Electricity bill is sky high... don’t think it is right?

amylondon

Hi All

I’m actually writing this on behalf of my boyfriend. His electricity bill with EDF is £197 per month, for a 2 bed, 2 bath flat. My bill at my 2 bed, 2 bath flat is approx £60 a month.

He doesn’t have any “extra” electric items, and doesn’t use any of them more than the average household.

Washing machine - used every other day always on “quick wash” and not a hot dry
Dishwasher - used MOST days but not every day
Television - probably used every day
Fridge - it’s a small fridge, one that fits under the kitchen surface with a tiny freezer inside
Electric cooker - used probably twice a day to cook normal amounts of food...
He has underfloor heating which hasn’t been used since winter and even then, he turns it off during the day.

I just can’t pin point why it is so high? His flatmate can be a bit rubbish with turning his bedroom light off but I can’t imagine that makes THAT much difference!

He has contacted EDF who basically have been useless and don’t offer guidance on figuring out why it’s so high - Even though it is more than the average cost of a 5 bed house. They’ve installed a smart meter as we thought this might help with what’s using most etc but it only splits by morning/afternoon/evening and daily splits.

I feel like there must be some error or fault occurringC he lives in a block of flats and rents, so I’m wondering whether they’ve got other flats linked to his electricity (unlikely I know). Is there any way of working out exactly what is making it cost so much??

Thank you!

molerat

How many kWh is he using per year ?
Is he paying off debt ?
When he moved in did he change over the account to him with an accurate meter read?
Is he on E7 and the registers are the wrong way round ?
Is it his meter that is being charged to him ?
Is the meter serial number on the bills the same as the meter that is connected to his flat ?


There is so much that he can do himself to help find out what is going on. Switch off at the fuse box and see if the meter is still increasing. Turn on as much as he can - heating, oven , kettle etc - the meter should go nuts. If the in house display does not go nuts then it is not his meter that he is paying for. He needs to take daily reads for a week or two to see exactly what is being used.

Robin9

This may also be meter reading error.

When he moved in did he ring the existing supplier and give them the meter reading (and take a photo). He will be on a standard (ie expensive) tariff unless he switched suppliers

Has he been reading his meter and giving them to his supplier? Are his bills Estimated (E) or Actual (A). Read his meter NOW and give it to the supplier.

[Deleted User]

It is a smart meter installed now so that will rule out transposed readings of the day and night rates now. Smart meters should not make any mistakes in rates and timings , but with the old meter that could well have happened. With people who have Night Storage heaters or the even more expensive underfloor heating, when the rates get mixed up it results in much higher bills for genuine multi rate electric meter users.
Those who have Eco 7 meters but now have gas central heating, a transposed reading results in a much lower bill.
Possibly you have some old bills or online bills where you can look at the readings to see if they were billed for the correct period.
Using lots of cheap rate night units and getting them billed as if they were day rate is where the increase in charges begins.Suppliers who notice this could keep it quiet and just introduce a catch up bill by upping the direct debit.It s fair for them to do that because of a billing error
The method for checking if you have the correct meter is to switch kettle on or something high usage and watch for the little red light on the meter to pulse faster than slow when kettle is switched off. Observing the digits moving wont work on most digital meters unless they show tenths of a unit
Its an extremely common thing for suppliers to bill multi rate meters wrongly ,so common that BBC Watchdog once ran a story about suppliers and meter readers who can t tell night from day leading to one OAP gathering up a 2k extra bill

welshmoneylover

amylondon wrote: »

Hi All

I’m actually writing this on behalf of my boyfriend. His electricity bill with EDF is £197 per month, for a 2 bed, 2 bath flat. My bill at my 2 bed, 2 bath flat is approx £60 a month.

He doesn’t have any “extra” electric items, and doesn’t use any of them more than the average household.

Washing machine - used every other day always on “quick wash” and not a hot dry
Dishwasher - used MOST days but not every day
Television - probably used every day
Fridge - it’s a small fridge, one that fits under the kitchen surface with a tiny freezer inside
Electric cooker - used probably twice a day to cook normal amounts of food...
He has underfloor heating which hasn’t been used since winter and even then, he turns it off during the day.

I just can’t pin point why it is so high? His flatmate can be a bit rubbish with turning his bedroom light off but I can’t imagine that makes THAT much difference!

He has contacted EDF who basically have been useless and don’t offer guidance on figuring out why it’s so high - Even though it is more than the average cost of a 5 bed house. They’ve installed a smart meter as we thought this might help with what’s using most etc but it only splits by morning/afternoon/evening and daily splits.

