EDF - petrified?

BobT36

You need to get some actual reads, not estimates.. 

RoseGold2021

BUFF said:

RoseGold2021 said:

BUFF said:

RoseGold2021 said:

I should also add I have installed a new boiler as well, as the previous one was not efficient. However that has made no difference to my gas bill @ all. 

What controls are you using, what temperature is set for room temp & for the flow/return temps to the boiler?

My new boiler is Ideal Logic Combi. 

Temp set for room - 21 degrees, set to come on 6am-9am, and 5pm, - 10pm
Flow temp I think is set to 80 degrees.

Considering moving to Scottish Power? But would that be jump from the fire into the frying pan?

Can you try turning down the room temp a degree or two (perhaps wear an extra layer instead)?  Do your radiators have TRVs?

Flow temp of 80 degrees suggests a return temp. of 60 degrees - this is above what is necessary (return<56C) for a condensing boiler to actually condense & thus save energy.

Tbh not only would moving to SP probably not help you much it may actually cost you (early exit fee) and if you are significantly in debt EDF can block it anyway.

I've turned down the temp. Rads have the TRVs. 

The flow temp I will tinker with, and turn it down.

Yes, I am aware there is an exit fee, and EDF would not release until the debt has been paid. Going to sort it, and hopefully will pay a reasonable cost (factoring in the energy hike which I am aware nobody will be escaping). 

BUFF

RoseGold2021 said:

BUFF said:

RoseGold2021 said:

Ah! See when I called EDF, they advised going on the Fixed, as it locked in the rate until November 2023, which sounded better - given I had just moved in, and the previous owner was with them.  
 
I am going to speak to them tomorrow, and try and get to the bottom of it! What on earth would I be paying if I had a family, 3 bedroom house?! £5000?? :-/ 

They were looking after themselves rather than you ...

Tbh it pretty much costs the same to heat your house irrespective of how many people are in it unless you don't heat parts of it. Your hot water & electricity usage would be higher though.

May I suggest that you should start to work out what is using your energy & how it can be reduced? To give you an idea I live on my own in a 3 bedroom house & your 2 month electricity usage is ~ what I use for 6 months. 

Yes, clearly! :-/

There are loads of radiators in the house, however 2 of the radiators I have turned off as the rooms are not in use. The rest of them I have turned down because with the new boiler, the house is too hot. 

I already do this . . the main ceiling lights in the living room, I do not use (they're spot lights), I only have a side light on. Everything plugged in, gets turns off from the mains. Reduced boiling the kettle (use a thermos to have hot water without kettle boiling). Washing machine used 1-3 times for the week. The Gas, only used for rads on a timer, and cooking.  I also no longer work from home to reduce usage.

I am really frugal with my usage, so I do not understand where these readings are coming from.  I have just done an estimate quote with another energy supplied; with the estimated costs from EDF, yes they are ridiculous! However, gave an idea of when my usage was likely, and the bills plummeted to £160! Appreciate that will increase, but interesting!

Try turning the TRVs down to 2 (probably ~15C) in the rooms that you are using but not much - you can always turn them up when you do (3 is normally ~20C). However, if there is a TRV in the same room as your roomstat turn that TRV to maximum - otherwise the 2 will fight for control & the roomstat may never reach set temp. >shut down the boiler>save energy.
Get the return temp to your boiler to 55C or lower (typically flow temps are 20C over return).

Are all your bulbs LED?
Do you really need to boil a whole kettle - mine will boil a cup (~300ml) at a time but I appreciate that some may have a minimum fill level of, say, 500ml. 
Do you really need to use a washing machine 3 times in 1 week? Full loads rather than partial? How do you dry clothing?
What size of TV do you have & how much do you use it? How old/what type of screen is it?

RoseGold2021

BobT36 said:

RoseGold2021 said:

BUFF said:

RoseGold2021 said:

I should also add I have installed a new boiler as well, as the previous one was not efficient. However that has made no difference to my gas bill @ all. 

What controls are you using, what temperature is set for room temp & for the flow/return temps to the boiler?

My new boiler is Ideal Logic Combi. 

Temp set for room - 21 degrees, set to come on 6am-9am, and 5pm, - 10pm
Flow temp I think is set to 80 degrees.

Considering moving to Scottish Power? But would that be jump from the fire into the frying pan?

Also I hope you're taking at least monthly meter readings, that should ward off any "estimates", and allow you to demand the DD be set accordingly. 

As to ending up on the fixed, as another mentioned, they were looking after themselves, not you. Unfortunately they don't 'have' to offer the Variable tarrif (even though it's an option, and would have been cheaper for you), so they didn't. You could potentially complain that they misled you by not telling you about the true cheapest option though. 

I feel a little daft now re Fixed Rate, and have walked into it blind. But just assumed it would be cheaper. But now I know, so thank you. I will use that as I do feel like I was misled / mis sold the product. 

As for the monthly readings, I've not been taking them, no but the Smart meter has been submitting the readings, which are more or less accurate. But I will start taking a note of my own readings from now on. 

RoseGold2021

BUFF said:

RoseGold2021 said:

BUFF said:

RoseGold2021 said:

Ah! See when I called EDF, they advised going on the Fixed, as it locked in the rate until November 2023, which sounded better - given I had just moved in, and the previous owner was with them.  
 
I am going to speak to them tomorrow, and try and get to the bottom of it! What on earth would I be paying if I had a family, 3 bedroom house?! £5000?? :-/ 

They were looking after themselves rather than you ...

Tbh it pretty much costs the same to heat your house irrespective of how many people are in it unless you don't heat parts of it. Your hot water & electricity usage would be higher though.

