Billed £280 per month for electricity!

matelodave

TBH 1111 kwh over 34 days in at the end of December/January isn't a fantastic amount over the odds, depending on the size of your property and how much heating you had on. It's an average of about 33kwh a day. We are all electric although we have a heatpump and our winter average is around 40kwh a day with peaks up to 60+kwh a day. Our overall annual average is 20kwh/day.

Just looking at your energy monitor, I'd be dead chuffed if my normal consumption was only 98watts, ours is much nearer 200.

Try not to get hung up on the instantaneous readings from your IDH - more meaningful are daily or weekly meter readings so you can get a better idea of your average consumption. The estimated ones that you got from Bulb aren't much good because they are guesses so you need to do your own monitoring and send in readings to your supplier so your bills are correctly using your actual consumption rather than random guesses by a computer.

I know you can't directly compare my consumption with yours but this will show you how it varies over the year (these are actual consumption figure for the months shown during 2019) - you can see that we actually used more in 31 day of Jan than you did in 34. If you record it you'll understand what is going on (our total last year was just under 7000kwh)
On your BG tariff that would have cost us £1200 (£100/mo), on your Bulb it would be around £945 (£80/mo) but on our Symbio tariff it's £840 (£70) so a better tariff would also help you save money.

Jan 1129

Feb 828

Mar 703

Apr 527

may 310

Jun 244

Jul 249

Aug 279

Sep 185

Oct 597

Nov 864

Dec 1066

Total 6981

aleksandramcr

Hi, I've been advised to change my tarriff to a "cheaper one" by British Gas advisor - they only changed it in December. 
Here's my October bill (still on the original tariif, yet it's spiked up) from 36 to 125.

November bill on the new tarriff (we did have an extra heating appliance plugged on that month some days)

bsms1147

28/08/19 00258 (A) Opening read

15/09/19 00421 (A) 19 days 163 kWh 8.6 kWh/day

30/09/19 00634 (E) 15 days 213 kWh 14.2 kWh/day

25/10/19 01021 (A) 25 days 387 kWh 15.5 kWh/day

[Gap]

29/10/19 01119 (A)

29/10/19 01155 (E) 1 day 36 kWh 36 kWh/day

26/11/19 02249 (A) 28 days 1094 kWh 39.1 kWh/day

26/12/19 03303 (A) 30 days 1054 kWh 35.1 kWh/day

28/01/20 04414 (A) 34 days 1111 kWh 32.7 kWh/day

7943 kWh 'today' - approx 3500 units in 90 days - gives an average over that these past three months of closer to 39 kWh.

I'm interested in that Bulb state '64 kWh/day' for this past month, have they been using any estimated figures in their calculations?

matelodave

I agree with bsms1147, your figures have been a bit random but if you pick the actual readings and work out your consumption in kwh you'll find that they are perhaps a bit high for a small flat but not horrifically so, especially as we've just had winter but Bulb's random guesses and silly estimates are because you haven't been reading the meter and sending in regular actual readings for them to calculate your bill correctly. 

I really cant understand where BG conjured up some of their prices from, they were daylight robbery and would have added several hundreds to your bills..

39kw/h a day is not a million miles off the mark for the winter and from August 28th to 25/10 you used 763 kwh in 59 days = 13kwh/day which again isn't fantastically high but I'm sure you could probably improve on them with a bit of effort.

Trying to extrapolate them over a whole year  I'd reckon you'd be using around 5800 between November and April and around 2500 between May and November which is 8300 which is roughly what Bulb are guessing as your annual estimate. Thats about 23kwh a day over the year nowhere near they silly guess of 64kwh a day.

I dont know what your DD is but I guess it should be around 8300 x 13.5p = £1120.5 plus 365 x 20p = £73 = 1193 plus 5% = about £1250 a year = about £104 a month. You'll be in arrears at this time of the year but you should cross over into credit around August look at this graph to show you how a DD works if the supplier doesn't faff around with it.

https://i.postimg.cc/gcM655nS/consumption-v-direct-debit.jpg

Your payments remain flat - the blue line but accumulate over the year - the red line.
You consumption varies over the months  - the yellow line and your cumulative consumption increases over the year - the green line.

You use more than you pay for between Jan and April and then less than you pay for up to around October (look at the yellow and blue lines) You are in arrears from Jan right through to July and then in credit up to the end of November (green and yellow lines)

aleksandramcr

Hi, I'm not going to lie - this is a lot of information to take in an analyse but I will of course read through it all over and over again until I've the best possible understanding of the matter. Me and my partner have decided we will be looking to move, end of May the earliest but realistically - end of June. We'll think twice before signing up for a property with 100% electricity or underfloor heating. I can appreciate I am at fault here too for not investigating the issue earlier than October and being proactive but as i've mentioned before - it's out first rental property and it seems like we will have learnt things the hard way. 
Thank you ever so much for all your valuable comments, I will surely review them again. 
I paid off £100 off the Bulb bill today, my plan is to a) finish my payment plan with British Gas by paying the last £200 instalment this Friday b) ask for at least a small good will gesture from Bulb and pay the remaining £200 or so b) move at the earliest possibility and find a flat/house without underfloor heating. 
Once again, thank you ever so much for all your effort. 

matelodave

Glad you found it useful and hopefully you'll have a better understanding of what to look for and the importance of monitoring your consumption yourself rather than just hoping or expecting the energy company to do it for you.

I have to say that I'm pretty impressed that you've kept your old bills - most people chuck them and then cant work out what's gone wrong. keep it up

Good luck with your house/flat hunting

Richie-from-the-Boro

May/June brings your heating costs into zero. If you're leaving you have the luxury of sourcing without the rush, much better options & decision making. Make sure you read your lease period terms in your contract. Best of luck.

Robin9

How nice to see a personal letter from Simone at Bulb rather than the standard paragraphs.

matelodave

The problem with waiting for bills or even checking on-line is that there can be a long time before you find out what is going on, It's made even worse when the supplier chucks in an estimate or two.

Keeping your own spreadsheet and reading your meter more often means you know instantly what you are using and if you set it up properly how much it's costing which makes it a lot easier to tweak stuff and see how it affects your consumption.

Gerry1

aleksandramcr said:

b) ask for at least a small good will gesture from Bulb

Why?  What have Bulb done wrong?  It's like buying a car that runs only on lighter fuel and then blaming the corner shop because you've used bucketloads of the precious stuff !

The problem is that you've been using a glorified electric blanket to heat your flat.  No doubt the cheapest to install, and no pesky gas safety certificates, annual inspections, maintenance and CO alarms.  They didn't care two hoots that it would nearly bankrupt the poor punters !

These Danish mats are intended for well insulated properties, and a big old converted pub will be the exact opposite.

aleksandramcr said:

Up until yesterday, the heating would only be on at all times as recommended - highest temperature at night when the tariff is meant to be cheaper, lower throughout the day cos the heat is meant to be stored.

Oh dear, four BIG, expensive mistakes ! Most of the overnight usage will have been wasted: there's virtually no heat storage, so you might as well have left a fan heater on all night, and it was hottest when you didn't need it.  And you weren't on E7 so the tariff was expensive 24/7.

Unfortunately you've learned the hard way, but at least you can escape easily and vow to get it right next time.