Electric usage has quadrupled, what to do?

Kayleighb1

this is the reading i submitted
11213



Sadly its looking as though i have taken the correct reading.

Last reading taken was May 2017 and that one was 5311. My reading.

House_Martin

Kayleighb1 wrote: »

this is the reading i submitted
11213



Sadly its looking as though i have taken the correct reading.

Last reading taken was May 2017 and that one was 5311. My reading.

Yeah thats a Secure Liberty meter.correct reading as you say

Kayleighb1

so pp are thinking that this is consumer usage rather than a possible meter fault?

Robin9

Print off a copy of the photo, send it to edf and ask them to amend their records.

You say in an earlier post - no communication, no bills . Do you manage you account online and get the paperless discount for doing so. ?

matelodave

Yep, I used to be busy with fulltime work - I was also away for weeks at a time. My wife was at home on her tod, looking after littleones and working as well.

She always managed to check the bills and statements and get them corrected if they were wrong and we didn't have the interweb to make it really easy either.

My daughter also has a list of excuses as long as her arm about why she can't manage to do stuff, unfortunately it comes back and bites her when she's least expecting it. She's slowly getting better but its a long haul. She spends half her life on FaceAch and other on-line stuff but now manages to squeeze in checking the energy bills since she had a problem like yours

Carrot007

philng wrote: »

6000 kwh is massive.

Or as I would say average and reasonable.

The official average gets skewed down by the lot of silly low properties that outweighh high usage ones. That's the problem with averages.

Kayleighb1

i manage it online, there has been no email communication. I assume that paperless literally means that, but they should still be emailing me with bill updates and requests for readings etc.

they have not asked for a meter reading until now. i have checked and it says i should be receiving quarterly requests.


Matelo, it isn't excuses and feel free to ask why my husband hasn't bothered as well. I have fulfilled what the energy company asked of me. had there been bills to check i would have checked them. I have heard nothing from EDF since last May when they requested readings, i gave them, and they subsequently gave me a bill and amended my direct debit.

why assume that everyone knows that things will go wrong and they should be taking readings more often than they are asked to? Why assume that people are ignoring communications?

are you taking pleasure from making this difficult situation harder for me?

Kayleighb1

Carrot007 wrote: »

Or as I would say average and reasonable.

The official average gets skewed down by the lot of silly low properties that outweighh high usage ones. That's the problem with averages.

so 6000KWH is the norm for a 3-bed property over a 9 month period? if so maybe i just need to suck this up. just a shock at how much it has changed.

matelodave

6000kwh is not the norm if you've got gas central heating & hot water. The average is around 3500kwh a year (thats around 10kwh/day) so for 9 months anywhere between 2500- 3000kwh could be reasonable.

I suggest that you start reading the meter weekly for a month or so (and recoridng it on a spreadsheet) to see when and where it's all going (daily is even better but becomes a bit of a chore). The more often you read your meter the easier it is to see when something goes wrong. It's nigh on impossible to back-track over nine months.

You'll then see if your average is anything like 10kwh a day or significantly more. If it's more then you need to investigate further to see where it's all going and you can only do that when you've got your baseline. You can then check by turning stuff on and off to see what's using it all or whats been left on that shouldn't be.

If your meter is registering a lot more than the appliances that you are using (a 1kw heater will use 1kwh in one hour) then you might need to get the meter checked, however most energy firms will charge around £70 unless the meter is found to be faulty so you really need to do some investigating first.

Kayleighb1

thank you, i will start recording as you suggest and then if my averages are showing that sort of usage when scaled up to 9 months, i will have to accept it and move on.

EDF have suggested shutting everything off and seeing if the meter still increases, but the only way i can do that is via the fuse box. cant access my fridge power for instance.