Help! £400 a month electric bill - one person, 2 bed flat!

Gerry1

The kettle would presumably be used during the daytime rates so there would be no saving, although you might save a bit by using less water.

As previously stated, get a timer for the immersion heater or manually switch it off during the day rate periods.

lovelouise

@Gerry1 sorry if I’m being a bit thick, but I don’t understand how I would be able to use a timer? It’s literally just one switch, like a light switch. I don’t even know where the actual water tank is - assuming the loft as I can’t find it anywhere else within the flat.

Gerry1

You need to establish whether the immersion heater is on a 24h or 7h circuit.  Leave it switched off until the water gets cool.  Then switch it on during the day and see whether it heats up immediately.  If so then, as previously advised, you need to switch it on late at night after the meter's mechanical timer has switched to cheap rate and turn it off when you get up.

To make it simpler, if it's a 24h circuit you would need to have the existing switch replaced by a timer wired in by an electrician, so you'd need to talk to your landlord.

Verdigris

I’ve been advised on another forum to stop using the immersion heater for water and use a kettle instead. Would this affect my bill significantly?

Hugely. Heating is the biggest consumer of energy. IIRC you put the immersion on for an hour. Assuming the tank was fairly cold that would consume about 3kWh which costs about 45p. Two kettles of water less than 5p. If you have a gas hob, heating up a large saucepan of water would be even cheaper.

Gerry1

Verdigris said:

I’ve been advised on another forum to stop using the immersion heater for water and use a kettle instead. Would this affect my bill significantly?

Hugely. Heating is the biggest consumer of energy. IIRC you put the immersion on for an hour. Assuming the tank was fairly cold that would consume about 3kWh which costs about 45p. Two kettles of water less than 5p. If you have a gas hob, heating up a large saucepan of water would be even cheaper.

Make sure you're not using an instantaneous electric shower.  Use the hot water only heated overnight by the immersion heater.

The OP doesn't have gas.

lovelouise

@Gerry1 the shower is electric, I’ve no idea how to use the water from the immersion heater instead. The water was hot immediately after switching it on for the first time when I moved in, so assume it’s the former of those options. I’ll start doing some of these things and see if I can get my bills down. Thanks again!

Gerry1

It's OK if it just pumps water from the hot tank, but if it heats the water using daytime electricity it will be very expensive.  If it's 10kW then a daily 10-minute shower at 17p/kWh will cost £103 per year. 

[Deleted User]

Hi,

a timer on the immersion heater would allow you to set it to catch the end of the cheaper rate tariff, and with a well insulated tank the water should still be warm enough to wash up at night, though a half kettle of hot water would probably suffice.

Could you stick up readings for this morning please, just to see what you have used since yesterday, you seem to be using about 10 units daily on the day rate.

Thanks.

Penelopa.Pitstop

lovelouise said:

I think I have entered the readings the wrong way round, as the lower one is the day rate. But it also looks like it has been entered this way for a while judging from my final bill for moving into the property? I can’t get through to my supplier to discuss til Monday now but do you think this will make a difference to the bill? I hope so!

Yes, It looks like supplier has wrong info. I had it before, actually it was like this for 10 years until I moved to the property and solved it. I was giving proper readings, but my bill always had swapped day/night reading. Meter was registered incorrectly, day and night assignment. My energy supplier said they have to unregister meter and register it again properly and it took 2-3 weeks to do it.

In my case, night usage was 0, because I removed storage heaters from property, so it was easy to work it out. Previous owner was old and had storage heaters, so probably never noticed wrong setup or maybe even never did meter readings herself.

Optimist2020

I also lived in a 2 bed flat alone with storage heaters and worked same hours as you. 
 I have a few tips that helped reduce my bill:
1) Definitely look up cheapest deal which you have already done.
2) I pay quarterly. I was told that when paying monthly, they base your direct debit on the previous occupier and it would have equated to 60 pounds a month. However, paying every 3 months means I paid 100 pounds instead (during summer months mainly), it did go up to 200 pds in the winter months. I always only pay for my actual usage. Monthly Direct debits change based on the season.
2) Leaving storage heaters on all the time will mean your usage is much higher. In the night turn on your storage heaters as normal then turn them off in the morning before going to work. The heating will still work. Depending on how good your insulation is, you could turn on heating every other day. In my flat, it stayed warm for 2 days.
3) Do you have an electric shower? If that works without the water heater needing to be on, I would use the kettle to boil water. 
4) Make sure you work out how to calculate electricity usage. It's pretty simple. I can explain that in a different post if required.