SSE price rise - this can't be right!

amco35

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice.
My 66-year-old mother has a one-bedroom council house. This house is all on the flat and quite small. She has a heater in the sitting room, bedroom, and kitchen. A towel rail in the bathroom. An electric shower, a washer/dryer, cooker, and television. 
The heater in the bedroom is a Dimplex 1kW Ultra Slim Panel Convector Heater and the other two are Dimplex Quantum Storage heaters (meant to be more economical).
She is on a standard SSE Total Heating Total Control tariff.
She was paying £196 per month by direct debit, but this will rise to £261 on 1st April. She's a pensioner with health problems and will be paying £60 per week now!

Here are the details:

Tariff: THTC standard tariff

Annual usage: 12018 kWh

standing charge going up from 27.48p to 50.14p

standard energy  22.89p to 32.51p

heating control energy 18.40p to 23.89p

personal projection £2,346.02 and now £3,120.65.

£774.63 increase!!!!

Compared to other households in her postcode area, her usage is above average. We have no idea why her usage is above average! She is in remission from cancer and also suffers flare-ups of Rheumatoid arthritis so does need to keep warm.

What can she do about this? Anything? I've looked at switching her to another provider, but none are available. We requested a smart meter, but SSE is not covering her area (Shetland)at the moment. The highest AVERAGE temperature in Shetland is 14°C in August and the lowest is 7°C in January.

Verdigris

Electric heating is expensive and there are a lot of heating devices. The only way to reduce that, without changing fuel, is to install a heat pump system, which will give 3+ kWh of heat for every kWh of electricity consumed. Some of the small sheltered bungalows near me have been fitted with solar panels and heat pumps. Perhaps the council could be persuaded to do similar?

Is you grandmother claiming the Warm Home Allowance? It might be worth approaching charities for help.

Aylesbury_Duck

That looks about right.  With everything being electric, and living in Shetland, the amount is plausible.  Is she on a tariff that expires soon?  If so, it may be worthwhile doing nothing and going onto the supplier's standard rate, which will be capped.  

Edited to add: are the amounts she's currently paying, and therefore the projections, accurate?  i.e. is she submitting regular readings?

EssexHebridean

People on the THTC tariffs are extremely limited when it comes to changing providers I believe - because you HAVE to have a provider who understands how the system works. 

Is she setting the Quantums correctly? They ar absolutely brilliant things and SO much better than the old box of bricks style heaters, BUT you definitely need to learn about them to extract the best from them. 

I have to say that her usage - while high, doesn't strike me as terrifically so for a remote island location and for someone who by the sound of it needs to keep their home rather warmer than average. Comparing with other households in the postcode district is possibly less than helpful as many of them are likely to use oil for heating, so you may not be comparing like-for-like. Friends of ours in the Hebrides have been paying in the region of £200 a month for a while now - they're on standard E7 rather than THTC but other than that a broadly similar set up to your Mum. Their property is a stone built cottage and is tucked into a hillside so escapes the absolute worst of the cold winds - but not all. 

Have a chat with her about how often she uses the shower (for example a lot of folk use a nice hot shower to warm themselves up rather than just hen they want to have a wash - it could be that she does this - and if that happens often it would definitely make an impact) also the dryer part of the washer dryer - as that tends to be expensive. It might be worth buying her a heated throw to see if that means she can turn the temperatures on the heaters down a little.

On the Quantums - we've found there is approximately a 2 - 3 degree drop on the temperature on the screen from what is actually achieved - so a heater setting of 22 gets us 19 - 20 degrees actual room temp. Remember also that it's more efficient to make sure they are set so that they only start fully giving off heat AFTER the charging time has closed off - although they don't leak much heat when charging it definitely is enough to ensure that rooms don't drop in temperature that much overnight, for example.  Also - that panel heater - how is that set? For an hour (for example) before she gets up in the morning and then an hour before she goes to bed? Or is it on all the time on a thermostat? The former should be more cost efficient than the latter as I understand it.