Significant Increase on Gas Usage - last two quarters

Windflower

Hello - I wonder if anyone can help. We're with British Gas and had a Smart Meter fitted on 1st December 2018. The first quarter usage after the Smart Meter was fitted (Jan-Mar 19) was pretty comparable with the same quarter in 2018, just a small increase which we would normally expect with it being the winter months.

However (all data taken from our online account):

Apr-Jun 19 usage is 2139 kWh (compared to 610 in Apr-Jun 18) - an increase of 251%
Jul-Sep 19 usage is 1412 kWh (compared to 283 in Jul-Sep 18) - an increase of 399%

Two adults in a small three-bed terrace, the Smart Meter is for GAS only. We had a new kitchen fitted in June, and now use electricity to cook instead of gas, so we would have thought the usage would have decreased slightly if anything! No heating has been on in the house since the Spring (we have a warm air system which is serviced annually on a British Gas service contract, last serviced in June at the same time the cooker gas was capped off by British Gas). We have on average one to two showers each per day, and do kitchen washing up twice a day (all using gas heated water!). That's it!!

We're scratching our heads as to how we are using so much gas (not to mention the increase in our gas bill charges!)

Any ideas please?

Thanks in advance....

Robin9

Is BG actually using the Smart Readings ?

Read your meters NOW - watch out for the decimal point. How do these compare with the bill

Look at the meter and note its serial number - is this what is on your bills ?

Windflower

Thanks Robin - I'll check that out as soon as I get home later, and try and go from there...

Windflower

Update on the above: BG are indeed using the new meter for Smart Readings, and these are correctly reflected in the meter readings and recent bills. (The serial number is also correct).

Yesterday evening when I got home from work I made a note of the meter reading, and can confirm that we have used 28 units (311kWh) since the meter was read on 19th August (to prepare the last bill).

Does anyone think that 28 units in 14/15 days is an excessive amount, considering all we are doing is using the boiler to heat water for a couple of showers a day, plus hot water for washing up (breakfast and evening meal)?

We managed to speak to BG last night (after being on hold for over 30 minutes), and although they couldn't access the part of our account which shows our usage (which we can see clearly on line?!?), they did think this last couple of quarters' costs were much higher than the same periods last year.

They have directed us to their Energy Efficiency team for further investigation, though we don't know what this well entail at this stage!

Fingers crossed!

Talldave

Do you have a tank, or is it a combi boiler? If it's a combi it seems high.

If it's a tank, how big is it? What temperature is the tank thermostat set to? What's the insulation on the tank like? Is the hot water "on" 24/7? How old is the boiler? All these parameters will affect the gas used. Consumption seems a bit high, but maybe you're heating the water thermonuclear hot and then adding lots of cold?

Windflower

I've taken data from all of our last bills and plugged it into a spreadsheet - details below. You can see the difference between consumption on the current and previous quarters! (Not worried about the March 18 increase as this would have included the "Beast from the East" when we whacked the heating up full blast!).

Bill Date Period Usage kWh Used % change
23 Dec 17
9 Sep 16-23 Dec 16 2407
9 Sep 17-23 Dec 17 2048 -15%

9 Mar 18
24 Dec 16-9 Mar 17 1979
24 Dec 17-9 Mar 18 2965 +50%

23 Jun 18
10 Mar 17-23 Jun 17 1128
10 Mar 18-23 Jun 18 982 -13%

10 Sep 18
24 Jun 17-8 Sep 17 184
24 Jun 18-8 Sep 18 134 -27%

1 Dec 18
9 Sep 17-30 Nov 17 1295
9 Sep 18-30 Nov 18 1124 -13%

NEW SMART METER FITTED 1 Dec 2018

19 Feb 19
1 Dec 17-19 Feb 18 2928
1 Dec 18-19 Feb 19 3720 +27%

20 May 19
20 Feb 18-19 May 18 1614
20 Feb 19-19 May 19 2839 +76%

19 Aug 19
20 May 18-19 Aug 18 259
20 May 19-19 Aug 19 1971 +661%

We're now getting an engineer to check the Smart Meter on 4th October. The chap my hubby spoke to has agreed that the increase (or perceived) increase in usage is a concern. He reckons it's not a leak as that would show a lot more usage. Apparently the meter will be changed, and the calibration looked at. If they have a larger than 2% error, they admit liability!

I can't wait to see what happens here... :eek:

In answer to Talldave; we have a Warm Air system, quite old, but serviced annually by BG. The warm air part only works when we set the thermostat for heating - and we've not used this since mid-April... We had the gas cooker removed in June during our kitchen refit (now electric), so the only thing that uses gas now is the hot water. We do have a standard tank which is lagged, when we use the hot water the burner fires up, and the pilot light is on constantly. The temperature of the water we use is not boiling hot, just a bit of cold needed. Even if we were heating it nuclear, would it really use this much gas? :(

GunJack

Windflower wrote: »

NEW SMART METER FITTED 1 Dec 2018

19 Feb 19
1 Dec 17-19 Feb 18 2928
1 Dec 18-19 Feb 19 3720 +21%

20 May 19
20 Feb 18-19 May 18 1614
20 Feb 19-19 May 19 2839 +43%

19 Aug 19
20 May 18-19 Aug 18 259
20 May 19-19 Aug 19 1971 +87%

(

your %ages are wrong.... they're actually worse than you're stating..e.g. May-Aug19 is 600+% increase on May-Aug 18 :eek:

Windflower

Gunjack: Thankyou Yep - my formula was wrong! So that makes it all significantly worse than originally worked out..... :think: (Original post amended!)

Talldave

Windflower wrote: »

...
In answer to Talldave; we have a Warm Air system, quite old, but serviced annually by BG. The warm air part only works when we set the thermostat for heating - and we've not used this since mid-April... We had the gas cooker removed in June during our kitchen refit (now electric), so the only thing that uses gas now is the hot water. We do have a large boiler which is lagged, when we use the hot water the burner fires up, and the pilot light is on constantly. The temperature of the water we use is not boiling hot, just a bit of cold needed. Even if we were heating it nuclear, would it really use this much gas? :(

At our previous property, the 170 litre hot water tank was taking around 100kWhr a week to heat.


At the property we've just moved to, with a 300 litre (but very well insulated) tank, we initially seemed to be using 130kWhr, but last week I tweaked the tank stat down from thermonuclear to very hot and consumption was just 52kWhr.

EDITED: Your consumption for just hot water heating appears to be average on the new meter. There's something wrong with the old meter readings. How on earth could you only use 134kWhr of gas in the period 24 Jun 18 - 8 Sep 18?


Which leads me to my next question of how you are getting these figures for year to year comparisons when the bills are not always issued on the same dates every year?

Windflower

The data on consumption and year to year comparisons is taken from our bills; On the page where you get the "gas use in detail" there is a table which shows how the gas you have used between the two dates (the period leading up to the bill date) compares with the gas you used between the same two dates the previous year. I wish I could post a picture, but can't figure out how to get a URL!

I have no idea how we only used 134kWhr of gas in the period 24 Jun 18 - 8 Sep 18 - but that's what the bill says, and like I say, there's only two of us using hot water in the summer months - and even less now we aren't using gas for cooking.

PennineAcute

Single person household and my gas cooker usage is around 3 kWh a day, which is approx 100kWh a month. (Less if I do not use the oven).

Not saying your current meter is over reading, but have a feeling your old meter was under reading.