Help! excessive electricity and gas consumption

RelievedSheff

What we don't know is whether the OP had a debit on her account which is being clawed back by the provider.

Robin9

Oscar - more info please.

For how long have you been paying this £300 - were you perhaps underpaying and the supplier is now playing catch up as the end of the fix approaches ?

Gerry1

A smart meter won't help you, it's a red herring. You just need to read your meters regularly and think in annual kWh (determined from actual readings) and annual costs.

Forget DD monthly amounts, they're wonky. The culprits are likely to include some or all of these:

• estimated readings;
• DD set too high and building up a credit balance;
• DD reclaiming previous underpayments; and
• DD increased because consumption was higher than forecast.

Sea_Shell

That consumption seems very high to me.

We're also 4bed detached, but no kids and we average 12000kwh Gas, and 1700 kWhs Electric per year.

I've been monitoring it for about 4 years and it's fairly stable, with the "Beast from the East" being the exception!!

oscarpaterson

Hello apologies for the late response.
So I have been looking at the meter readings that i have given the company as far back as I can see on the website. Since October 2018 until 30th August 2019 the gas meter has gone from 30155 to 31668 so increased by 1513 and the elect from 30384 to 34232 so 1513 and 3848 respectively. When I have annualised this then its 1778 per year and 4307.
I might have paid less a year or so ago and I'm going to go through all the bills and work out what's happened.

Gerry1

oscarpaterson wrote: »

Hello apologies for the late response.
So I have been looking at the meter readings that i have given the company as far back as I can see on the website. Since October 2018 until 30th August 2019 the gas meter has gone from 30155 to 31668 so increased by 1513 and the elect from 30384 to 34232 so 1513 and 3848 respectively. When I have annualised this then its 1778 per year and 4307.
I might have paid less a year or so ago and I'm going to go through all the bills and work out what's happened.

No good unless it's all in kWh.

zagfles

oscarpaterson wrote: »

Hello apologies for the late response.
So I have been looking at the meter readings that i have given the company as far back as I can see on the website. Since October 2018 until 30th August 2019 the gas meter has gone from 30155 to 31668 so increased by 1513 and the elect from 30384 to 34232 so 1513 and 3848 respectively. When I have annualised this then its 1778 per year and 4307.
I might have paid less a year or so ago and I'm going to go through all the bills and work out what's happened.

Multiply the gas by about 11.2 to get kwh (it'll vary a bit depending on calorific value but 11.2 is a good approximation for metric meters).

So annualised gas is about 20,000kwh, in fact probably a bit less as main use will be in winter, not Sept/Oct which are probably lower than average.

On that usage, you should be paying about £110 a month on any decent tariff. So why are you paying £300 a month?? Either your tariff is a rip-off, you're paying on bad estimates, or you owe from previous bad estimates. Or something else is wrong. Are your bills based on actual readings or estimates?

oscarpaterson

A combination of both, i have been pretty poor at doing readings I admit but I am going to go through everything with the above advice so I can work out what might have gone wrong.

I have been back paying for the past but got to zero and two months later gave another reading and I'm in debit of £700

Apologies I am a bit of a novice at this one!

oscarpaterson

The bills from Octopus include the calculation I see so I will also look at that.

Husband was suggesting were get a gas engineer in to check everything is ok. I did laugh.

Gerry1

oscarpaterson wrote: »

I have been back paying for the past but got to zero and two months later gave another reading and I'm in debit of £700

Apologies I am a bit of a novice at this one!

Not being funny, but are you sure that you're really in debit?

My bill shows a balance of -£150. It means I'd have to pay minus £150 to clear it, i.e. I'm really in credit. It sort of makes sense, but it's easy to be misled by a negative balance.