May I suggest that you should start to work out what is using your energy & how it can be reduced? To give you an idea I live on my own in a 3 bedroom house & your 2 month electricity usage is ~ what I use for 6 months. 

Yes, clearly! :-/

There are loads of radiators in the house, however 2 of the radiators I have turned off as the rooms are not in use. The rest of them I have turned down because with the new boiler, the house is too hot. 

I already do this . . the main ceiling lights in the living room, I do not use (they're spot lights), I only have a side light on. Everything plugged in, gets turns off from the mains. Reduced boiling the kettle (use a thermos to have hot water without kettle boiling). Washing machine used 1-3 times for the week. The Gas, only used for rads on a timer, and cooking.  I also no longer work from home to reduce usage.

I am really frugal with my usage, so I do not understand where these readings are coming from.  I have just done an estimate quote with another energy supplied; with the estimated costs from EDF, yes they are ridiculous! However, gave an idea of when my usage was likely, and the bills plummeted to £160! Appreciate that will increase, but interesting!

Try turning the TRVs down to 2 (probably ~15C) in the rooms that you are using but not much - you can always turn them up when you do (3 is normally ~20C). However, if there is a TRV in the same room as your roomstat turn that TRV to maximum - otherwise the 2 will fight for control & the roomstat may never reach set temp. >shut down the boiler>save energy.
Get the return temp to your boiler to 55C or lower (typically flow temps are 20C over return).

Are all your bulbs LED?
Do you really need to boil a whole kettle - mine will boil a cup (~300ml) at a time but I appreciate that some may have a minimum fill level of, say, 500ml. 
Do you really need to use a washing machine 3 times in 1 week? How do you dry clothing?
What size of TV do you have & how much do you use it? How old/what type of screen is it?

I will tinker with the radiators and boiler tomorrow, and see how I go. Thanks. 

I do all of the suggested things to save ££, but no change.

I wash 3 x max due to gym attire which I need and don't want to have hanging around. 

BUFF

You don't have fish tanks do you? It seems that those can use quite a lot of electricity.

~3000kWh/year is apparently typical useage for an "average" household but for a single occupant imo you should be able to cut a chunk off that - we just need to work out what is using your electricity.

RoseGold2021

BUFF said:

You don't have fish tanks do you? It seems that those can use quite a lot of electricity.

~3000kWh/year is apparently typical useage for an "average" household but for a single occupant imo you should be able to cut a chunk off that - we just need to work out what is using your electricity.

Nope, no fish tanks in the property. 

Yes, totally agree. It needs to be cut, significantly. Just don’t know what’s racking up the bills. :-/ 

Fred2712

If you only moved in Oct 2021 then any DD calculation EDF do would be based on the last 12 months Usage so it would be fair to request a lower monthly dd figure until you have lived at the property for 12 months but obviously you don’t want to go too too low.

Marvel1

BUFF said:

RoseGold2021 said:

Ah! See when I called EDF, they advised going on the Fixed, as it locked in the rate until November 2023, which sounded better - given I had just moved in, and the previous owner was with them.  
 
I am going to speak to them tomorrow, and try and get to the bottom of it! What on earth would I be paying if I had a family, 3 bedroom house?! £5000?? :-/ 

They were looking after themselves rather than you ...

Tbh it pretty much costs the same to heat your house irrespective of how many people are in it unless you don't heat parts of it. Your hot water & electricity usage would be higher though.

May I suggest that you should start to work out what is using your energy & how it can be reduced? To give you an idea I live on my own in a 3 bedroom house & your 2 month electricity usage is ~ what I use for 6 months. 

Surely if for example if 1 person and you have say heating on 1 hour in morning and 2 hours evening.

Family with children will probably  have it on longer, it will cost more and not the same as above?

Also running maybe additional electric devices.

BooJewels

@RoseGold2021 - I think you're going to have to do a little work with us to get to the bottom of - and hone -  your usage.  Please don't consider moving and complicating the matter until you've done a little bit of investigating and we'll help you with that.  My very quick back of the envelope sums suggest that your usage can probably be honed to a more reasonable level than the bills you've had from EDF would suggest.  Taking the rough figures already supplied and halving them for summer, would give rise to a monthly DD of under £200 at your current usage - so I think their estimated figures are certainly excessive - probably based on the usage of the previous owner.

What date was your smart meter installed and do you have the opening and closing readings of the old meter - we can see what you've used since the new meter was installed - but we could use the figures between you moving in and 15th December. 

As others have said, your current tariff is more expensive than it needs to be, so that isn't helping either.  Your thermostat at 21C is perhaps higher than you need to still be comfortable.  I'm at home on my own and here all day and mine is set at 19C during the day and I work in shirt sleeves - 21C would be uncomfortably hot for me.  I too had a new boiler installed in November and have been looking closely at my usage since then - it is certainly using a bit less than the old boiler was and this I think is perhaps to do with it having a much better thermostat.  I've been finding that the boiler itself is running about half of the time - it's not on constantly, as the thermostat is much better at measuring the temp and firing as and when needed.  I have my boiler temp set to 55C and my TRVs are mostly in the 2/3 areas and that gives me even heat through the house.

I know that conventional wisdom is that you should turn rads down in unused or less used areas, but over time, I've found that keeping them cooler, but heated gives a better feeling in the surrounding areas, especially if you do go in and out of those areas at all or the doors are open.  I'd personally rather have a slightly lower but even temp throughout the house than very warm areas alongside cool areas.  But that's what works for my circumstances and particular property and room arrangement - which is a bit unconventional.  When I changed my approach a while ago it improved my fuel use very slightly and certainly my comfort levels.