Massive Gas Bill - Advice please?

simonjewell

Carrot007 wrote: »

Well from your reads something odd has been going on since Late November., with not so much in Feb.

Looking at the 28 Day view there are some very big use days.

Looks like something is being left on a lot for some days.

Best thing to do now is keep an eye on it and investigate what is occuring on one of the big house days. Does the handheld unit have a current useage "speedo" type display you can keep a look at as much as possible?

I know that's what it looks like, but nothing is being left on - as I said, we only have a gas hob and a hot water heater. On one of those days we were out of the house all day.

According to the meter I used no gas yesterday - hooray, free gas! It's the large jumps in usage that's cost me dearly. I'll keep taking meter readings every day. Maybe if the meter reading doesn't change over a few days that will be enough to convince Sainsburys that the meter is faulty. Maybe I'll encounter one of the high usage spikes.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.

Dird

how is 4000 possible -_-" we only have the heating on a couple hours/day and have used 5000kWh since late December even with an electric cooker

[Deleted User]

I take it that the smart meter was initially installed by British Gas. Sainsburys is British Gas and the smart meter should be working OK . I was with Sainsburys and it continued to work fine as a smart meter. Just one small point..there are 8 numbers on a metric meter, have you left a leading zero out of the reading you posted and are you taking the reading from the monitor and not by pressing the red button on the smart meter itself ? Smarts will show a small spike on the IHD with the 26p a day standing charge being deducted

simonjewell

Dird wrote: »

how is 4000 possible -_-" we only have the heating on a couple hours/day and have used 5000kWh since late December even with an electric cooker

Electric underfloor heating

I take it that the smart meter was initially installed by British Gas. Sainsburys is British Gas and the smart meter should be working OK . I was with Sainsburys and it continued to work fine as a smart meter. Just one small point..there are 8 numbers on a metric meter, have you left a leading zero out of the reading you posted and are you taking the reading from the monitor and not by pressing the red button on the smart meter itself ? Smarts will show a small spike on the IHD with the 26p a day standing charge being deducted

Yes, the original meter was installed by BG. The reading on the monitor matches the reading on the actual meter. I have been pressing the red button to get the reading, and the black button to update it. Current reading on the meter is 04657.341 - exactly the same as yesterday morning.

[Deleted User]

The gas meter sends its reading only as far as the electric smart meter and that is responsible for sending the reading through to Sainsburys so maybe its the electric smart meter not communicating. Besides that tho it looks like the gas meter has stopped.. that is very rare, and you have proved that that is the case if the reading has nt budged even one hundredths of a unit after any usage. Sainsburys will organise a new gas meter and at the same time hopefully sort the electric meter communication to BG out.
Is nt the years energy usage a total of gas and electric kwhrs ?

Dird

simonjewell wrote: »

Electric underfloor heating

Very fancy :-o so what is your electric bill like with that?

simonjewell

sacsquacco wrote: »

The gas meter sends its reading only as far as the electric smart meter and that is responsible for sending the reading through to Sainsburys so maybe its the electric smart meter not communicating.

Sainsburys told me that they don't use smart meters - we only get readings done by people coming to the house. I don't think ours has ever sent a reading out. They told me yesterday that if they take the smart meter away for fault finding it would be replaced with a non-smart (dumb?) meter.

Besides that tho it looks like the gas meter has stopped.. that is very rare, and you have proved that that is the case if the reading has nt budged even one hundredths of a unit after any usage. Sainsburys will organise a new gas meter and at the same time hopefully sort the electric meter communication to BG out.

Proving the fault is one thing - next step will be to get Sainsburys to reduce my bill!!

Is nt the years energy usage a total of gas and electric kwhrs ?

Guess so - although my gas usage is low at around 4000kWh, the leccy is high - about 13000kWh and rising every year.

simonjewell

Dird wrote: »

Very fancy :-o so what is your electric bill like with that?

High. Almost 15000kWh last year, which is up about 20% from the previous year. Amazingly we aren't disputing that side of the bill!

Dird

simonjewell wrote: »

High. Almost 15000kWh last year, which is up about 20% from the previous year. Amazingly we aren't disputing that side of the bill!

Oh OK. Since Dec 18th we've used 1474 elec, 5167 gas. Will be interesting to see how the gas rate compares to the next 4 months

Rubidium

sacsquacco wrote: »

Is nt the years energy usage a total of gas and electric kwhrs ?

I thought smarts were supposed to easy to use and idiot proof!

The display is clearly showing GAS usage over 12 months: