Electric cooker causing huge bills?

LindaLou72

Hi, I'm looking for some help and advice!

We live in a 3-bedroom semi in the UK Midlands and have our gas and electricity with British Gas, on a standard tariff (14.01p/kwh). Have recently been informed by them that we need to increase our direct debit for electricity from £70 per month to £120. We've always paid between £60-70 pm until now, though it's partially my fault for allowing them to take estimated readings.

I recently got a smart meter installed, and got a portable electricity meter to check the usage of appliances. They mostly seem average in their usage, and we don't have anything that ought to be a big drain. Just one PC, a washing machine, no dishwasher, and we don't use electric heaters. We heat the house with gas, and those bills are below £60 pm.

I think it may be our cooker that is causing the problem? But I can't connect the electricity meter to it because it just switches on and off. I investigated as well as I could while I cooked dinner tonight - can anyone tell me if this seems normal, or if something sounds wrong here?

We got our electric fan-assisted oven and induction hob installed a little over 3 years ago with a new fitted kitchen. Both appear to be working normally. The oven is a Hotpoint UH53KS and the hob is a Nef T1B40X2.

I cooked for half an hour, using one ring - the largest - and the oven at 180C. By my estimation, having watched the smart meter, that cost us 26p. It seems like a lot?

The background wattage on the smart meter before I cooked was at about 346 (5p per hour) and it stayed that way; we'd used £1.52 worth of electricity (which includes a standing charge of 20p per day) by that time (5:30 p.m.).

When I turned just the oven on, initially our usage went up to 43p per hour (2,383 watts). Then I tested just the hob ring on its own, and that was initially 53p per hour (2,923 watts). After both had been on for 10 minutes, the usage was switching on the meter between 44p and 90p per hour (2,480 and 4,970 watts). Again, that seems - incredible? I'm positive there was no other major usage in the house during that time.

After 20 minutes of cooking, we'd used a total amount of 21p worth of electricity in the house, and 10 minutes later, the total stood at 26p.

If this is abnormal, does it mean my oven and hob aren't working correctly? What would be the best thing to do? These aren't luxury models, they are supposed to be good reliable standards. But £120 a month for electricity when we don't use it to heat our house, don't have an electric shower or anything else that should drain it - I can't understand.

Thanks for reading through this, and comments and advice are very welcome.

Carrot007

> We've always paid between £60-70 pm until now


Prices have been increaseing for years. Does you new figure include a debt to pay back as well? (As in this is more than just your useage for underpayment).


How many people, what makes heat. Unless you are a restaurant tehn I doubt the electric cooker makes that much of a deal. More think heating water and the house.


And TBH as a 3 bedroom semi I would love for my bill to be as cheap as £120 a month!


Though I at least know I am above average in usage. Just a thought but since this place is cheaper than my last place by about 2000 kwh a year on the leccy due to one thing, do you have an electric shower you use a lot? Really it made than much difference to me.

coffeehound

Hmm, if you were using 30p a day for cooking, that would only account for about £9 a month. It must be something else..

LindaLou72

26p was for one meal (the oven on for half an hour, and one hob) and I usually cook 2. Others in the house sometimes cook theirs separately. There are 3 of us - husband and myself, and our 16-year-old.

LindaLou72

3 of us - myself, husband, and our 16-year-old. Not aware of a debt, but we are coming off several months of estimated bills. The smart meter is showing that we're currently paying on average £2.50 per day for electricity, but that's minimal usage.

No electric shower, and the house is heated by a gas combi boiler, which also heats the water.

PasturesNew

LindaLou72 wrote: »

I cooked for half an hour, using one ring - the largest - and the oven at 180C. By my estimation, having watched the smart meter, that cost us 26p. It seems like a lot?

Oven power/kW and cost to run is often overlooked by people, sometimes, people trying to cook "a cheap meal" will have spent more on the oven running cost than the food they put in it.

Carrot007

LindaLou72 wrote: »

3 of us - myself, husband, and our 16-year-old. Not aware of a debt, but we are coming off several months of estimated bills. The smart meter is showing that we're currently paying on average £2.50 per day for electricity, but that's minimal usage.

No electric shower, and the house is heated by a gas combi boiler, which also heats the water.

Which sounds reasonable to me. I have hardly been here for most of the day and mine says £2.33 right now, obviously including the gas (which I assume you are not using much of anyway right now, I had a shower this morning, and maybe a bowl of washing up!).



£3 a day for all is a low use day for me. A lot more in winter (over double?, why can't they just give me the stats on a spreadsheet!).


Unless you have a list of actual reads vs what they say it is hard to say what is going on. Debt is hidden on non prepay tarrifs (as in they just put up the DD). I take reads every now and then, useed to be monthly before I was on a smart meter. However once being on them I checked for a few months they were gettign it and still check quarterly.


I assume your DD is £200 a month? (single fuel just confuses). It does sound high. Mine is £140 in a similar house though just the two of us. But without knowing any "debt" catch up it is hard to comment (and your single fuel thing! (sorry I would not know my single fuel costs unless I logged on)).

Talldave

The wattage sounds OK - remember once the oven's up to temp, it goes off (apart from the fan) and then comes back on again intermittently to keep the oven at 180.


I think maybe you need to look at your "base" load. By 5.30pm you'd used over 10kWhr, which seems a lot. Have you got a 75" OLED TV on all day?


Is that 346W a typical figure? If so, you need to look at what is really on all day and find out where the cost is coming from.


That all said, cooking all the meals whilst the oven's on is obviously going to be better than 3 separate sessions. Re-heating something in the microwave doesn't use much extra electricity as it's only on for a short time.

coffeehound

Have you got halogen downlighters or spotlights? They can use a lot when left on.

Carrot007

PasturesNew wrote: »

Oven power/kW and cost to run is often overlooked by people, sometimes, people trying to cook "a cheap meal" will have spent more on the oven running cost than the food they put in it.

All what I have said asside, looking at this it is worth it to say, electric rings are damn expensive. But not that expensive unless you use them for hours.


The government can take my gas away when they device cheaper costs for electric cooking and heating! And hopefully that won't be a mess like smart where they said to the suppliers, do this, we are not going to advise how. Get together and decide before implementation!

matelodave

You really need to understand your energy consumption and not get hung up about the indications on the In Home Device connected to your smart meter.

In a lot of cases the tariff info is wrong and just watching the instantaneous reading is enough to frighten anyone.

You would be much better off reading the meter (not the IHD) and recording your use in kwh rather than £'s on a weekly basis so you can understand what is going on. Make sure that you check your bills/statements regularly rather than just hoping that it's all sorting itself out.

Even with smart meters some suppliers aren't using the data for billing purposes and still guesstimating your consumption - if that's the case get the bills corrected, don't accept estimates.

If you check your bills regularly and properly you wont get into the situation where your DD is miles too low because you'll know yourself whether it's paying for your consumption or not and you can do something about it before it gets out of control.

Induction hobs are probably the most efficient form of hob cooking but sticking the oven on for several hours to heat and reheat stuff isn't - learn to eat together so you aren't cooking several meals a day and use the microwave oven rather than the big one.