Billed £280 per month for electricity!

aleksandramcr

Hi Tim, could you please clarify with switch should be on and which off (if you refer to left/right on the picture)

Robin9

Any chance of a photo of your meter, consumer unit and any time switch ?
As others have said your heating and water heating should be on E7 - still won't be cheap

tim_p

aleksandramcr said:

Hi Tim, could you please clarify with switch should be on and which off (if you refer to left/right on the picture)

On the tank there will be two similar looking covers, approx 3” in diameter, each with one of those wires going to them. The switch that controls the top one normally should be marked ‘Boost’ and be turned off. The wire and switch feeding the bottom one is normally controlled by E7 and left switched on. 

aleksandramcr

This is my main meter in the hallway as well and the portable monitor:

matelodave

As you dont seem to have e7 then you are heating water all the time if the switches are on., although the heaters are thermostatically controlled it still wastes energy keeping the tank at full temperature all day and all night if you aren't using it.

Ideally shut the top heater off one off, get a timer for the bottom one and only turn it on for about two hours a day before your morning ablutions. Get some pipe insulation and put it over the pipe that come out of the top of the tank to reduce heat loss even more. Hopefully, unless you squander hot water it should then stay warm enough to last right through to the next morning.

Learn how to use hot water wisely, dont let it run down the sink, dont have long hot showers or deep baths and dont keep running short amounts to rinse stuff (including your hands)

Gerry1

Looks like you may have been well and truly shafted if there's no gas and they've put in a cheap and nasty system that costs you an arm and a leg to run.  They've made a quick buck and you're stuck with the fallout.

Might be best to think about moving sooner rather than later.

Once again, aren't smart meters wonderful?  You seem to have a smart meter that's gone dumb so you have a problem with estimated bills.

tim_p

Gerry is right, you’ve been royally shafted. Yes, between us we can probably get your electricity costs down to more manageable levels but it’s never going to be economical to live there unless the insulation is so good the place takes no heating!  Evidence so far points to that not being the case at all. Meanwhile start taking some meter reads from the meter at regular times and ideally daily, enter ‘em into a spreadsheet and manually switch the immersions off and control the bottom one to minimise on time but still supply enough hot water.  We’re approaching summer and a time when the heating won’t need to be on but come autumn and winter and you’ll be using lots again.  

Robin9

The OP will get some benefit by switching to E7 ASAP - the OP has a programmer which I think will enable the heating to be restricted to off peak times.   Not ideal but in conjunction with some time switches on the washing machine will help = perhaps the LL would install a time switch on the water heating.  

Not ideal. Depends how long OP intends to stay.

aleksandramcr

Hi all, 
Thank you for the investigation and your valuable comments, I'm currently in the process of writing a mahoosive complaint so I will surely refer to the points you've made. In the meantime, I had the following reply from Bulb: 

aleksandramcr

I don't intend to stay for longer than the next two months, which will hopefully be enough for me to find a new place (with gas preferably) but as you can appreciate, it's not very safe or advisable to move these days. We had our last £200 instalment to pay off to British Gas this month, now I've also got a £280 bill issued yesterday and if things don't change - i'll likely end up on a payment plan with Bulb if nothing improves. My landlord has been passive-agressive, coming back with comments such as the below (my comments in bold): 
"1.    It is impossible for anyone other than the tenant in their own individual unit to use their own electricity.

I understand and I'm glad that's 100% clear, I was worried that maybe another tenant has fiddled with the meter or that it has something to do with the building conversion. 

2.    If the tenant uses more electricity, their supplier will charge them for it.

Again, that's understandable and I can definitely see that we would have used more energy in October-December but not now that it's relatively warm. 

3.    Further to your previous email tenant is working from home, right?

I am working from home, yes but I only brought my work equipment in last month. Prior to working remotely, we used to get bills from British Gas with a similar estimate (from £200 to £250 a month)

4.    If the tenants 1st bill wasn’t a full quarter or month then it will have been lower than normal.

Yes, I reckon the first bill was an estimate, so we only got billed £104.00 whereas this month it seems to be back to "normal" (high)

5.    All tenants were provided British Gas smart meter upon moving in.

That's correct, I do check the meter at least once a month and provided the readings to both suppliers. 

6.    The underfloor heating is electric. Not piped into a boiler.

Thanks for confirming that."