Energy Spreadsheets - being organised?

PennineAcute

I use Libre Office and wrote this to keep a track of my usage, tariff rates, etc.

JustAnotherSaver

Wow some of you are pretty detailed. I don't mean that in a negative sense btw.

How do you obtain the calorific value then if it varies so much/so frequently?

On the one hand I would like something similar to DerwentMailman's spreadsheet. It seems pretty simple yet breaks down the costs clear enough. I don't think i would want/need to go daily, personally. Monthly should suffice for me. Yet am i correct in thinking that as a very basic, you only need your meter reading, nothing more (in order to challenge the bill put to you) and anything beyond this is personal preference?

What i am wanting to avoid is a situation that I currently have with Tonik...

energy company goes under and says i owe £XYZ. I don't agree.

I've provided meter readings on the 1st of the month every month yet I don't know them. I also don't have individual bills. They've pooled them and made them awkward to follow (any Tonik customer should know what i mean).

These bills they put to me seem to say i haven't made a payment in certain months, yet my bank statement says i have. When i challenge Tonik they claim they have taken the payment off what i owe and therefore their original final bill for me is correct.

My defence is that their bills they make viewable clearly omits payments in specific months. I am not a mind reader nor do i have access to whatever hidden information they have so I can only base my calculations now on what they allow me to see, not what they have behind the scenes .... and what they allow me to see is saying that i didn't pay squat in a specific month.

So now i'm waiting on their response and have been waiting for weeks. They're not being helpful in the slightest.

What i want is to avoid all this uncertainty. If my energy company goes under, i want to know exactly what i have used (in terms of what the meter says) and exactly what has come out of my bank to pay them.

I pay for fixed tariff's because that's what i prefer. So i want to know exactly what my usage costs and then when it's all said and done, we should then be able to work out if what i have paid covers what the cost is and therefore whether i owe or not.

JohnB47

JustAnotherSaver said:

Wow some of you are pretty detailed. I don't mean that in a negative sense btw.

How do you obtain the calorific value then if it varies so much/so frequently?

On the one hand I would like something similar to DerwentMailman's spreadsheet. It seems pretty simple yet breaks down the costs clear enough. I don't think i would want/need to go daily, personally. Monthly should suffice for me. Yet am i correct in thinking that as a very basic, you only need your meter reading, nothing more (in order to challenge the bill put to you) and anything beyond this is personal preference?

What i am wanting to avoid is a situation that I currently have with Tonik...

energy company goes under and says i owe £XYZ. I don't agree.

I've provided meter readings on the 1st of the month every month yet I don't know them. I also don't have individual bills. They've pooled them and made them awkward to follow (any Tonik customer should know what i mean).

These bills they put to me seem to say i haven't made a payment in certain months, yet my bank statement says i have. When i challenge Tonik they claim they have taken the payment off what i owe and therefore their original final bill for me is correct.

My defence is that their bills they make viewable clearly omits payments in specific months. I am not a mind reader nor do i have access to whatever hidden information they have so I can only base my calculations now on what they allow me to see, not what they have behind the scenes .... and what they allow me to see is saying that i didn't pay squat in a specific month.

So now i'm waiting on their response and have been waiting for weeks. They're not being helpful in the slightest.

What i want is to avoid all this uncertainty. If my energy company goes under, i want to know exactly what i have used (in terms of what the meter says) and exactly what has come out of my bank to pay them.

I pay for fixed tariff's because that's what i prefer. So i want to know exactly what my usage costs and then when it's all said and done, we should then be able to work out if what i have paid covers what the cost is and therefore whether i owe or not.

I use a spreadsheet I created mself, using LibreOffice. I don't worry about the gas CV changing - I used to but my entering a value each month showed that the actual change in cost was small, so I don't bother now. I tend now to enter energy readings each month, when I supply readings to Avro. Then about 3 days later I check to see if the bill matches my calculations. It does, always with only a pence or two difference.

PennineAcute

JustAnotherSaver said:

Wow some of you are pretty detailed. I don't mean that in a negative sense btw.

How do you obtain the calorific value then if it varies so much/so frequently?

On the one hand I would like something similar to DerwentMailman's spreadsheet. It seems pretty simple yet breaks down the costs clear enough. I don't think i would want/need to go daily, personally. Monthly should suffice for me. Yet am i correct in thinking that as a very basic, you only need your meter reading, nothing more (in order to challenge the bill put to you) and anything beyond this is personal preference?

