Smart meter more expensive than old meter

purplepixi

We live in a very old cottage with no heating. We have no gas installed. And nothing like night storage. Just 2 open fires. When we moved in 2 years ago we put the portable electric heaters on in the house for a while before we moved in to dry the house out. The first quarter which was the winter was £350.  About 6 months later we had a smart meter installed now our bills are crazy.

For the summer quarter we've used £500 😱. Honestly I can't see where. We no long use the plug in radiators. The water heats up for 1 hour a day. We have an electric oven, but that's only used for 45mins or so in the evening. Dishwasher and washing machine. A few TVs an Xbox, fridge, freezer. Nothing crazy. And most of the time there's only 2 of us in here.

They say our annual usage is around £1600 on electric. Surely that can't be right.

Anyone else had stupid high bills from their smart meter?

With South Electric.

Robin9

Can you give us some meter readings please -  and check that the meter serial numbers on the bills are the same as on the meter itself.  Can you read the meter as well (not from the IHD)

Neil_Jones

If you have no gas in the property it becomes insanely expensive to run a property on electricity only, especially when winter comes round.

Before you had the smart meter were you supplying regular meter readings to the provider?  Or were they all estimated?  That might be what the problem was and now you have a smart meter with readings being acccurate again it reflects your true usage.

How many kilowatts are you getting through a year and what are your standing charge/unit charges?

You need to go round switching things off and seeing what's draining the power.  You may be surprised.

Gerry1

South Electric?  Never heard of them !

You may have a smart meter but it may not be phoning home.  Are your bills showing estimated readings?

daveyjp

Fag packet calculation, but 1600 at 15p per kwh would be about 30 kwh per day (excluding standing charge), which reduces it slightly.

In an all electric house that is quite possible.  Water heating and cooking could be 10-15 of those. A 3kw heater for 5 hours is 15.

welshmoneylover

The old meter may have been under recording for a while? A newer meter would be calibrated to record your usage correctly 

RelievedSheff

Instead of thinking in pounds you need to think in terms of kWh consumed.

Check back over your old bills and see how your power consumption compares with the old meter to the new smart meter.

Have you changed tariff recently? Could it be that you have moved from a cheaper tariff to an expensive standard variable tariff which is why your bills are now more expensive?