Is this too much?

oscarpaterson

Oh so I am a newbie to this but after writing my budget for next year, enough is enough!.

My husband and I bought our first home in 2011. I know everyone else's electricity bills have also rocketed but mine is £150 a month. This is just for our lighting and electricity. We cook with gas and heat including water :beer:with oil. We live in a brand new property, 4 bedrooms and there is just the two of us. We do use a dishwasher apx once a day and the washing machine averaging every other day.

I've got nobody else to ask and i've no clue, is this alot and if so? what can I do about it?

Clueless

JSR

Yep that's an awful lot. First thing to do if you haven't already is to use a comparison site and switch to the cheapest tariff. Second thing is to find out what's using so much electric. Good candidates are immersion heater being left on 24/7 and high energy spotlights/downlights being left on for long periods. Those things can be 50 W EACH!

Serendipitious

Check your freezer too. I once had an older one (a free cast off from someone who had downsized) but it turned out to be massively expensive to run. Fortunately I found out at the end of the first quarter after I installed it.

matelodave

Try reading the meter every week and turning off as much as you can. You can then see what uses it all and can take steps to minimise your consumption


Do you need to run the dishwasher every day, we can usually get away with every other day. Likewise, are you filling up the washing machine or running it with partial loads. What about using a tumble dryer
Turn off stuff at the wall rather than leaving it on standby - TV,s Sky boxes Computers, X-boxes even some washing machines and other appliances consume electricity when they are on standby rather than properly switched off.


Make sure that the immersion isn't switched on, take shorter showers and turn lights off when they aren't being used.
As said above, halogen spotlights can use quite a bit - we've changed 10 x 50 watt spots in the kitchen to 10 x 4 watt LEDs, saving 460 watts = 5-6pence for every hour that they are on (and they are on a lot at this time of the year)


£150 a month for electricity sounds like a hell of a lot if you aren't using it for heating as well - we get away with £85 a month and we are all electric - heating, light, washing, cooking, hot water etc

oscarpaterson

Thank you. I'm going to call npower tomorrow and check the tariff.

Then I'm going to do a meter reading and check use over a week.

Good tip re the dishwasher- we tend to put pans in there as well so I'm going to stop doing that and hand wash those.

matelodave

you could try an energy monitor - our libraries in Cambridgeshire lend them out for two weeks at a time.


We wash our pans separately but be careful that you don't flush gallons of hot water down the sink whilst doing it otherwise you won't be saving all that much and could end up increasing your water bill if you are metered.

macman

A DD of £150 pm does not mean you are using £150pm. Post your actual kWh annual electricity usage , as £££'s monthly tell us nothing about actual consumption.
Nor do we know what tariff you are on -but clearly something is badly wrong, as you are using about 450% more than the UK average of 3,400kWh. Based on an cost of £1,800pa, yours is about 15,000kWh.