Crazy Energy Bill

Happy_Sloth

We moved into a new house about 4-5years ago and when we did there was a sudden jump in our energy bill. This was expected it's a bigger house, less well insulated, the people are more spread out meaning it's being heated less efficiently (More rooms being heated)  We accounted for this jump at the time although i'll admit it was steeper than we expected.  

Roll on 5 years and the energy bill has continued to climb, it baffled me for a long time (and to some degree still does) a few months ago i bought plug socket electric meter to read the output of each socket to try and work out what was eating the electric (the part of the bill that seems unreasonable). 

We currently pay £300 per month, which is more than we normally use. We tend to let the credit build up and then when we need to save a little money reduce it for a few months and burn off the excess.  

We've just come off a fixed term deal and the new deal is £600! I do not know what they think I'm doing! i know the cap raises in April and martin lewis estimate is that my bill would go to about £450. so for the time being I'm best just sticking with the variable tariff.  

The issue is my husband hasn't worked for 12 months due to ill health, he's lost 2 very close family members to Covid and i can't envision him being fit to work any time soon, so for the short to medium term i think we need to accept I'm going to be the only earner for a while (My eldest son pays rent so there is more money coming into the house)  but in either case i need to get this energy bill down! alot!  because if it does go up by £150 (or possibly more) in April that's going to cause us real issues.

I've been though our bills reduced everything that can be cut back,  the only place left that extra £150 can come out of is the food budget which is already pretty tight.

I'm figured out most of the electric bill comes from a few appliances... 

• Dog Food Freezer. - The freezer i keep dog food in is on it's way out, the seals are shot, is it worth spending £200 now on buying a new one? will it noticeably reduce the electric bill, i assume it will pay for it's self eventually but what about the short/medium term. Is it worth the £200 now?  

• Kitchen Fridge/Freezer - The fridge freezer in the kitchen is a monster. https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/refrigeration/fridge-freezers/haier-cube-series-htf-610dsn7-fridge-freezer-black-stainless-steel-10179188-pdt.html rating f. It's not very old at the time it was rating A so we thought it was good, but now they re-did them it's rating F!  ... We do use the space it's not wasted, but i've been using the electric meter and it seems to eat quite abit of energy. it's there, it's in place i can't really replace it, but it's costing quite abit.  

• Computers -  3 PC's (My husbands in particular is eating electric) with 2 people working from home on big over powered gaming PC's and my husband using his for most of the day while he's unwell. But with WFH we have no choice, the 3 PC's are on for most of the day, my son uses his all day for work, they play's games in the evening.  This seems to be 99% of where the electric go's, honestly i was surprised by this... i didn't think they ate as much as they do.. my alone husbands seems to cost about £2 a day to run on it's own which is staggering! that's £60 of the bill on it's own. 

I honestly don't know what to do? i simply can't afford £450 a month in April. 

RecoveringAndy

So the general advice is currently that's you're probably best just staying on the Standard variable tariff which you'll be placed on after your fix ends. Don't switch or accept another fix from your current supplier.

You're about to experience two significant price hikes. Your fix has just ended so you fixed this 12-24 months ago. You would likely have fixed significantly under the price cap. You're now going to jump up to the price cap rate which will feel very expensive. 

Then, in April, that price cap will increase significantly again.

So you're feeling it two fold. Coming from a relatively cheap tariff to the price cap and then the price cap increase.

Not much you can do about it apart from trying to minimise consumption and maybe hope for some government intervention.

bagand96

If you were averaging around £300 then it might be right that it could go up to more than £450

The thing is the current predictions of "50% rise" are predictions on the rise from current Ofgem price cap to the new cap in April. 

However many people are on fixes that are a lot lower than the current capped rates. So there will be a hefty rise from the old fix to the current cap, then another hefty rise to the new cap in April.  This is going to come as a shock to many, who could l be seeing 100% rises.

What were your unit rates on your fix? And what are your unit rates now?

In terms of your use you seem to be on top of what's using the electricity. You could always do a meter sanity test... Turn everything off at the consumer unit (fuse box) and check the meter isn't recording anything. Then turn each circuit back on one by one and see what the meter records. This should rule out any unknown background usesge (immersion heater on 24/7 etc)

Spies

Can't see where you mention if your house is centerally heated?

worrywart_3

I will see
more  than 100% rise when my fix ends and I go on the April cap! 

Gas 2.5 electricity 13. Something 

worrywart_3

With regards to the question I shouldn’t imagine it’s worth spending out in new appliances, can you buy a new seal for the dog freezer.

QrizB

Yes, can we have some more details please?

• What fuels - electric & gas, electric and oil/lpg, electric-only, something else?
• How much energy are you using annually? This will be shown on your bills.
  
• Which supplier and tariff?

Your big fridge-freezer is rated as using 430kWh/yr. That isn't completely terrible (although it would be 20% of my electric bill) and you're unlikely to save enough in the short term for it to be wortth replacing. This one is the best of that size at Currys and it used 246kWh/yr; the difference is around £40/yr, so it's hardly worth paying £1300 just for the energy saving.

The dogfood freezer, is worth replacing. You could be saving £60/yr (see this thread) but replacing it will cost £200 (or less; there are freezers at Currys from £100) so payback is relatively quick.

wild666

PC's can use a lot of electricity, my main desktop is an i5 4600 and it's on all day but I have everything that I'm not using around the house turned off at the wall socket. Do you really need the electric cooker and microwave on standby 24/7 or the washer, TV, DVD player and other appliances on standby 24/7? 
If you have a combi boiler turn the hot water setting down to 50 degrees and the heating down to 55 degrees of slightly lower, you'll use less gas that way.
If the seals are shot on a freezer replacing them will be cheaper than buying a new freezer and they can be done by you with a little knowledge.

smartn2

Although PC's can use a reasonable amount of electric I'm very surprised at the £2 a day figure quoted. Even a gaming rig when not gaming should not be drawing anything like that unless being maxed out 24 hours a day. For work related tasks the power required (browser, office apps etc) should be much less. Are you making use of all the power save settings?

FreeBear

bagand96 said: In terms of your use you seem to be on top of what's using the electricity. You could always do a meter sanity test... Turn everything off at the consumer unit (fuse box) and check the meter isn't recording anything. Then turn each circuit back on one by one and see what the meter records. This should rule out any unknown background usesge (immersion heater on 24/7 etc)

My first thought was immersion heater or electric underfloor heating. Electric towel radiators will also eat up a fair bit of energy if left on 24/7...

If you have a smart meter with an In Home Display (IHD), it should point you in the direction as to what is using the most electricity, and at what time of day. You might be shocked as to how much energy is wasted by leaving stuff on standby overnight.

Astria

The only thing better than an IHD is a KWH meter - you connect the appliance(s) to the meter and record the amount of energy used over an hour or a day. You can typically get them for about £10, eg: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Persdico-Digital-Electricity-Monitors-Analyzers/dp/B07WVWBHC4/

You can then see what a device is using and whether it would be worth replacing it with something more "energy friendly".