At minimum electrify switched on, still high bills.

Gerry1

Genex said:

Just chiming in to say I'm having the same problem with SSE. I was with Eon paying £45 a month in total for Gas and Electric for my house. It was time to switch so I went with SSE which had the best rates, expectedly higher which I was ok with HOWEVER SSE are claiming I'm using 10x the units of gas than I was with Eon despite nothing having changed. I dont have the heating on, I've even stopped using the gas cooker as much, washing once a fortnight. 

As I say, I expected the cost per unit to go up but they're claiming I'm using 10x more units which is just !!!!!!. So, yeah, write SSE off as another consumer abuser

It would be better to delete your post and start a new thread.  Sorting out the answers can get very confusing when there are several people posting questions.

If your meter is metric, make sure you're sending gas readings in m3 not kWh, because this mistake would result in over 11 times the correct consumption being recorded.

[Deleted User]

Koolerking said:

But if im living in a cold flat save for using one rad for say, 5 hrs a day and 2 low wattage lights, i really don't understand where the actual electricity is going! 

The Rointe heaters appear to be rated at between 330W up to 1600W so for 5 hours (with just one of these rads) you could be using 1.5kWh or (more likely) 8.0kWh.  So the size of whatever rads you have turned on is rather important to your consumption.

wittynamegoeshere

It's obviously the heaters, they're the thing that's using the power.

But this is completely normal for electric heaters.  You can't get more efficient, they're all 100% efficient, it's just that electricity is expensive for heating.  Nothing you've stated about the amount you're paying is excessive, it's all as expected.

The one improvement you could make is if they are attached to external walls.  If so a big chunk of the heat will be going through the wall - even if there's insulation and/or foil sheet or whatever.  If so then move them to an internal wall or just use a freestanding oil filled radiator instead, well away from external walls.

Other than that, I assume a heat pump isn't an option for a flat so the one remaining option may be Economy 7.  In which case you'll need to pay a lot for new heaters that will be physically bigger.  You'd need to do some careful calculations to work out whether you'd ever get your investment back in savings, it's probably unlikely.  Plus Economy 7 heaters have lots of disadvantages too, they're difficult to control and also lose some heat when you don't need it.

markin

Your using around 16kwh a day 8 to 10kwh will be that 1 heater if its at least 2kw, Buying the cheapest storage heater should pay back in around 2-3 years if you move to E7, and fit a timer to the immersion.

Gerry1

wittynamegoeshere said:

Plus Economy 7 heaters have lots of disadvantages too, they're difficult to control and also lose some heat when you don't need it.

Modern High Heat Retention night storage heaters are more efficient.  The cost of each kWh of heat will be the same, but  they use less electrical energy because they have a fan to blow heat out only when it is needed (timer and thermostat both calling for heat).  This means they lose less heat overnight and (if correctly programmed) during the day if the occupants are out.

They often have a Plan B in the form of a built-in convector heater for use if there's a sudden cold snap or unexpected occupancy.  This allows a less cautious attitude to be adopted, but expensive day rate usage should be strictly limited.

coffeehound

Koolerking said:

Water heater is a 130L OSO Super S. Apparently this is quite a good one, i chatted to a specialist. They also said to only switch on for an hour and it made a huge difference in costs, but as i mentioned, i seem to only see about £4 difference, which is strange.

One hour is perhaps a bit skinny; that's only enough time to heat it by 20º.  As suggested, having it on a timer to come on for perhaps 2 hours finishing shortly before normal shower time will mean you aren't wasting any heat.  Its thermostat should be set to something sensible like 60º so will switch the power off automatically when it is hot enough.  Personally I'd set the thermostat to 55