is up to you to time to take best advantage of the low rate period you have.

cookies_and_crem

Wywth wrote: »

Ignoring NSH which are usually linked to a low rate only circuit, when do you think you use the most electricity?

3am when most people are asleep and dead to the world?
Or 7am when many people are getting up, putting the lights on, cooking breakfast, boiling the kettle, having a shower, drying/straightening their hair, ...

As I said, anything you have on a timer is up to you to time to take best advantage of the low rate period you have.

Thanks for the response. I appreciate that my electric costs will go up further. Maybe we will end up paying over £150 a month and I'll have to be happy to settle for that, I have done before. But at least I'll know that I can being charged correctly and that I tried to ensure that I was paying/using as little as possible.

My x2 4 hour washer/dryer cycles and PC on all night will now incur lower rates so I'll be happy enough with that. In all fairness we probably use most of our electricity after 7pm - TV, cooker, oven (we dont have breakfast at home), computer, heater, kettle numerous times, things charging and lights... many lights which we must get better about turning off.


I don't use an internal timer. Thank you for your responses - You have convinced me that my energy costs are not unusally high and that there is a possiblility that the costs may increase further. I will have to suck this up and be grateful that I can more than afford to as well as be reassured that i am paying fairly for what i use.

I was more concerned that Southern electric may request that I reimburse them for all of the cheaper electricity that I recieved at weekends for example, over the past 6 years - but that has been answered.

Thanks all.

footyguy

May I ask, why do you leave your computer on all night?

I remember reading on here someone saying just how much they use. It's not much in the scheme of things, when when you start multiplying it out by the hours of unused time it does amount to quite a lot of wasted energy (and so money)

I checked mine using a plug in monitor and was astounded just how much the base unit used when I thought it was turned off (not just in sleep mode). That was not including the monitor or any of the other accessories like printers, etc.

Now it all gets turned off at the wall when not in use.
I suggest you do likewise for the 8 hours you are asleep and the 11 hours a day you suggest the house is unoccupied.

cookies_and_crem

My husband requires it for his hobby/second business. It's to allow for transfer of information over a couple of hours, but as we wanted to take advantage of the cheaper rate he would allow for the updates to happen in the middle of the night. I wouldn't leave a PC on all night for no reason.

It is always switched off in the morning ironically!

cookies_and_crem

Incidentally, I have found out that we are using 12974kwh of energy pa. I'm going to research how this compares.

Fire_Fox

cookies_and_crem wrote: »

My x2 4 hour washer/dryer cycles and PC on all night will now incur lower rates so I'll be happy enough with that. In all fairness we probably use most of our electricity after 7pm - TV, cooker, oven (we dont have breakfast at home), computer, heater, kettle numerous times, things charging and lights... many lights which we must get better about turning off.

The big energy guzzlers are not usually media gadgets and lighting, it's heating and hot water and the tumble dryer. Lighting can add up a bit if you have an awful lot of 50W+ halogen lamps (MR16 and GU10 types) which a small number of modern flats do.

I believe the average day/ night split is about 60/40 but it's possible to do better. Since your shower is off the immersion and not an electric power shower, if you have the storage heaters and immersion on at night rate (if your meter timer clock was correct) and put timer plugs on the washing machine and tumble dryer you should be able to get most at night. IMO tell the energy company that is what you were doing if they try to estimate your bills.

dunney66

I've just discovered that my economy electric meter is wired incorrectly. Some of my storage heaters are using the normal meter instead of the economy meter. Currently in discussions with EON to resolve this.

As well as taking meter readings every day for 5 days I also took meter readings at 10 mimute intervals during the evening. For the 1st hour I switched everything off and unplugged it and then switched on 1 storage heater. Instead of my ecomony meter turning round it was my normal meter.

Maybe worth doing the same if you think your bills are high.

cookies_and_crem

Just a quick update.

Thank you for all of your advice. As I suspected our bills were high due to the timer being out. Southern electric have calculated a refund of just under 400 quid. While our consumption is not much less, the rate at which it has being consumped has reduced, so we are using more electricity at the night rate.

Thank you all for your help and advice.