I feel like there must be some error or fault occurringC he lives in a block of flats and rents, so I’m wondering whether they’ve got other flats linked to his electricity (unlikely I know). Is there any way of working out exactly what is making it cost so much??

Thank you!

Is the immersion heater on 24/7?

anniecave

How many units is he using per day since the smart meter was installed?

With the smart meter you should be able to check easily whether it is your meter or not (turn on a kettle, does the usage suddenly increase) and does turning everything off reduce everything to zero?

Even if there were possibly transposed day and night reads previously this would not cause a bill of £197 per month in the summer.

Worth checking the immersion heater, if it's on all the time, check that the water isn't too hot, that would cause some electricity use...


With the smart meter also you should be able to work out what is causing the bills, turn everything off and then see how much the usage changes. With some meters there's the option to show usage as kwh used rather than £ cost. The kwh per hour would be useful, as you could turn items on and off for periods of time to see how much they actually use.

chrisw99

Definitely something wrong there, we're a family of 4, older kids so they have TVs on all the time, dishwasher/washing machines probably at least twice a day, I would say above average users of electricity, but the highest I've ever had to pay in one month was £98 and that was last December when we had a new boiler fitted so had temporary electric heaters on for a few days instead of the central heating.

£197 a month?! are you sure that's not for dual fuel with gas as well?

Brewer20

Definately something amiss there @£197 pm I would be having fits of rage and blowing a gasket if my meter was telling that sort of usage.
Not enough info here, how long has he been paying that amount per month, can he change or do a comparison to change suppliers?


Just for comparison, well no comparison really, I pay Igloo £48.38 pm for my gas and electricity in a 3 bed semi.

[Deleted User]

amylondon wrote: »

Hi All

I’m actually writing this on behalf of my boyfriend. His electricity bill with EDF is £197 per month, for a 2 bed, 2 bath flat. My bill at my 2 bed, 2 bath flat is approx £60 a month.

He doesn’t have any “extra” electric items, and doesn’t use any of them more than the average household.

Washing machine - used every other day always on “quick wash” and not a hot dry
Dishwasher - used MOST days but not every day
Television - probably used every day
Fridge - it’s a small fridge, one that fits under the kitchen surface with a tiny freezer inside
Electric cooker - used probably twice a day to cook normal amounts of food...
He has underfloor heating which hasn’t been used since winter and even then, he turns it off during the day.

I just can’t pin point why it is so high? His flatmate can be a bit rubbish with turning his bedroom light off but I can’t imagine that makes THAT much difference!

He has contacted EDF who basically have been useless and don’t offer guidance on figuring out why it’s so high - Even though it is more than the average cost of a 5 bed house. They’ve installed a smart meter as we thought this might help with what’s using most etc but it only splits by morning/afternoon/evening and daily splits.

I feel like there must be some error or fault occurringC he lives in a block of flats and rents, so I’m wondering whether they’ve got other flats linked to his electricity (unlikely I know). Is there any way of working out exactly what is making it cost so much??

Thank you!

You mentioned the word "flatmate " . That brings up warning signals. A lady I know has a large house with 11 flats who she rents out at on a bills gas/electric included and was incensed to see the size of the electric bill.
We both went round each flat and asked to see inside and all three of the ones who admitted us had extra electric heaters in the room making it a tropical hothouse even with gas central heating.
I would ask your boy friend to look around the other flat for 2 or 3 bar electric fires. Some people like their rooms very hot and have them running all night..Ditto with electric showers. A long slow 25 minute shower every day adds up

chrisw99

How smart is the smart meter? Never had one so don't know about them, but can it give you a daily usage? If so, start tracking it religiously every day, write down the current usage at say 8am every morning (suppose you don't need a smart meter for this, could just write down your meter reading at the same time each day).

If you do that, you can then maybe look at the numbers and look for patterns, is it constant every day, do weekends go a lot higher, does it go lower when his flatmate goes away, etc.

amylondon

Wow thank you everyone for your advice. There are no other heaters in the flat and the heating has been off since Christmas (definitely hasn’t been on lately... heatwave!!) I’m not too good at this sort of thing - basically if we switch everything off, one of us watches the smart meter whilst the other turns each electronic appliance on one by one then will we be able to see what’s going on?

Are smart meters always accurate?

I have no idea what’s going on as it is extortionate and so frustrating you have to keep paying that amount even though you know it can’t be right.

Thanks!