Bulb - Bills have doubled

Metroguy78

Newbie here, not sure where to go to with my issue.  

Been living in my house for 4 years and after 3 years paying £90 a month for both gas & electric, we changed to Bulb soon after getting a smart meter installed and the past year it seemed to have jumped up to £200 a month.  

Been waiting for Bulb to investigate but they have gone very quiet so I went through and created a spreadsheet to compare usage over the past 2 years and also check daily usage over a 7 day period to see if there's an issue with the smart meter.  Last thing I can think of is turning off everything apart from the fridge freezer and seeing what the meter increases by?

As you can see below in red that Dec 2019 the Gas went up by 816 units (usually around 80 units) and October 2020 has another huge jump for both gas and electric. 

Nothing new has happened, been working from home for 4 years etc so feels like either a meter breakdown or soemone's hacking our usage lol

Robin9

An initial question - are these ACTUAL or ESTIMATED readings. ?  

Hasbeen

As above check your readings.
An existing smart meter then a change of provider.
Check you smart meter has not went dumb.
Bulb may be estimating if not getting any actual readings from yourself or the meter.

ARH_2

It seems unlikely that both your gas and electric meters are faulty, but not completely impossible. 

As above, are these all actual reads? Others are just noise. 

The food in your fridge freezer can cope with the power being shut off for half an hour. Turn all power off at the fuse box. You should expect that the meter doesn't move a jot. If it moves with all power off then you have yourself a meter issue. 

Metroguy78

Robin9 said:

An initial question - are these ACTUAL or ESTIMATED readings. ?  

I have highlighted the green readings as actual, you can see the smart meter readings with npower are all in green.

Robin9

When you swopped to Bulb the meter would be dumb and rely on you (or a meter reader) taking readings.

For the gas there was no reading between Jan2020 and Nov 2020 - no wonder there is such a big jump. For gas about 12,000 kWh  pa -  the estimated readings were ridiculously low.

You appear to be a high electric user - do you have an electric shower/ big freezer ?   Typical figures for electric are about 2900/3000 kWh.

Get into the habit of reading monthly !

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Not having a go at you, but it's very difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from your table because the info is all so vague and so much info is missing.  The reader has to make many guesses and that severely weakens your case.

Firstly, it's in the wrong forum: it should be in Energy, not under LPG and the rest.  (You're not the first to make this mistake and won't be the last, the revamped website is poorly designed.)

• You haven't stated any units.

• Was the original gas meter imperial or metric?

• What do the 426.3, 83.1, 562.3 and 226.2 figures mean, monthly averages?  If so they're not very meaningful because monthly consumption obvious varies with the season.  Only annual usage is meaningful.

• What happened to the gas 'inrement' (sic) in Feb 2019?  Were you away on holiday?

• Presumably the days of the week refer to usage in the last week.  If so, the entries need to be in a separate table and show actual dates so that it's immediately obvious what you're trying to say.  Anyone from Bulb or the Ombudsman simply won't have time to unscramble something more akin to a cryptic crossword !  It'll just go into the 'Rainy Day' or 'Too Difficult' pile.
  

A couple of clues.  Is the higher energy usage down to Covid19?  You probably can't compare 2019 with 2020.  Where did you get the gas readings from?  With the conventional meter you needed to convert the volume to kWh.  Did you do this, and if so, how?

Similarly, with the smart meter, you need to read the volume (m3) figure from the meter on the wall, not something from the portable shiny toy and not a kWh figure, that needs to be calculated from the volume.

You're certainly doing something wrong somewhere, your gas kWh usage should be many times that of electricity.

Finally, what were the kWh rates from npower and what are the rates with Bulb?

TL;DR:  It's worth doing switch-off tests to rule out any faulty meters, but I suspect that misunderstandings between metric, imperial, kWh and volume may account for much of the apparent discrepancies. Once again, not having a go at you, but you really do need to make a clear, watertight and easily understandable case to have any hope of getting anywhere. Ambiguity will sink you !

Robin9

Could you post a copy of the gas meter showing the reading please ?/

Is this one of the meters with a little keypad ?  If so which button do you press to get the reading ?   Watch out for the decimal point. 

Looking again at your readings and assuming all is correct - then Elec consumption is about 7000 kWh a year and £1050; gas is 2900 x 11.2 = 32,500 kWh and £810 ; Add standing charges and VAT to give £2100

dunstonh

You have posted in the wrong forum but you are getting plenty of replies. So, I will add my bit.

You have to totally ignore the estimated readings.   Looking at Gas, you took a reading in January and another in October.  So, you had the cold months of Feb and March where the estimate barely moved but in reality, the usage could have been at peak.   This year, September was colder, so many started their heating a bit earlier than normal.   So, you have 2-3 months of peak use that are showing barely any movement on the estimate.    So, its no wonder the actual reading jumps when you finally do one.
You need to record actual readings. Not estimates.

We use about 16,000 KwH of electric a year (no heating).  We have high usage but you are coming out at around 6300.  So, levels do not sound unreasonable if you are in a good sized 4 bedroom house or bigger.  Working from home uses more energy.  So, you would expect to be above average.   If you are a smaller house than that or consider yourself energy efficient then you need to investigate your usage.  A smart meter can help that by you looking at real time use.  (someone leaving an immersion heater on is often a cause of high use).

Metroguy78

Gerry1 said:

Welcome to the forum.

Not having a go at you, but it's very difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from your table because the info is all so vague and so much info is missing.  The reader has to make many guesses and that severely weakens your case.

