Are my bills right? They just seem so high

danieledwards4

Hi, I'm hoping somebody might be able to help. I've checked the forum and can't see too many posts similar to my query.
To cut a long story short I feel like my bills seem very high for what I feel is quite low usage.
Currently my direct debit is £100 a month for electricity alone now we live in a 3-bedroom house which uses gas central heating. 
An average day will consist of myself and my wife getting up in the morning a cup of tea being made and two slices of toast, we then leave the house and there was nobody here till 4 p.m.. my wife and 2 children return home and my son puts his Xbox on and my daughter is upstairs on her iPad. 
My wife makes tea in an electric oven (a rated) and will then jumps on the Mac to do uni work. I will come home eat tea and that's really it. During the evening the kettle will be used 4-7 times as we do like a cuppa... The living room TV in our house is never on unless it's a weekend and we watch a film... We always put a wash on Tuesday and Sunday and on the weekend we have my kids who use a 2nd Xbox... Again the TV stays off almost all weekend in the house.
We have an outside freezer and I tiny fish tank. 
We don't use a tumble drier or other energy scoffing items but our bill seems larger than our previous property, where we did use the TV lots and we did use a tumble dryer. In fact out bill has almost doubled.
I have attached screenshots of my bill so you can see usage. Now the WC the 16th I have added because we went on holiday for most of it. 
On the 16th we left the house at 1pm no one was in till the 19th and that was not till 5pm then we left again for 2 days on Fri the 21st at 8:15am and didn't return till 1am Sunday morning but still used what looks like almost 16kwh over 2 days 

I've called BG and they are telling me my usage is right and it's exactly what it should be but i really want someone else's opinion please.....

comeandgo

Looks ok to me.  Are you in the cheapest rate?

danieledwards4

comeandgo said:

Looks ok to me.  Are you in the cheapest rate?

Not the cheapest but as cheap as I can get till my deal is up... Does 10khw not seen a lot of energy to use in a day if nobody is in the house at all, that's and expensive router and fridge 

Talldave

danieledwards4 said:

comeandgo said:

Looks ok to me.  Are you in the cheapest rate?

Not the cheapest but as cheap as I can get till my deal is up... Does 10khw not seen a lot of energy to use in a day if nobody is in the house at all, that's and expensive router and fridge 

Yes! Get an energy monitor and start shutting things off at the consumer unit to see which circuit is eating the juice. Fridge and freezer are likely suspects. Is there an immersion heater topping up the hot water hotter than the boiler's heating it? Electric underfloor heating anywhere? Loft lights left on? 
What is your annual consumption?  It might be worth switching and paying the exit fees. We're heading for 5000 kWh a year, averaging £52 a month.

st999

When I'm in all day I use about 9 kWh a day.
When I go on holiday all that is on is the sky box and the fridge and freezer and the usage is about 3 kWh a day.
Gas central heating.

Matthaus73

2 adults + 2 teen (gamers ,lot of xbox and tv time) in the house just checked our average over last 28 days is 9kwh a day.
We have gas cooker.

Tooskint

How much is your actual bill though as your direct debit could be too high especially if just moved in.  Turn all heating timers off and only turn heating on for a few hours a day and see if that reduces your bill 

matelodave

If the kids are using an X-box dont they also have a TV connected as well. Does anyone have a crafty fan heater going.
TBH your leccy consumption isn't overly high but you might be able to reduce it a bit with LED bulbs especially if people are spread all over the place and they are using the lights a lot (our kitchen used to have 10 x 50watt halogens = 500watts, it's now 10 x 5 watts = 50 watts)
You can only reduce your consumption when you've worked out whats using it, as others have said do an energy audit to find out  - fridges & freezers can use more than you think and it's worth turning stuff off at the wall rather than leaving it on standby. A plug-in energy monitor (try Amazon or Screwfix) will allow you to check how much individual items consume and you might be surprised at how much things like X-boxes, TV,s, Sky boxes and other stuff use, even when on standby.
(We had a couple of electric reclining chairs and I was horrified when I saw that they consumed 15w each just on standby = 720watts a day = 263kwh a year = £40 or more)

Yuna51

Most appliances on standby will use around 5-10w. You can buy special plugs that turn the device on and off fully linked to the TV remote. That might help? 

Talldave

Yuna51 said:

Most appliances on standby will use around 5-10w. You can buy special plugs that turn the device on and off fully linked to the TV remote. That might help? 

Modern TVs in standby use 1W or less, mine's around 0.1W, not worth worrying about. There's a downward trend in standby consumption as a result of EU regulation and technology progress. 
The "special plugs" use power in standby - check what it is and make sure it's not more than the device you're using it with!
My Powerline sockets use 5W active and 0.5W in standby. I had to change a menu setting in the TV to stop it pinging the network in standby and preventing the Powerline socket from dropping into standby.