How much more expensive in winter?

spadoosh

Trying to do a bit of planning with utilities. Gas and elec with first utility.

Any ideas of a rough % difference between charges and DD over the winter months? At the moment DD is £55 and charges for last month where £66 (however lots of adjustment from previous bills for actually submitting a meter reading for the first time in a few months).

Thinking its not going to be too far away but also thinking ill end up overpaying a bit for the year. DD where reduced prior to meter reading from £66. So theres a bit of credit on the account. And OH is on maternity so trying to pull in as much as possible even its a little bit.

Also cant believe how cheap it is. When we moved in to the house (ok on a bad tariff about 5 years ago) we where paying nearly 3 times that!

footyguy

spadoosh wrote: »

Trying to do a bit of planning with utilities. Gas and elec with first utility.

Any ideas of a rough % difference between charges and DD over the winter months? At the moment DD is £55 and charges for last month where £66 (however lots of adjustment from previous bills for actually submitting a meter reading for the first time in a few months).

Thinking its not going to be too far away but also thinking ill end up overpaying a bit for the year. DD where reduced prior to meter reading from £66. So theres a bit of credit on the account. And OH is on maternity so trying to pull in as much as possible even its a little bit.

Also cant believe how cheap it is. When we moved in to the house (ok on a bad tariff about 5 years ago) we where paying nearly 3 times that!

Simple answee is it varies by customer

However, these graphs brom Ovo indicate how average usage (in percentage terms) varies by month

https://www.ovoenergy.com/binaries/content/assets/documents/pdfs/understanding_the_link_between_your_direct_debit_and_energy_consumption.pdf

(for some reason, that link never posts correctly for me - remove the space in "and" and it should work )

matelodave

We use around £750-£800 a year in energy which give us a DD of £65 a month.

In the seven summer months between April and October our average consumption is about £35-£40 a month = £280 which leaves £500 for the five winter months. But December and January can easily use around £120 to £140 each depending how cold it is.

It all works out in the end, but a lot depends on when we start a contract.

Starting in April we have a reasonable buffer for when winter starts (7 x £65 = £455 but we only use 7 x £40 = £280 so we are about £175 in credit which gets used up during the winter).
Starting one in November or December means that by April we've racked up about £175 of debt which takes the rest of the year to pay off.

I've got it all worked out (I keep a spreadsheet to make sure that I'm on track) but some energy companies don't like seeing that amount of debt and start mucking about with the DD payments - Scottish Power were the worst sometimes halving the DD and sometimes doubling it, usually after about three months. We had no trouble with First Utility or GB Energy I just asked them to leave it alone as my forecasts are a lot better than their guesses.

spadoosh

Think im working it out at a couple of quid over what i should be paying by DD. Will leave it till the DD matches the charges and then try and recall any credit.

Thought i was using a lot more than usual but just had a new boiler so must be offsetting it.

[Deleted User]

@spadoosh
When I changed my boiler (which also removed the hot water storage tank), my gas usage went from 1460 units (cubic meters) down to under 800 in the first year. And has been low every since.
So changing the boiler can be effective in saving fuel.

Terry98

footyguy wrote: »

https://www.ovoenergy.com/binaries/content/assets/documents/pdfs/understanding_the_link_between_your_direct_debit_and_energy_consumption.pdf

(for some reason, that link never posts correctly for me - remove the space in "and" and it should work )

It worked for me when I removed %20%20 in the middle of "and"

So providing you use Gas to heat the house it seems the Gas you use is approximately 60% for the five months between Nov and Mar and 40% for the other 7 months.

Although Electricity is slightly higher in Jan and Dec I think it would be safe to assume you could average it out equally throughout the year.

[Deleted User]

@spadoosh
Going forward I would suggest taking monthly meter readings and putting them in a spreadsheet so you can calculate your own energy split on a monthly basis.
I do this and it is interesting to see the pattern of usage over the years.