Firstly, it's in the wrong forum: it should be in Energy, not under LPG and the rest.  (You're not the first to make this mistake and won't be the last, the revamped website is poorly designed.)

• You haven't stated any units.

• Was the original gas meter imperial or metric?

• What do the 426.3, 83.1, 562.3 and 226.2 figures mean, monthly averages?  If so they're not very meaningful because monthly consumption obvious varies with the season.  Only annual usage is meaningful.

• What happened to the gas 'inrement' (sic) in Feb 2019?  Were you away on holiday?

• Presumably the days of the week refer to usage in the last week.  If so, the entries need to be in a separate table and show actual dates so that it's immediately obvious what you're trying to say.  Anyone from Bulb or the Ombudsman simply won't have time to unscramble something more akin to a cryptic crossword !  It'll just go into the 'Rainy Day' or 'Too Difficult' pile.
  

A couple of clues.  Is the higher energy usage down to Covid19?  You probably can't compare 2019 with 2020.  Where did you get the gas readings from?  With the conventional meter you needed to convert the volume to kWh.  Did you do this, and if so, how?

Similarly, with the smart meter, you need to read the volume (m3) figure from the meter on the wall, not something from the portable shiny toy and not a kWh figure, that needs to be rom the volume.

You're certainly doing something wrong somewhere, your gas kWh usage should be many times that of electricity.

Finally, what were the kWh rates from npower and what are the rates with Bulb?

TL;DR:  It's worth doing switch-off tests to rule out any faulty meters, but I suspect that misunderstandings between metric, imperial, kWh and volume may account for much of the apparent discrepancies. Once again, not having a go at you, but you really do need to make a clear, watertight and easily understandable case to have any hope of getting anywhere. Ambiguity will sink you !

Thanks so much for the details response, you all seem to understand this way more than I.  I am just trying to investigate why my monthly bill has gone from 2019 smart meter £90 a month with npower to 2020 paying £200 a month with a no longer smart, smart meter.

•  Looking at the bills from both years these are all in Kwh

• As far as I recall the old meter was also metric, March 2019 was when the new meter was installed thats why the numbers all went back to 0.

• Yeah i did this as month average to compare 2019 to 2020

• I mis-typed that data and it should be 44 not 3, seems to just be a low consuming month nothing unusual.

• I've dated this correctly now on my sheet but i only set out the spread sheet here to try to visual see what was being consumed, i didn't think it would be something to send to an ombudsman.  

For me its the strangeness of the gas in October 2019 (741) to December 2019 (1590) within 2 months my meter has more than doubled and I have no idea how.

Will do a switch off tomorrow for 30 mins or so and see if that brings up any issues. Thanks all for your input.

Gerry1

Metroguy78 said:

Gerry1 said:

Welcome to the forum.

Not having a go at you, but it's very difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from your table because the info is all so vague and so much info is missing.  The reader has to make many guesses and that severely weakens your case.

Firstly, it's in the wrong forum: it should be in Energy, not under LPG and the rest.  (You're not the first to make this mistake and won't be the last, the revamped website is poorly designed.)

• You haven't stated any units.

• Was the original gas meter imperial or metric?

• What do the 426.3, 83.1, 562.3 and 226.2 figures mean, monthly averages?  If so they're not very meaningful because monthly consumption obvious varies with the season.  Only annual usage is meaningful.

• What happened to the gas 'inrement' (sic) in Feb 2019?  Were you away on holiday?

• Presumably the days of the week refer to usage in the last week.  If so, the entries need to be in a separate table and show actual dates so that it's immediately obvious what you're trying to say.  Anyone from Bulb or the Ombudsman simply won't have time to unscramble something more akin to a cryptic crossword !  It'll just go into the 'Rainy Day' or 'Too Difficult' pile.
  

A couple of clues.  Is the higher energy usage down to Covid19?  You probably can't compare 2019 with 2020.  Where did you get the gas readings from?  With the conventional meter you needed to convert the volume to kWh.  Did you do this, and if so, how?

Similarly, with the smart meter, you need to read the volume (m3) figure from the meter on the wall, not something from the portable shiny toy and not a kWh figure, that needs to be rom the volume.

You're certainly doing something wrong somewhere, your gas kWh usage should be many times that of electricity.

Finally, what were the kWh rates from npower and what are the rates with Bulb?

TL;DR:  It's worth doing switch-off tests to rule out any faulty meters, but I suspect that misunderstandings between metric, imperial, kWh and volume may account for much of the apparent discrepancies. Once again, not having a go at you, but you really do need to make a clear, watertight and easily understandable case to have any hope of getting anywhere. Ambiguity will sink you !

I am just trying to investigate why my monthly bill has gone from 2019 smart meter £90 a month with npower to 2020 paying £200 a month with a no longer smart, smart meter.

Probably because most readings in 2020 were underestimated (how many kWh did you tell did you tell Bulb that you used each year?).  The DD would be increased to reflect your much higher than expected usage, and increased again to start clawing back the arrears.  It won't always stay at £200 per month.  Presumably your account shows a significant debit balance?

MSE DD advice

Please post photos showing the current meter readings.  An updated spreadsheet would also help, with all entries specifying the units used (e.g. kWh / m3) and the meter readings showing E (estimated), C (customer), A (actual, e.g. installer / meter reader).

Smart meters often display multiple parameters, so it's not impossible that you've managed to display different ones, hence the apple readings have suddenly turned into oranges.