Sky High Electricity Bill

AriaJane

Hi,
I have received my electricity bill this morning for period January 19th - April 19th. It is £2,189.68.

As you may imagine, my heart collapsed into my stomach when I received it. I called my husband who nipped home to look at the meter reading, and since 19th April's reading (which wasn't an estimate) to today it has increased by a further 2,234 Kw. I estimate that to be in the region of £400.00 of electricity in 29 days.

I have called the electricity company who insist it's an oil filled radiator that's causing the issue. I have refuted that since it's never caused an issue before. They are sending out an Engineer to look at the meter to determine if it's faulty, but they haven't given me a date yet.

My heart still residing itself in my stomach, I was hoping any of you can suggest what on earth has caused this.

To give you background, we are renovating a 3 bedroom house, which includes re-wiring. As each room is being done, we're hooking new wiring into an new RCD unit.

Still connected to the old RCD unit is:

4 x pendant lights upstairs - rarely used since we haven't started up there yet and it's not habital to use as bedroom space etc.
1 x pendant light in the porch.
1 x pendant light in downstairs bathroom
1 x strip light in the kitchen
1 x cooker
Usual kitchen appliances...kettle, washing machine etc.

Connected to new RCD unit is:

4 x lamps in livingroom / bedroom (we're camping there while we renovate around us)
2 x ceiling pendant lights
1 x self thermostatically controlled hot water tank (3kw)
1 x oil radiator (the plugs in)
1 x TV
1 x sky box
2 x phone chargers

The hallway lights have been pulled and we've only just bought the new lighting for it, which isn't installed yet

The 2nd sitting room has just been plastered, so although we've pulled the old electrics from it (in February) and re-wired the room, they're not yet hooked up to the new unit until we paint the room. It's literally wired hanging from the ceiling and walls waiting for their fixtures.

We do not have a heating system. There's no gas in the area and the storage radiators that were there have all been disconnected a long time ago and binned (hence the need for the oil filled plug in radiator)

Lastly, we had SSE in on 28th December to move the electricity box from inside the front door to outside, so it was a brand new meter put in on that date.

We're literally living out of 3 rooms. We've come from a 'proper' house with all the mod cons and never ever received a bill like this there.

Please help me trouble shoot this through my tears

Tiexen

Turn everything off then check meter as you turn them on

AriaJane

Thank you, we're planning on doing that over the weekend, I just can't see why any of the equipment we've got plugged in would ever cause over the average 1 years usage in a 3 month period and if I was missing something.

spiro

Well that equals 77kwh/day.
To use that amount it would normally need to be something that heats like your heaters or the hot water tank.
Read the meter as frequently as possible and record the readings so you cab see the use per hour.
After say a day if you are using about 77kwh/day try switching off the hot water tank for 24hrs and see how much you use. If this doesn't cause your consumption to drop don't use heater for 24hrs.

Robin9

Is the meter being read correctly ie if the meter says 001234.9 it should be entered as such and not 1234 or even 12349


PS do your bills show the readings associated with the meter change ?

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Check this
1 x self thermostatically controlled hot water tank (3kw)

AriaJane

Hiya, the readings are correct, when I checked after installation of new meter in December at it was sitting at 00027, now it's 14557.

House_Martin

AriaJane wrote: »

Hiya, the readings are correct, when I checked after installation of new meter in December at it was sitting at 00027, now it's 14557.[/QUOTE
If you have a one bar electric fire you can do your own usage check before calling out the supplier. They will come and do a meter check but will charge you at least £70 call out fee if the meter turns out to be ok, so its worth making sure before you call them.
A one bar electric fire will use 1 kwh of electric in an hour or one unit on the meter. Switch everything else off,including freezer and check in the hour if the meter has advanced by only 1 unit exactly

System

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth wrote: »

Check this
1 x self thermostatically controlled hot water tank (3kw)

Even if the immersion heater was on 24 hrs a day, this would only equate to 72 kWhs of usage a day. That said, the homeowner would hear kettling in the cylinder and the hot water coming out of the taps would be boiling hot.

Personally, I would take a hard look at the oil filled heater. If the thermostat on this fails then it will just keep pumping out heat which may go un-noticed in a property that is being worked on. I suspect therefore that the high usage was down to the heater and hot water re-heat. If the heater is now unplugged, and usage hasn't fallen back to normal, then the meter is squarely in the frame.

AriaJane

House Martin, we don't have any heating at all, other than the one radiator in our camping out room.

Hengus, I agree RE the HW tank. I did some rudimental sums with pen and paper and figured out that if there was something wrong with that, then that would be coming out at around 60/70p per day. Husband took a note of the time the meter ticked over this morning and he's going to check it again when he's home from work, work out the average wattage/h and then we'll switch things off one by one over the weekend and eliminate.

Our bedroom was always cold in our last home, so that oil radiator was used there 24/7 and we never had a bill like this. I'm absolutely not refuting its poor energy efficiency and we're definitely going to be eliminating it from our enquiries, I just can't believe this would be the ultimate culprit.

I just don't understand it. Google tells me that the average bill for a 5 bedroom house spends circa £1200 per year. We've used double that in a 3 month period and we're living out of 1 room, with a bathroom and kitchen. I'm just baffled. We'd literally have to be having everything running 24/7 for this kind of bill, and even then, I'm not convinced that it would come to over £2k for the period.

System

AriaJane wrote: »

I just don't understand it. Google tells me that the average bill for a 5 bedroom house spends circa £1200 per year. We've used double that in a 3 month period and we're living out of 1 room, with a bathroom and kitchen. I'm just baffled. We'd literally have to be having everything running 24/7 for this kind of bill, and even then, I'm not convinced that it would come to over £2k for the period.

There is a clue in the word average. For something to be average, there must be many homes than use less and many that use more than the average figure. It is also worth noting that 70%+ plus of the annual energy usage total can be consumed over the Winter months. I know that it is not wholly relevant to your situation but we use gas. Our daily gas consumption for water heating and cooking now averages about 7kWhs per day. Looking back to the days from we were hit by 'The Beast from the East" we had two days when 101kWhs were consumed.

If insulation is poor, then the heater may never reach the set temperature and it will just go on consuming energy. For the temperature in the property to be stable, the heat loss from a property must be equal to that being put in.

The good news is that it should be a simple thing to investigate. If it is the heater which is the culprit, then cancel the meter check as you will be charged if the test reveals no fault.