help! huge electric bill

dizzydi_3

Hi

I moved into a one bed flat in January and have just had an estimated electricty bill for 260 pounds, I thought this would be way over my real usage, but when I read the meter it looks like I owe about 500! I've never had such a large bill before. There a few things about the flat:

We have storage heaters that were set very high when we moved in and it took us ages to turn them down (doh! about two months).
We have an electric cooker
We have an electric boiler
We have a heated towel rail

We have economy seven tariff, but don't seem to have used (almost) any electricity at night! How is that possible with storage heaters, I thought that was what they were about?

any advice is very welcome as I will struggle to pay 260, let alone 500 pounds!

Thank you.

helen21_2

It sounds like you have been using electric in the day to charge up your storage heaters and they been throwing the heat out in the night! Have you checked the timers on these?

helen21

dizzydi_3

They don't seem to have timers!

helen21_2

They must have some kind of controls on either the heaters or the main controls? Otherwise how would they know when to store heat and when to release it? Not got that kind of heting myself, but your heating and boiling system will have a timer somewhere!

helen21

chris73

Being largely 'All Electric' sadly, your bills are going to be much higher than the equivalant household using Gas Heating. Electric Heating, especially storage heating is one of the most expensive forms of heating around.

As Helen pointed out, your Economy 7 timer maybe set wrongly and 'charging' with heat during the peak rate daytime tariff rather than overnight. This timer is usually located next to your Electricity Meter and may be either a digital device or one with a large clock face on it. If you have something which is labled as a 'Radio Teleswitch' then you can rule out a timer issue since the changeover is done automatically to switch between tariffs. If you have a timer and feel unsure about checking it, then contact the Electricity Board the chances are that it's got a tamperproof seal fitted which is illegal to remove in any case, so you wont be able to adjust it yourself.

Other ways of cutting down your bills include obviously turning down your heating, and also turning down your immersion heater by 2c or 3c. Chances are if you have to run the cold tap when filling the bath or doing the washing up then you are overheating the water in anycase for your needs, so you may be able to lower your immersion heater thermostat by as much as 5c or 10c. It does vary, but a lot of people can manage on water temperatures of 50c or 55c, so if you are heating your water to 60c+ then that is just a waste of Electricity and a 5c difference can mean a fair saving. If you don't need an entire cylinder of hot water, then boil the kettle for washing up etc, and allow the washing machine to use it's own built in immersion heater where you only have 1 or 2 loads of washing to do - this is still far cheaper than heating 50 ltrs of water which you may not use - especially during the summer months.

Try and use a Microwave or Slow Cooker rather than the Electric Cooker where it is practical to do so.

Replace lamps with low energy bulbs, especially those which tend to get left on for long periods such as Hall or landing lights. A 23w energy saving bulb will give out around the same light as a 100W and only use 25% of the electricity.

A small heated towel rail doesn't use much Electricity, usually around the same amount as a conventional lightbulb and somewhere around 50 - 100W. However consider whether you need it on, every little bit adds up.

Other heavy users of electricity include Tumble Dryers, Electric Fires, Dish Washers, Halogen Uplighters.

loobyloose

my friend has exactly the same problem, she switched her storage heaters totally off as she couldnt work them, she doesnt cook at the place, works all day, but still for 6 months renting this place the whole bill for that period turned out at £360+ for having the lights on and watch a little tv and the fridge plugged in! she hated the place and on top of that a crazy bill and apparently its meant to be economy 7, apparently the most electric gets used at nights, when shes asleep, shes switched off everything now as shes at her new place, but has to hand the keys over at the end of the month. She going to check the numbers incase her unscrupuolous neighbours are tapping electric from next door, they can climb through in the attic, crappy terrace houses eh?

FJSRiDER

dizzydi wrote:

I moved into a one bed flat in January and have just had an estimated electricty bill for 260 pounds, I thought this would be way over my real usage, but when I read the meter it looks like I owe about 500!

We moved from an 'all electric' small flat (storage heaters and economy 7) to a gas/electric 3 bed semi and our annual costs dropped by @£250 to @£750 and we are warmer in winter and have hot water all the time!

Your £500 for 6 months is not far from what we used to pay - although obviously we used more in the winter and less in the summer.

Do seek advice as to the setting of Economy7 as has been suggested that will cost if it is not being used properly.

dizzydi wrote:

any advice is very welcome as I will struggle to pay 260, let alone 500 pounds!

I'm afraid you are going to have to get used to it!

athompson4

I have an outstanding elec bill for £10,000. This covers July 2007 to October 2008. We did have some building work carried out during that period but I just cannot see how we are supposed to have used that amount of elec. We are a familyof four and live in a 5 bed house with gas central heating and a gas cooker.

We are in contention with our supplier but the numbers on the meter seem to match up.

I dont mind paying for what I've used but £10k!!!!!!!!!!

Yours in despair.

dogshome

Hi dizzydi - Your low useage on the Night Rate meter suggests that you might be reading the Day Units as Night Units and vice versa - It's not uncommon for the Elec. suppliers to also get them confused

In the middle of the day, switch on a few items - TV, Lights, Kettle, Cooker - and interrogate the meter to see which display is recording the use, this will be the Day rate
Just to check, stay up till 1am one night - Turn off everything except the Water tank & Storage heaters and check which meter display is moving, this will be the Night rate.
If you find the Day/Night meter readings don't match those on your bill, WRITE to your supplier

I'm afraid ECO 7 is expensive and usually a Direct Debit payment of £100 a month is required to avoid debt

davidgmmafan

To check if the readings are mixed up there's no need to stay up till 1 am, just read the meter say 30 mins or an hour apart during the day whilst you would have used some elec. The rate which has advanced is the day rate. It may be useful to also observe it at night just to check if the night rate IS working. If it was something to do with the timer switch I would expect to see zero usage at night.

Storage heaters use a lot so if they are set properly your night usage should be at least comparable to your day or much higher.

Premier_2

This thread is 5 years old

and the OP hasn't been back to MSE for about 4 years

The user who resurrected this thread by posting in it has created their own thread asking the same thing here:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2731021