Spending £2300 a year on electricity

Kendowned

Hello MSE forums, I have been helping my partners mother with her bills trying to cut costs and such and have got round to looking into her electric bills. Currently, she pays around £190 a month this seems really high! I did a comparison on Uswitch and the tariff she is on with SSE comes up as the best available surely this can't be right.

She is on the 1 year fixed v15 tariff with SSE and the bills are calculated based on using an estimate of 17000kwh per year looking on averages for google this seems very high. the home is electric only with no gas 5 people living at the property. is there a chance she has been overcharged?

D_M_E

ESTIMATE - that is the problem.

She might use more, she might use a lot less than the ESTIMATE.

She needs to get 2 meter readings a year apart - ACTUAL readings, NOT estimates - and put those into a comparison site and see what comes up.

Also, being all electric, is she on an E7 tariff with an E7 meter?

If so then a reading for both day and night usages would be required.

EDIT - also make sure, if an E7 meter, that the supplier has not transposed the readings and is not charging day rate for night use and vice versa.

Robin9

Have you got access to her bills ? Look back until you can find one with ACTUAL readings on them; read her meter and then do some basic maths to determine the annual consumption.

17000 suggests electric heating. What form does this take - storage rads or panel heaters.

Kendowned

Thanks for your responses, the meter is an E7 with an E7 tariff. I don't have access to her bills as she hasn't kept them I will probably ask her to contact her provider and ask for the last reading which she has said could have been years ago! is there a chance she could be refunded if she has been overcharged over the years?

The heating is electric and I believe the radiators are storage based on a google search of the model number of the one in our room.

Robin9

First step - read those meters

Second - ring her supplier and give the readings to them.

That will generate a new bill and a re-assessment of her DD

Third - When you've got that bill you will have a reference number and you can set her up for online billing.

Fourth -Read her meter at least every month.

Cardew

What type of house? and how good is insulation?


The only way to determine if 17,000kWh pa is too high is to read meters. Once you have those readings you can determine if a rebate is due - normally a reduction in the DD - or money is owed.


It is perfectly possible for 5 people to use 17,000kWh pa in an all electric house.

Biscuit_Tin

Kendowned wrote: »

Hello MSE forums, I have been helping my partners mother with her bills trying to cut costs and such and have got round to looking into her electric bills. Currently, she pays around £190 a month this seems really high! I did a comparison on Uswitch and the tariff she is on with SSE comes up as the best available surely this can't be right.

She is on the 1 year fixed v15 tariff with SSE and the bills are calculated based on using an estimate of 17000kwh per year looking on averages for google this seems very high. the home is electric only with no gas 5 people living at the property. is there a chance she has been overcharged?

Why don't you think it is correct that the tariff she is on is cheaper than anything else currently available?

The tariff she is on was being offered about 6-8 months ago; prices generally have risen quite dramatically since then.

spettifer

Unlikely. We have just bought an electric only house. It has a 6kw electric flow boiler feeding a wet underfloor heating system (we are still trying to get the temps right on the 5 thermostats) and an immersion heater on a storage tank for hot water. It's a small 4 bed house, part 200 year old stone and cob, part 25 year old extension. There are 2 of us and we both work from home. In 40 days we've chewed through about 3000kwh which rather shocked me, but given we probably had the temps set too high it'll be a little on the high side of normal. Granted it is winter (even here in Devon) so we are unlikely to use as much in the summer but that's an average so far of 2400 kwh/month so we're looking at the thick end of 300-350/month in electric right now. We expect to average around 225-250 a month over the course of a year however (at least I hope so). I don't think 190 a month for 5 people is excessive in an all electric house - in fact I only spotted this post as I came on to do some digging to see what experience people had of electric combo boilers in an effort to reduce our costs!

matelodave

The problem with electric flow boilers is that they use leccy when heat is required which is usually during peak times so it's not always possible to benefit from an e7 oe e10 tariff, especially as the peak rate cost of these tariffs is considerablt higher than a single rate tariff.

I'd suggest that a 6kwh boiler is flogging it's heart out virtually all the time as it's probably not man enough to heat the whole place, our 11kw heatpump is just about enough for our place

Ideally you need to try and work out when you need heat and try to calculate which sort of tariff would suit you.

If you've got underfloor heating then there's usually a bit of thermal storage in the floor mass (unless it's an overlay system) so you may be able to tweak the heating times to take some advantage of the stored heat.

If you've got multiple thermostats then you could possibly adjust the heating time & temperatures of the different zones by using programmable stats.

We have eight underfloor zones (one for each room) each controlled by it's own programmable stat so they only get heated as required ( eg Lounge all day, Study from about 9-5, Bedrooms & bathroom 7-9am and 9-10pm, kitchen for an hour or so in the morning, lunchtime and dinnertime). We find that we dont need them set to above 19-20 degrees because the whole place is warm from the floor upwards

We have an Air Source heat pump which is very slow to respond so although we increase heat at these times we dont allow the house to go below 17 degrees because it takes too long for the house to recover if we let it get too low. Just to raise it a couple of degrees takes a couple of hours unless I override the flow temp which increases the running costs considerably.

We are on a single rate tariff and the unit runs almost continuously at this time of the year but at low water flow temperature of between 30-40 degrees. It's an averagely insulated, double glazed 140sq.m bungalow and our annual average consumption for all our leccy is 7200kwh.

This year it's going to be around 6900kwh, on our Eversmart single rate tariff that'll cost about £865 (£72/mo).

As we've got a heatpump we qualify for RHI (Renewable Heat Incentive) which gives us around £720 a year for seven years.

Robin9

Kendowned - any progress ?

spettifer

I agree with what you say wholeheartedly. We have 5 thermos (I'd like more but it is what it is) and I'd love a heatpump but can't afford it right now, plus I suspect the amount of pipework required to get it into the heating system would make it less worthwhile. Still, all questions for the engineers I will need to talk to. Problem with RHI is you need to be at least D rated to qualify and I don't think we will be (high-ish E at last look in 2015), so would need more work and more expense beforehand.

Anyway, this is a bit OT. I still don't think the bills the OP mentioned are that high all things considered with 5 people wanting hot food, showers, clean clothes etc all on electric, but I'm sure they could be improved, but probably not without some investment. Modern electric radiators are way better than storage heaters. A mate of mine has a business selling them and I scoffed at him when he told me but I went with him to one of his customer sites before and after and I was impressed enough. Plus they look nicer. But that all comes at a capital cost of buying and installing new units and those old storage units weigh a ton and need disposing of which adds expense which the OP's family member might well not want to incur. Cheaper (and probably more sensible) to investigate insulation options, possible extra lagging on pipes and tanks etc which might be available using the green deal to help with costs, or could be done themselves as it's not a difficult job.