What i am wanting to avoid is a situation that I currently have with Tonik...

energy company goes under and says i owe £XYZ. I don't agree.

I've provided meter readings on the 1st of the month every month yet I don't know them. I also don't have individual bills. They've pooled them and made them awkward to follow (any Tonik customer should know what i mean).

These bills they put to me seem to say i haven't made a payment in certain months, yet my bank statement says i have. When i challenge Tonik they claim they have taken the payment off what i owe and therefore their original final bill for me is correct.

My defence is that their bills they make viewable clearly omits payments in specific months. I am not a mind reader nor do i have access to whatever hidden information they have so I can only base my calculations now on what they allow me to see, not what they have behind the scenes .... and what they allow me to see is saying that i didn't pay squat in a specific month.

So now i'm waiting on their response and have been waiting for weeks. They're not being helpful in the slightest.

What i want is to avoid all this uncertainty. If my energy company goes under, i want to know exactly what i have used (in terms of what the meter says) and exactly what has come out of my bank to pay them.

I pay for fixed tariff's because that's what i prefer. So i want to know exactly what my usage costs and then when it's all said and done, we should then be able to work out if what i have paid covers what the cost is and therefore whether i owe or not.

Mine started off very basic, and then as time went on - and playing around with what if I do this - I produced the sheet I did.
As I have a smart meter and I use my In-Home Display, it is easier for me to enter daily usage.
My CV value is just an average figure.  Reasonable accurate (around 40p a month out) which is rectified when I enter a current bill.
I like how it shows the meter readings for any particular day.  Makes it easier to sort out any problems that may occur.

Talldave

I get the Calorific Value from my monthly bill.

A long term record of meter readings is useful to keep, and can also act as useful evidence in the event of a rogue meter giving spurious consumption values.

JustAnotherSaver

Going off course a little - how accurate are those gizmos that you plug in and they tell you your consumption/cost?

I was just looking at one now for about £10 and i got the impression it only told you the cost of what you plugged direct in to it whereas i was thinking more along the lines of something plugged in that could tell you the cost of turning on anything electrical in the house - flick of the light switch, turning a radio on, washing machine, anything, rather than having to plug each appliance directly in to this gizmo?

victor2

JustAnotherSaver said:

Going off course a little - how accurate are those gizmos that you plug in and they tell you your consumption/cost?

I was just looking at one now for about £10 and i got the impression it only told you the cost of what you plugged direct in to it whereas i was thinking more along the lines of something plugged in that could tell you the cost of turning on anything electrical in the house - flick of the light switch, turning a radio on, washing machine, anything, rather than having to plug each appliance directly in to this gizmo?

They are not very accurate, especially for items which are low usage, and of course are electricity only. However, they will give you an idea of what a particular device, like a TV or Fridge is using when it is on. You should think in kWh, not cost. The cost those devices give is only as good as the rate you are able to put into it, and doesn't take into account the standing charge. The monitors you can hook onto you main house supply are again not very accurate at detecting smaller differences. The most accurate monitor is the meter itself. Regular readings of that will tell you how many kWh of each fuel you have used since the last reading.

Your calculations then need to work out the cost, taking into account the kWh rate, standing charge and VAT.

Zellah

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

[Deleted User]

Zellah said

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

All a  smets2 meter is going to do is accurately send the meter readings to the supplier and bill you accurately.  In addition to my spreadsheet detailing the actual numbers submitted, I also keep all the bills digitally as a pdf file.  If I want to know how much energy I am using I would either need to use these bills OR use a spreadsheet.  One is not necessarily better than the other but, for me personally, a spreadsheet gives me more in-depth information than the utility bills can provide.

To give you an example, Yorkshire Energy, in their last statement to me on 3rd December stated that their personal projection for the next 12 months for Electricity and Gas would be 3011kWh and 10199kWh.  My actual consumption, as measured by the spreadsheet (and their bills) over the last 12 months has been 3648 kWh ( nearly 20% higher) and 9589 kWh (5% lower)!   

JustAnotherSaver

Zellah said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

From what i have read, smart meters are not immune to error.

And going out on the 1st of the month to check and then enter meter readings isn't that difficult for me. As a backup, i have a reminder alarm set in my phone to do it. It's never bailed me out though.