Trapped by comparison sites

FarawayPictures

Talldave said:

FarawayPictures said:

Talldave said:

The_Green_Hornet said:

tim_p said:

Yes, the standing charges are daily, so multiply both by 365 and add in to your totals.  

Just to be pedantic, as 2020 is a leap year you need to multiply both by 366.

Or do the standing charge calculation on a monthly basis and get Excel to count the days: =(DAY(EOMONTH(A2,0))*0.14)

I don't understand what figures you're using - it's unlikely you'll use 1kWh of gas in any month!!  Stick to whole kWh.

It's the unit amount.

So in March and December you use 1kWh of gas and 2kWh of electricity?  UP seem to think your annual gas consumption is around 16,000kWh, so that's a big difference?

No, sorry, I explained it in an earlier post. There was a difference in providers and how they gave their bills. The '1s' are just placeholders for when I get newer readings but the whole year is covered.

Talldave

But if these are historic "actuals" from your bills, how come the consumption per month is identical month after month to 1 decimal place?

You need to fix the totals/VAT problem!

Robin9

And get rid of those decimal points (except for the unit rates)  - they just clutter everything up.

Gerry1

Sorry to have to be so blunt, but not only is this chart massively over engineered but the reality is that it's just a case of Garbage In, Garbage Out.

You haven't shown any meter readings, and much of the data is obviously nonsense.  Did you really use only 1kWh of gas and only 2kWh of electricity throughout the whole of March, and the same in December?  Was you consumption in cool dark April exactly the same as in hot sunny July?

You've also muddled up the units, e.g. you're probably paying 14.055p per kWh for electricity, not 0.14055p.

All you need are fairly recent actual readings from the meters on the wall, and the same from 12 months earlier.  Electricity will be kWh, gas will be cubic metres (or hundreds of cubic feet if an old imperial meter).

For example:-

Electricity

1 Nov 2019: 40000 kWh

1 Nov 2020: 42900 kWh

Annual consumption: 2900 kWh

Gas

1 Nov 2019: 50000 m3

1 Nov 2020: 51078 m3

Annual consumption:1078 m3

You then convert the gas volume to kWh (if you don't have all the bills).  Theoretically you'd need to know what the calorific values were (how 'concentrated' or 'dilute' the gas was) but the default value of 39.2 will be good enough for comparison purposes.

And that's it.  You just bung your results into the Citizens Advice and 'Switch with Which?' comparison sites (in this example 2900kWh of electricity and 12000 kWh of gas) and see what the cheapest Dual Fuel cost is.  Then you ask them what the cheapest Electricity Only and Gas Only costs are, you add those costs together and see whether it's cheaper than Dual Fuel, which it probably will be.  Also have a look at the customer service ratings (e.g. at Citizens Advice and the threads on this forum) to avoid the Supplier From Hell.

Obviously it's a bit harder if you don't have meter readings taken a year apart, so you'd have to guess a bit, but the figures don't have to be absolutely bang on because you're not billing somebody, you just want to establish a pecking order of the cheapest providers.  In any case, next year's consumption may vary a bit depending on the weather, working at home, holidays etc.