Shocking electricity bill!

Mrs_Pinkerton_Trunks

I'm new here so be gentle

Just received our quarterly bill from Npower - £570 for the period 12th March-5th July! According to them we have used over 5 THOUSAND kilowatts in 3 months :mad: We are an end terraced house, not a power station, plus we are all out at school or work most of the day so how they can say we've used that much is beyond me.

I have been in touch with Npower who say this must be a mistake and told us to read the meter, which had then leapt 193 kilowatts in the space of 6 days (from the day the bill was produced!) The meter has lept 64 kilowatts overnight! I am absolutely distraught as we simply cannot pay £200 per month for electricity. Any ideas? Npower is sending someone to check the meter but not for 3 weeks and it's going round and round and round in the meantime. It must be a mistake, surely?

Yours by candlelight

Mrs PT

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

I am assuming you don't have storage heating??

You are sure you are reading the meter correctly?

It is just about imposible to use 64kWh overnight with any sort of normal usage.

The first thing to do is switch off everything in the house and watch the meter; obviously it shouldn't be moving.

Gradually switch on items to see what starts the meter moving fast.

bristol_pilot

64 kWh overnight could be storage heating, but the excessive cost implies that it is being charged on the wrong tarriff.

193 kWh in 6 days - could be an immersion heater that has been incorrectly wired so that it is permanently on. I have seen this before. Does there always seem to be plenty of hot water available?

You are in an end terrace - check the wiring. Any suspicious wires heading through the wall towards your neighbours property?

missile

Have you just moved in or is this much higher than your previous bill?

Mrs_Pinkerton_Trunks

Thanks for your replies.

We have gas central heating - no immersion heaters, no storage heating, and the boiler is set to hot water only at the mo as it's summer (supposedly!) and the central heating has been off for about 2 months now.

House was rewired two years ago and we've lived here for 9 years. Our average bill was about £100-£150 per quarter - we pay £50 per month for electricity but last quarter had a £153 rebate as we were so much in credit.

We had a our meter upgraded last July and between July 06 and Dec 06 we used 1000 kilowatts - last quarter we supposedly used just over 5000! Mental!

We've not got any new electrical equipment and the only things that are permanently on are the fridge and freezer.

Is there any chance the meter could have gone a bit crazy and decided to go for an impromptu spin? I'm absolutely baffled by this bill!

anniecave

assuming the meter reading on your march bill was more or less OK, it sounds like your meter has gone a bit haywire!

jamesd

Please do follow Cardew's suggestion and also try switching off all of the circuit breakers or pulling all of the fuses to verify that that causes it to stop moving. There's a remote chance that there's a fault in something that could lead to a fire or an electric shock.