Gas and electricity shocker!

theshoefairy

Need some help here I think and I will try to be as concise as possible.

Basically I live in a 3 bedroom semi. Up until October 2013, there were three of us here. My mother then passed away and her partner moved out so now I live here alone. I took care of the gas and electric bills that are sent quarterly. From July to October when there were three of us here each of these were about £160. Yesterday, I received the gas an electric bills for the period of end of October to end of Jan and I had a shock. Gas bill is £342 and electric bill is 222.09! I don't understand this at all as it is just me living here!

Can anyone offer advice? I am also looking to switch to a cheaper tarrif so are there any that could be recommended? A friend of mine is part of a family of 4 and he told me that he pays £30 month each for gas and electric with eon.

Many thanks

liam8282

We are a family of 4, in a 3 bedroom house, and we pay around £100 per month for gas and electric.

£60 that your friend says that he pays, sounds too low.

July to October, 4 months, 3 summer months, so gas and electric will be lower, but £160 for 4 months, again sounds too low.

I can only suggest that you were on estimated meter readings, which have now been caught up with actual readings, the difference being why your bill has gone up by so much. It was too low Jul-Oct, so this has been added on the Oct-Jan bill.

theshoefairy

Thanks for the reply. Sorry, from july to oct gas was 160 and electric was 122, that's almost 300 so it may be right based on what you have said. Are you paying 100 a month for both?

rogerblack

It is in principle quite possible with a newly constructed well insulated property to approach 60 quid a month total energy bills.
Properties vary _massively_ in energy demand.

liam8282

Yes about £100 a month, for both gas and electric together, don't know the split between the two.

You need to look at your bills and see what usage they were based on, see if they are actuals or estimates.

liam8282

rogerblack wrote: »

It is in principle quite possible with a newly constructed well insulated property to approach 60 quid a month total energy bills.
Properties vary _massively_ in energy demand.

There are a lot of variances, property, supplier, usage, etc.

But I would still say £60 a month is very low and not an average amount.

liam8282

These tables might help to see average usage:

https://edfenergyuk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/976

StuC75

Were the readings upto date for those times or just estimates that have now been caught up..

Also going into winter is the colder time of the year so usage goes up -- i.e. I only use gas for heating & water - my gas is £10 month in summer, climbs to about 70/80 in autumn and over £100 in January \ feb until I turn heating off -- but a pay £60 a month by DD and the plan is in credit for winter and goes back to £0 for march..

Also are you using a clothes drier more?..

Your scenario is the problem with paying on Quarterly bill, you need to be putting more aside in the warmer months to help for now...

zeupater

liam8282 wrote: »

There are a lot of variances, property, supplier, usage, etc.

But I would still say £60 a month is very low and not an average amount.

Hi

That's the problem with averages ....

We're not average and our dual fuel DD is below £30/month (total usage just over £40/month including logs) ....

Coinciding with a change in occupancy levels, to me it looks like someone else had the role of 'thermostat' (house & hot water)controller and used to go around shutting doors, turning the TV and lights off and unplugging anything which wasn't being used ...

Having said that, even July to October (assuming it to be a quarter) being £280 is pretty high at over £90/month, but £564 for a mild winter quarter is well within the realm of silliness. What really stands out is the electricity at £222, which is higher than the total energy cost for the previous quarter. If you are heating the house with gas (£342/ ~8000kWh for a mild winter quarter - quite high!) then there should be very little difference in electricity usage between the two, so this is likely the main source of your problem (assuming the readings to be actuals).

This isn't anything to do with low efficiency light-bulbs etc, it's much more basic (although you should really look into energy saving measures later) .... You need to look for the obvious such as leaving the electric immersion heater on constant, which overrides the GCH H/W heating (which is much cheaper) ... is there an thermostatic electric heater in a bedroom/utility (etc) which is being left on, an outside halogen floodlight, under-tile electric heating in the bathroom or something similar .... this should be done straight away!

The average UK dual fuel household should use around 3300kWh of electricity and 16500kWh of gas/year .... that's what you need to check, usage, not cost, because the cost is always changing. Roughly talking this would be around £500 for electricity & £700 for gas, so liam8282's £100/month is pretty much spot-on before anyone starts to look at ways to seriously reduce usage. To place into perspective, on the figures given, the OP's current DD should be well over £140/month ...

Once the main electricity gulping culprit has been identified and rectified, the OP can start looking at efficiency measures ... but that's another story ....

HTH
Z

km1423

Our leccy bill is high this quarter, bit of a shock. I have put it down to using tumble dryer so much more because it has been too wet to hang laundry outdoors.

Saying that having checked our annual usage, we are only slightly over in our daily KW usage.

Read your meters regularly, for a month, say every saturday, and submit the readings. Then read meters monthly.

If you receive estimated bills, read meters and submit. If you don't keep on top of this problem you will receive another nasty shock.

ollski

I'm a family of 4 in an 1850 3 bed semi , we have quite a lot of halogen downlighters and use lpg but my bills total about 170pm in gas and 120 in just leccy. Obviously we use more in winter than summer but these are the average over the year.