Electric only (underfloor heating + electric boiler) usage & billing

justinjoeman

Hi all,
I've been living in a 2 bedroom flat for about 11 months now so energy usage / billing was all fairly new to me. Underestimated usage when looking at London averages as I assumed mine wouldn't be far off (my first mistake considering nearly every website reports this based on dual gas/electricity...)
Anyway I've not been able to find much information on annual usage for people in a fully electric 2 bedroom flat with underfloor heating. I'm with British Gas (my second mistake as they aren't exactly the cheapest...) and my account is in debit currently for around £2000. So I looked into it and our usage is approx 13,000 kwh for the year so far. I suspect the underfloor heating is the cause at 150W per m2 with approx 60m2 of wiring. Waiting on the developer to get back from holiday to provide this information for me. I have a smart meter being installed at the end of January but in the mean time I have no idea of the usage during the day as I don't have an energy monitor yet. I don't think getting gas put in is an option either.

• Does anyone else have a similar setup? What is your usage (yearly or monthly)?
• Best advice on programming the heating to help with usage? Set at a constant temp to maintain that or time to effectively turn it on / off? Or a combination of both?

Thank you for any help! I think I'll have to pay this big bill anyway but trying to learn any lessons I can for the future while I'm living here even though it's a costly lesson!

** UPDATE **

I purchased an electricity monitor and went around turning everything on/off to try and get an idea of the usage. When I plugged it in about 5.5 kwh was being used. Turned off all the underfloor heating (most of it was off anyway from the thermostat) and it dropped to about 3.4 kwh. Then I thought "what about the water heater?!?!?" - turned that off and it dropped from 3.4 kwh to just 280W... Default timer on it as well was for it to be running 8 hours a day (5-9am and 4-8pm). It uses 3 kWh, 24 kwh a day which is 8,760 kwh a year! 

Half my usage has been on this which by my current tariff has cost me about £1638 alone!

Well that's an expensive lesson to me and anyone else who might end up reading this - CHECK THE TIMERS FOR YOUR BOILER / HEATING, FIND OUT THEIR ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND UNDERSTAND YOUR ELECTRICITY USE!!! Buy an energy monitor as well. 

Robin9

To get an idea of your usage - read your meter several times a day for the next week

You are using on-peak electricity which is expensive -  what tariff are you paying ?

justinjoeman

Robin9 said:

To get an idea of your usage - read your meter several times a day for the next week

You are using on-peak electricity which is expensive -  what tariff are you paying ?

At the moment when I spoke to British Gas about the smart meter they said from my meter readings I was using an average of 60 kwh a day which seems like a lot! Tariff I am on is the HomeEnergyFix April 2021 I belive - about 18p per kwh

Robin9

justinjoeman said:

..................about 18p per kwh

WOW -   look to swop and get down to about 12/13p  - paying a leaving penalty of £30 

matelodave

Is your underfloor heating buried in the concrete - if so then you should really be using it like off-peak storage heating, the same with hot water. The idea is for it to charge the floor (and heat the hot water tank) during the off-peak period and then dissipate that heat throughout the day and evening thus benefitting from the lower cost of energy for heating your home and your hot water.. What controls have you got, timers or thermostats? what are they set to?, how old is the property?
.
What tariff are you on, how much is your day and night charge (per kwh) if you are on an off-peak tariff and what is your standing charge. If you are on an off-peak tariff, have you got details of your peak and off peak consumption (in kwh not £££'s)

If you've been using it on a single rate tariff or even worse on an E7 tariff but only turning it on and off like a conventional heating system then it will cost you a fortune. Even on off peak it wont be everso cheap but it should be cheaper than on a single rate tariff.
It gets even worse if you've been using panel rads, convectors or even fan heaters to give yourself a boost. Add to that, either heating your hot water or using an electric shower at peak rate then your bills will be horrendous.

TBH 13,000kwh a year is probably around average for an average home, say 12000kwh for heating with gas (but gas would only cost around £400) and then another 3000kwh for electricity (say £450) plus two standing charges, say £75 each = £150 giving a total of £1000 a year give or take. 13,000 kwh at 18p/kwh is costing you £2340 plus the S/C. whereas I'm only pay 12.25p/kwh = £1625 plus s/c.

Just saving a penny a kwh would save you £130 a year, saving 5p/kwh would reduce your bill by £650) Your rate of 18p/kwh is is just ridiculous. 

So you need to get yourself onto a more suitable tariff and save yourself a lot of money without really trying. Secondly start reading your meters a lot more frequently so you can get a better idea of what is using it all and when and then learn how to reduce your consumption - if you don't monitor it you can control it

Gerry1

Sorry to have to say this, but you have the worst possible arrangement; you could hardly have done worse if you had tried.

• All electric

• Underfloor heating: cheap to install, massively expensive to run.

• Absurdly expensive tariff.

If you're renting, move ASAP.  If you're buying, bust a gut to get gas and wet CH.  Failing that, consider storage heaters such as Dimplex Quantum operated on an Economy 7 tariff.

