really big gas/leccy problem :(

Smamfer

is someone growing weed in your house?

lstar337

Possible cause of high electricity consumption: Teenagers.

Do you know what electrical items they are using?

Teenagers tend to use a bedroom as a total living space, so kind of like your house being split into flats, all with their own high consumption.

Also, teenagers tend to not understand/care about bills and how much things cost.

Are your teenagers boys or girls? Girls usage will likely be showers. They take long showers (for long hair I'm told by OH), which is bad news if your shower is electric. Boys usage will likely be games consoles and big TV's that the use way into the early hours!

You make have wonderfully efficient teenagers, but this isn't usually the case!

lstar337

Tissy1 wrote: »

I can't even afford to keep my children warm, they are freezing cold every night.

Electric blankets are a cheaper form of overnight heating.

I saved over 10kWh a night by turning off a storage heater in favour of an electric blanket which keeps us warmer than the heater ever did!

Once you find out where your electric is disappearing and put a stop to it, you might want to consider electric blankets.

sniffles

Forgive me if I have missed something, but nowhere do you mention a fridge freezer. I had quite a large one running in my back porch and it was never full. When I replaced it with something much smaller my electricity bill almost halved.

smartn

Istar is absolutely right about teenagers. I try like mad to keep my electric bill down but I still reckon on a good month over winter we use £80 a month in electric. Things like electric cooking (daughter always baking), tumble drier use (Son plays lots of sport so washing machine and tumble drier on regularly), lights always on (despite me going round and turning off and converting majority to LED), TV and console use, electric blankets always left on (still cheaper than heating rooms by gas etc). By all means try and reduce your usage but with teenagers it isn't always that easy!

paddyrg

Monthly payment to clear outstanding balance
£92.00
Monthly payment for future energy use
£618.00

This looks like someone/some system at the supplier has made a revised estimate and got it way out. I had this once, an energy company's computerised systems would quadruple my monthly payments for no good reason, I'd call them and they'd reset it until the next year...

As for cutting down on leccy try...
When everyone is out of the house, turn off all the appliances you can find and see if the wheel is still spinning. If it doesn't, there's something else afoot (eg you have an extension in the shed and some neighbour has plugged into it) and you can start tracking it down.

Tissy1

I went round the house and turned everything off then sat for 10 minutes with a torch watching the meter and it stayed the same. I have a normal fridge freezer, nothing big, about 12 years old.
Spoken to the kids about everything off at the plug, they all know things are a bit bad at the moment.
I still haven't had my new bill yet, so can't phone up to try to sort it out.
I am going to get an electric blanket for my daughter, she has no heating in her room so was using an oil filled radiator.
I am also going to wait til my bill comes and phone the CAB see if they can help.
I just need a much lower monthly payment, and I will pay back what I owe as much as I can afford. I am worried that they will either cut me off or try to put in a prepayment meter.

Consumerist

Tissy, the bill you posted indicated you had an Actual electricity reading on 19/01/2013. Do you have an Actual gas reading for 19/01/2013?

If you have, there's a chance we can estimate your annual usage for gas.

From the bill and your recent readings, it looks as though you have used about 7,600 kWh of electricity over the year to 21/01/2014. On the tariff indicated on that bill, annual cost would be about £1,230 pa which would be about £103 per month for just the electricity.

It might be handy for us to see if we could do the same for your gas and then estimate a realistic annual cost and DD for your total energy consumption.

Tissy1

That is all I have, because the gas meter is external, I was told by npower that I just needed to read the electric meter and leave the reading out, the guy would have access to the gas and would do that himself. I have never even checked anything from npower, just carried on paying the direct debit that they set. It went up from about £100 to £150 a couple of years ago, I just thought that was right according to the readings I was leaving.
They came about 3 months ago, I left the reading on show, then last Thursday I got another card again, I just wrote on it that I had phoned with the readings.

Consumerist

It seems odd that an Actual reading was taken for electricity on 19/01/2013 but not for gas. Is it possible that an Actual gas reading for that date is shown on another bill?

Edit
If you can't find an Actual gas reading for 19/01/2013, when was the last Actual gas reading shown on a bill and what was the reading?