Abnormally high gas bill

Beeboo23

Hi,
I’m a first time home owner and have just received our first bill. £198 for the month. There’s 2 of us living here and we’re both key workers so not working from home during the day. The house is a 3 bed semi. 

I thought this seemed high but Eon confirmed it’s correct so we’ve had to suck it up and pay it. 

However, I checked the meter reading 1 week after we got that bill it was 5007 for the gas on the 15/1 and 5711 on 22/1 meaning we’ve apparently used 704 units in 1 week.

Following the calculations on our last bill If I’m calculating this correctly 5711-5007=704 units x1.02264 (conversion factor) x40.1 (calorific value) / 3.6 (to get kWh) =8,019.315626666667x 3.056p per kwh = £245.07 for the first week of our bill from 15/1 to 22/1. 

Surely we can’t have already used £245 of gas in the first week of our bill?? 

I feel as though something must have gone wrong somewhere. 
 

niktheguru

Seems ridiculously high.
what is using gas in the house. How long and how high do you have the heating on?
how big is your house, do you heat the whole house? How old is your boiler?
try turning the heating and hot water off, then have a look does the gas meter increment over the period of an hour.
do you have a smart meter or a standard meter. Can you give us a picture of the meter with a reading on it. 

niktheguru

Also, 3p per kWh is a very high rate. You need to do a price comparison search and get a cheaper rate. But I don’t think this is the main cause of your high readings!

Gerry1

Was the reading on 15/1 actual or estimated?   Did you register with the existing supplier and give an opening reading on the day you took possession?

Beeboo23

We’ve already switched to a new provider this is just for the first 5 weeks whilst we’ve been going through the switching process. 

We live in a 3 bed semi. Boiler’s a combo boiler about 5 years old. We have a smart meter. 

Here’s the meter on 22/1 and a photo of the smart meter taken today. 

Also attached a screen shot of the meter reading on the 15/1 according to our bill. 

Beeboo23

Gerry1 said:

Was the reading on 15/1 actual or estimated?   Did you register with the existing supplier and give an opening reading on the day you took possession?

We didn’t move in until 20/12 but we got the keys 16/12 so understand we have to pay from this date. 

The previous owners passed our details on. 

I took metre readings when we moved in.
Electricity 012268kwh 20/12/19

Gas 052234kwh 20/12/19

They wouldn’t take them from me as we have a smart meter which sends them automatically.

Gerry1

Good news: you've sent the wrong gas reading.  Should be m3 not kWh.

Send the correct reading and the bill will be dramatically lower.  Solved !

Phones4Chris

Where did the 16th December 040619 A reading come from? My suspicion is that could be a kWh reading as well. You need to look at the m3 reading as @gerry1 has said, I believe you get it by pressing 9 but I'm sure a gas expert will be along soon to confirm.

Gerry1

Déjà vu !

Aren't smart meters wonderful?

macman

To expand for the OP: gas meters register volume. Old ones in 100's cu ft, modern ones in cu m. The conversion to kWh is variable, as the energy content of a fixed volume of gas varies very slightly from day to day. So the conversion from volume to heat energy (kWh) is done at the billing stage. In your calculation, you've converted a kWh reading to kWh...
A smart meter sends the volume consumption back home for billing purposes: the kWh display is just an approximate conversion for you to use and to feed the IHD, if you have one.
Electricity meters of any kind, old or new, measure directly in kWh, with no conversion necessary.

Beeboo23

Gerry1 said:

Good news: you've sent the wrong gas reading.  Should be m3 not kWh.

Send the correct reading and the bill will be dramatically lower.  Solved !

Thank you!
They’ve never taken a reading from me as it’s a smart meter so it’s all done automatically. 

I have taken another reading just now though and it’s 5157m3 currently so that makes a lot more sense and correlates with what the smart meter says that we’ve used £52 in gas over the last 10 days. Still seems high to me but we should shortly be with a new and better priced provider. 

Panic over though, thank you.