Electric Bill has doubled question

wilsbowski

Hi first post here and please forgive me as it is a bit long winded.

I've been living in a rented 1 bedroom flat for the past 5 years and have been using npower as my electricity supplier in all this time. The flat is just electric, no gas.

Anyway from around June 2010 I have been paying around £45 a month. I'd imagine that this is probably a little high compared to most 1 bedroom flats, but I do have a lot of multimedia devices and have never been very careful when it comes to conserving electricity.

However I received my half yearly bill on Monday and noticed that from February, I had been paying £80 a month and that from next month they were planning to charge me £110! Quite how I hadn't notice this increase I'm not really sure.

Thing is I really can't put my finger on anything that I am doing differently that would have caused this spike. Apart from maybe one possible thing…

Since the flat is just electric that means that I have electric radiators and most winters I have avoided using these as I have been a bit fearful of the price. This year however I cracked in January and tried to turn it on. My heating was broken though so I contacted my housing association and they had an electrician come out to fix it.

The electrician seemed to do a bit of a bodge job as far as I am concerned though, as rather than having a working thermostat where I could set the heating to come on at certain times, I just had to turn the radiator on at the wall. Figuring I would only be using the radiator for a few weeks out of the year this didn't really concern me.

However now that I've noticed that the bill increase happened just after this, I'm a bit concerned that whatever the electrician did to 'fix' my heating has meant for it being "always on" despite me not using the radiators since February.

Does this sound like it could be a viable reason for this increase? I really can't see anywhere else that this energy could be going but also don't really know anything about how electricity works or is charged

If so, would there be anyway for me to try and claim this money back through my housing association and how would I prove this is the case?

Thanks

Wywth

wilsbowski wrote: »

Hi first post here and please forgive me as it is a bit long winded.

I've been living in a rented 1 bedroom flat for the past 5 years and have been using npower as my electricity supplier in all this time. The flat is just electric, no gas.

Anyway from around June 2010 I have been paying around £45 a month. I'd imagine that this is probably a little high compared to most 1 bedroom flats, but I do have a lot of multimedia devices and have never been very careful when it comes to conserving electricity.

However I received my half yearly bill on Monday and noticed that from February, I had been paying £80 a month and that from next month they were planning to charge me £110! Quite how I hadn't notice this increase I'm not really sure.

Thing is I really can't put my finger on anything that I am doing differently that would have caused this spike. Apart from maybe one possible thing…

Since the flat is just electric that means that I have electric radiators and most winters I have avoided using these as I have been a bit fearful of the price. This year however I cracked in January and tried to turn it on. My heating was broken though so I contacted my housing association and they had an electrician come out to fix it.

The electrician seemed to do a bit of a bodge job as far as I am concerned though, as rather than having a working thermostat where I could set the heating to come on at certain times, I just had to turn the radiator on at the wall. Figuring I would only be using the radiator for a few weeks out of the year this didn't really concern me.

However now that I've noticed that the bill increase happened just after this, I'm a bit concerned that whatever the electrician did to 'fix' my heating has meant for it being "always on" despite me not using the radiators since February.

Does this sound like it could be a viable reason for this increase? I really can't see anywhere else that this energy could be going but also don't really know anything about how electricity works or is charged

If so, would there be anyway for me to try and claim this money back through my housing association and how would I prove this is the case?

Thanks

Has your usage doubled? You can only find that out by taking meter readings.

Forget about what you are paying monthly by DD.

If the heater was on constantly, surely you'd know about it. If it's not on, it's not consuming any electricity.

Try your local library to seeif they will lend you an electricity monitor to see where and when you are using electricity if you really can't fathom it out any other way.

Nada666

wilsbowski wrote: »

Anyway from around June 2010 I have been paying around £45 a month. I'd imagine that this is probably a little high compared to most 1 bedroom flats, but I do have a lot of multimedia devices and have never been very careful when it comes to conserving electricity.

You imagine incorrectly! Most would think £45 is ridiculously low when it included heating and cooking.

£80 or £110 (to claw back arrears from when paying £45) seems reasonable. Then again, you have not been using heating - so £45 is high for devices (but okay once including cooking).

I don't know what you mean by radiators always on - is there heat coming out of them? You can not unknowingly use £65 of electricity for heat. What sort of heaters are they - storage or panel?

wilsbowski

Apologies for the delay, I've been looking at my old bills for the usages.


It would appear that I have just been gradually using more electricity....

05/07/11 - 10/01/12 = 1916kwh
10/01/12 - 09/07/12 = 1862kwh
10/07/12 - 10/01/13 = 2486kwh
11/01/13 - 03/07/13 = 2997kwh

Not really sure what I meant by heating being on constantly. I guess what I was trying to say that with the thermostat not working correctly, whether electricity would be going to the radiators all the time, sort of like a TV on stand by. Obviously this is not the case as, like the above shows, my usage just seems to be slowly creeping up.

Thanks for your advise, I guess I just need to be a bit more careful and probably look for a better deal, rather than come up with crazy radiator conspiracies

macman

You still haven't told us what sort of heating your have-are they just wall mounted convectors?
If the 'stat isn't working correctly, the heater won't shut off at the set temp and will continue to heat the room as long as it's on. There's no 'standby usage'.

molerat

You also have not stated whether the readings used for bills are Estimated or Actual / Customer. As you are in a flat is the meter being read actually yours ?

matelodave

You can't rely on just what the electricty bill says unless you read the meter regularly.

Estimates & guesstimates just mean that you don't pay for what you are using. Read your meter every month and give the reading to the supplier. If you record the info yourself then you can see if your usage is creeping up and you can take steps to economise. You will also know how much you should be paying.

Take control, don't let the supplier dictate.