Cutting Electricity Costs

lynseydee

We had the shock of our lives the other day when I received a letter from our energy supplier saying they were increasing our monthly payment from £70.00 per month to £107.00 per month (this was off the back of me phoning to see if I could reduce our monthly payment slightly as my husband is currently out of work). I phoned them to see why they wanted to charge us so much a month to be told that we are using £96.00 of electric per month :eek:

I am now going around making sure things are turned off and we're not using things unnecessarily but I still can't work out how we use so much electric. Does anyone know what uses a lot of electric and how we might be able to bring our bill down?

Cardew

Presumably you heat with electricity? If so that will be the bulk of your consumption.

There are lots of threads and websites that give detailed information on this.

The main offenders are any appliance that heats with electricity. Tumble dryers, immersion heaters, washing machines, heaters, cookers etc.

An old/faulty fridge or freezer can use a lot.

Electronic goods tend not to use as much(except plasma TVs) but it adds up if they are left on long periods.

Your best bet is to get one of the monitors from Aldi or Lidl and you can go around the house and check various appliances.

Poppycat

The only way to do it is too see how much electric kwh you consume over a given period, shop around for another supplier using one the energy search sites and inputting your postcode, current supplier and usage. Also turn off appliances when not in use and dont use high powered white goods like tumble driers if you do

Also see if you can apply for a grant for insulation as that may help cut your energy needs down

dellxps

it may also be useful to check that you are on the cheapest tarrif with your supplier. An online tarrif may save you more, i was on a capped plan for ages with high bills, switched to online and saved lots of money.

lynseydee

Cardew, we actually have gas and electric and so our heating is run on gas. We did have our fridge freezer that wasn't working properly but has now been replaced. The only "offender" is the washing machine and I tend to do my washing when I get home from work apart from when I do some washing on a weekend. We do have a plasma but it always gets turned off completely when we're not watching it.

Poppycat, our current supplier told me how much electric we had used for a given period over the year and I tried to see if we could get a cheaper quote but they were coming up around the same price. I think our loft is already insulated. Is there any other way of insulating the house? (sorry really stupid when it comes to things like this).

Dellxps, I think they actually changed our tariff as one tarrif was cheaper for gas and another was cheaper for electricity. She did say that the plan we weren't on would save us about £40.00 for the year and I think she changed us over so I think I shall have to check.

Poppycat

lynseydee if your on a low income it could be possible that you may get help with insulation else where, like cavity walls assuming you have them and dont have any insulation, also fitted draft excluders etc

The loft may need upgrading depends when it was done as standards have changed.

Plasma tv do use more power than say LCD's

We pay SP £70 per month and it going down to £60 as we make sure we have most lights with energy bulbs it does make a difference. We dont use CT yet we have a log burner but we have paid £160 for logs, £110 last week but that should see us until Spring I hope. I also collect wood so reuse

We also got loft redone in insulation, draft proof where we can

Cardew

Well if you use gas for heating, a monthly bill of £70(let alone £107) is huge, especially if you are out at work. That is regardless of the tariff you are on.

You really need to carry out some investigations why your consumption is so high. The average is 3,300kWh per year; yours must be about 3 or 4 times that consumption.

Poppycat

We used from 25th Sep to 25th Oct £31 of electric and £9.74 in gas (mainly baths, washing) I monitor every month the consumption

Thats 4 a family of 4. We have several pc's on a evening and a couple of tv's on. Most of lights are low energy we wash 4-5 times a week and have 2 freezers on

lynseydee

I knew £70.00 was quite high but when we first went with our current supplier they want £40.00 for each energy. I phoned up to reduce our payment and she was going to reduce it to £50.00 per month but as we hadn't been with them for a full year I thought this was a bit low so suggested £70.00. I wanted to reduce this again to £60.00 which then brought on the letter increasing our payment. Electrical items in use are:-

Plasma tv
Amp for surround sound
Washing machine
Dishwasher
American fridge freezer
2 pcs
power shower
LCD tv in bedroom
Most of our lights arn't energy saving as most of the rooms in our house have funny bulbs and not the standard type "bulb shape".

That's all I can think of that runs off the electric. I did think about monitoring what electric we use on a monthly basis as even I can't believe we use £96.00 a month. We did phone our supplier to see if they would send somebody out (as advised by a work colleague who did the same) to see where we were spending so much money but apparently they don't do that, hence asking you knowledgeable people on here.

espresso

lynseydee wrote: »

I knew £70.00 was quite high but when we first went with our current supplier they want £40.00 for each energy............

So how many kWh are you actually using? This was mentioned in the 3rd post and until you know that, you can't calculate what you need to be paying to cover your actual usage. Read your meter.

Poppycat

WE have some fairly none standards bulbs in house but we paid to get them replaced ie candles, spots, gu10's it cost us about £100 but it will be worth it in the long run

My average consumption per day for last month was 12 kWh of electric in Jul it was 16 but because I am more careful and also have energy bulbs in the consumption has gone down