Billed £280 per month for electricity!

Richie-from-the-Boro

- O/P I'm on the same annual use as yourself 8500kWh
- I've averaged the same 8500kWh for a decade
-  I bask in 22°C all winter
- I'm on night store heaters + stored water
- I'm on 70% night use electricity, 30% day
- I myself supply actual meter reads every month
- I'm on E7 tariff
- I pay annual cost ÷ by 12 = DD

aleksandramcr

Richie, how much does it cost you monthly and who's your supplier?

bsms1147

With the heating completely off, what is your energy use and daily kWh use?
64 units a day for all electric is high. Without the heating it should be closer to 10/day.

aleksandramcr

Hi, this is a reading from half an hour ago (4.41 kWh at 12:30) - the reading was on about 100 kWh, it's suddenly spiked up on turning the kettle on. Behaves the exact same way on turning the hot water tap. We turned the heating off yesterday completely until the situation's clarified a bit. 

aleksandramcr

See below

1. 

Gerry1

I wouldn't spend too much time writing a complaint to Bulb or to the landlord.  You'll have to pay for the electricity used, and a payment plan will be as good as it gets.  You were misled into believing you had E7, so you could ask the landlord for a goodwill payment to offset the additional cost of single rate.  But you might find it hard going unless the E7 claim had been put in writing, and the landlord could state that you should have noticed from the bills that you weren't on E7 and that you could have chosen to switch to it.  Venting your anger may make you feel better, but don't expect more than very limited success, if any.

Put it down to experience, move on (literally) and be glad that you won't be stung with estate agent's fees, surveys and stamp duty.

On a more positive note, make sure your next property has GCH, that you register with the existing supplier, do a whole of the market comparison starting with Citizens Advice and 'Switch with Which?', understand the property's infrastructure and meter and above all, keep sending monthly meter readings and doing the sums based on those readings.

Talldave

aleksandramcr said:

Hi, this is a reading from half an hour ago (4.41 kWh at 12:30) - the reading was on about 100 kWh, it's suddenly spiked up on turning the kettle on. Behaves the exact same way on turning the hot water tap. We turned the heating off yesterday completely until the situation's clarified a bit. 

You need to get control of the immersion heater(s) - you really don't need to re-heat the tank after every hot tap usage.

aleksandramcr

Hi Gerry, you're definitely right - I'll have to pay for the electricity regardless (which I have been doing as mentioned before) and move out ASAP before I get another 2-3 bills for the same amount. I just feel very misled and frustrated with what the landlord's been saying and some of the accusation's I've heard but I don't set my hopes too high in terms of any compensation. I might ask for my rent to be reduced next month seeing that I'll have nearly £500 to pay in one go (£200 to British Gas and £280 to Bulb) but again - probs not v likely. 
The neigbhour next door's had been reported to a credit agency for not beeing able to keep up with electricity bills, I'm not sure about the other tenants. Perhaps they just pay they direct debit and don't bother checking the full balance, like we did in the first two months. 

bsms1147

aleksandramcr said:

See below

1. 

That sounds like normal behaviour at least for the kettle; shooting up to a few Kw as something high-load is applied, like a kettle, then returning to the baseline. Without the kettle on what's the baseload draw (left chart) on your in home display? And as you use hot water it's likely that this is replaced with mains water, and then heating that up in the cylinder which is why it goes up with hot water use too. This can/should be adjusted - there may be some tweaks to the hot water tank (eg with timings/temperatures) that may reduce its use.

Overall 4.41kWh since ?midnight sounds reasonable so far, so if today ends up closer to ~10kWh by close of play, and the only thing that's changed is heating is now off, then that's the sole cause.

matelodave

I dont think that you can blame all your ills on your landlord.
Your DD with BG was unfeasibly low and it appears that you didn't check your bills and statements until you got a ginormous bill. You then changed to an a inappropriate tariff with another supplier without appreciating the consequences. You also don't seem to have worked out where all your energy was being used by trying to understand how your heating and hot water system worked and optimising it to suit your lifestyle.
Checking your meters and consumption a bit more often would have helped you work out that you were using a lot, rather than just waiting for a bill and throwing your hands up in horror when you saw how large it was.

TBH used correctly the system might well be fit for purpose (and probably is) but an all electric dwelling is always going to be expensive to run but you need to understand how to use it properly to get the best out of it and make sure you are on the right tariff.