scottish power bill

mama27

Hi
I'm sure this has been covered before, so apologies! There are 9 people in our house and our bill from scottish power is 360 pounds this quarter (it was 600 last quarter!) I run the washing machine and dishwasher at night but usually run the washing machine twice during the day and the dw once.
We don't have gas, or central heating.We don't leave anything on stand-by but obviously with kids this is not an exact science! We have energy saving light bulbs.
I looked on uswitch and can save 152 pounds a year with npower but i guess we can't swap while we owe them money?
i'd appreciate some advice

Rebecca

Cardew

Are you on Economy 7 - if not there is no point in running appliances at night.

What are your consumption figures in kWh?

How do you heat if no Central Heating?

mama27

Hi Cardew
Don't really understand this, but
1190 night units (economy 7) @ 3.883
3344 day units @ 8.348
standing charge 92 days @ 14.86

We have a coal stove in lounge and an elec heater on landing.

Hope this is the info you wanted!

Cardew

Obviously you are on Economy 7 but you really need try to get your percentage of units used at night to be higher - that is a 7 hour period somewhere between midnight an 8am (normally).

Presumably you heat water with an immersion heater - in the hot water tank? If so, that should come on during the 7 hour period. Although with 9 people you are going to use a lot of Hot Water.

You should avoid having the storage heater 'topping up' during the day if possible.

If you can't get more electricity used at night, you may be better off switching to a 'normal' tariff.- not Economy 7. Just enter your yearly figure of kWhs into a comparison site and see how that works out.

mama27

thanks very much, will try and act on that advice. our water heater is constantly on, but will try only heating @ night.

anniecave

if you are on fixed direct debit you may be able to switch suppliers, I don't know what the criteria is for how they decide if you are on direct debit.

We managed to switch from npower while owing money because they'd vastly underestimated our meter readings and we were paying by fixed DD and I didn't get around to telling them the correct readings until the point when the switchover took place!