No point in comparing your usage with others.  Number of occupants, in / out in the daytime, cool or tropical, ground / top floor, thick / zero insulation, short / long showers etc make comparisons meaningless.

justinjoeman

Robin9 said:

justinjoeman said:

..................about 18p per kwh

WOW -   look to swop and get down to about 12/13p  - paying a leaving penalty of £30 

Any recommendations on suppliers? When I had a look on comparison sites cheapest I found was around 15p per kwh (single rate). Still a saving of about £250-350 a year without any changes to use

Gerry1

Bung your 14000kWh per year into Citizens Advice and 'Switch with Which?' and see what you get.

CA shows me 13.503p/kWh and 21p/day.

justinjoeman

matelodave said:

Is your underfloor heating buried in the concrete - if so then you should really be using it like off-peak storage heating, the same with hot water. The idea is for it to charge the floor (and heat the hot water tank) during the off-peak period and then dissipate that heat throughout the day and evening thus benefitting from the lower cost of energy for heating your home and your hot water.. What controls have you got, timers or thermostats? what are they set to?, how old is the property?
.
What tariff are you on, how much is your day and night charge (per kwh) if you are on an off-peak tariff and what is your standing charge. If you are on an off-peak tariff, have you got details of your peak and off peak consumption (in kwh not £££'s)

If you've been using it on a single rate tariff or even worse on an E7 tariff but only turning it on and off like a conventional heating system then it will cost you a fortune. Even on off peak it wont be everso cheap but it should be cheaper than on a single rate tariff.
It gets even worse if you've been using panel rads, convectors or even fan heaters to give yourself a boost. Add to that, either heating your hot water or using an electric shower at peak rate then your bills will be horrendous.

TBH 13,000kwh a year is probably around average for an average home, say 12000kwh for heating with gas (but gas would only cost around £400) and then another 3000kwh for electricity (say £450) plus two standing charges, say £75 each = £150 giving a total of £1000 a year give or take. 13,000 kwh at 18p/kwh is costing you £2340 plus the S/C. whereas I'm only pay 12.25p/kwh = £1625 plus s/c.

Just saving a penny a kwh would save you £130 a year, saving 5p/kwh would reduce your bill by £650) Your rate of 18p/kwh is is just ridiculous. 

So you need to get yourself onto a more suitable tariff and save yourself a lot of money without really trying. Secondly start reading your meters a lot more frequently so you can get a better idea of what is using it all and when and then learn how to reduce your consumption - if you don't monitor it you can control it

Controls = thermostats in each room which can have an override to maintain a certain temp or a program of when it should be at a particular temperature. At the moment the lounge area is set to run at 19c during the day & lowered to 16c during the night. So it will come on/off to keep the steady temp as I understand this is better with the lag and how long it actually needs to be on to warm up. The rest of the rooms it is set to 16c - one of the rooms I don't even think it is working at all so potential it's using electric but not doing anything?

Tariff = single rate tariff - the HomeEnergyFix April 2021 I believe. I didn't know any better as this is the first time I've had sole responsibility of this stuff and sorting a mortgage / moving / all the new info was hard to keep track of. Decided to just stay with British Gas as I didn't know process for swapping and that is who the developers used. Learned my lesson now lol.

Property is a new build, about a year and quarter old now. We haven't used any other heating, only the underfloor one.

matelodave

The cheapest I found a few minutes ago for where I live (East Anglia) was 12.9 but that was with Symbio who can be a real pain to deal with so I wouldn't actually recommend them unless you want a lot of faffing around trying to understand their bills.

I'm with Neon Reef but it looks as though their prices have increased since I joined them in October, they are now around 14.5p. Have a look a the Switch with Which? and Citizens Advice switching sites.
Dont get too hung up about the standing charge - as I said before, save a penny on the kwh rate and you'll save £130 with your consumption. Even spending another 10p/day on the standing charge will only add £35.60 to your annual bill

TBH the quicker you switch the sooner you'll save, especially at this time of the year - you've another three months of winter to go and that could account for about 40-50% of you annual energy costs.(most people use around 60-70% of your energy between November and March and around 30-40% between April and October)

justinjoeman

Gerry1 said:

Sorry to have to say this, but you have the worst possible arrangement; you could hardly have done worse if you had tried.

• All electric

• Underfloor heating: cheap to install, massively expensive to run.

• Absurdly expensive tariff.

If you're renting, move ASAP.  If you're buying, bust a gut to get gas and wet CH.  Failing that, consider storage heaters such as Dimplex Quantum operated on an Economy 7 tariff.

No point in comparing your usage with others.  Number of occupants, in / out in the daytime, cool or tropical, ground / top floor, thick / zero insulation, short / long showers etc make comparisons meaningless.

I've already purchased the property so moving on this basis isn't really an option at current. This is an expensive lesson for me so doing the whole adulting thing got to learn from your mistakes. Up until the last month I didn't really have any idea of how much electricity things use, how mine and my girlfriend's behaviours would determine how much is used, how to work it out and just went on the British Gas projection when doing the quote. Stuck with them as that is who the developer used.

Main purpose of getting an idea of other people's usage was to see if I am doing something incredibly wrong causing it to be high or helping me to see if this is just how it is and I just need a different provider (which I'll change anyway).

There are other avenues I need to chase up with the developer as well - meant to be a Solar PV system which in best case saves around 4500 kwh a year but not sure how this works or if I'm even setup correctly for this.