Physically don't have the money

PM22

It says 00015.5 kWh on the display so that must be the reading along with £6.31 

PM22

I think my tariff is estimated on 15,809 kWk electricity at 29.48p and a standing charge of 41.66p a day 

SusieT

PM22 said:

I think my tariff is estimated on 15,809 kWk electricity at 29.48p and a standing charge of 41.66p a day 

How much...... is your heating electic, or is that a typo? I honestly cannot see you using nearly 16,000kw of electric a year unless you are paying for both your neighbours!!  I am high usage at between 4 and 5,000 kw a year, so if you are using that amount and not including heating I have no idea how you can do it.

Edited to add, I looked at an earlier reply from you saying you also have gas, so I assume you are have gas cenreal heating, which makes my idea of heating by electric wrong.
I have just worked it out on your 41.66 and 29.48 numbers and you are right that they are estimating that usage which is absolutely insane. Are you behind on your current usage at all and they are budgeting for a catch up? You really do need to call them and find out why on earth they are forecasting that usage. 
Even if you used 5000 kw it would only be around 135 a year, so they do seem to be way overestimating there 

PM22

I was behind but I have now caught up and am £7 in credit.

RAS

The average electricity usage of a UK household is less than 4,000 KWh. You are a small family and somehow using 4 times as much, despite having gas central heating?

Do you have an immersion heater? Are you on economy seven?

Ask your provider for all the meter readings over the last two years, and whether they were estimated or actual.

Graham1982

As someone that was somewhat in your position a couple of years ago, it is absolutely vital that you give accurate meter reads to your supplier and if necessary raise a dispute with them whilst they investigate whether your bills are estimated or accurate. In any event this will give you a few weeks breathing space whilst they resolve it. 

I say somewhat like you, I was on a poor income and a big rented house that the landlord refused to insulate. I couldn't afford to insulate it for some while so was literally burning money. Every winter the energy company increased my payment plan to the point where I adopted the tactic of using estimated usage as every time they looked at the meter properly the bills went up. This obviously was a bury head in sand moment. In any case I finally got the house insulated, kept doing estimated reads which meant that I was actually consuming less than the estimation each month. I eventually gave them accurate reads and found that they owed me £13 as opposed to me owing £1000.

As an aside:

Do you live in a house or flat? if house please check on the status of your insulation. This was my reason for having to constantly have the heating at max.

PM22

Thank you for your replies. I live in a 2 bed maisonette with my son. Neither of us are home during the week. We don’t have slot of electrical stuff or gadgets. The electric is £88 and the gas is £79.65 per month and I don’t think I can afford much more

SusieT

You did really well to pay down the arrears and start to build up credit, doing that gives them no excuse for adding to the dd..
With a 2 bed maisonette you should be able to keep the bills reasonably low, I changed to LED bulbs last winter and that alone made a big difference to the kw I used, so if you have not already changed it could be well worth doing, even if it is only for the ones that are mostly used.

Robin9

PM22 said:

It says 00015.5 kWh on the display so that must be the reading along with £6.31 

With respect I think you are reading the In House Display and  not the Smart Meter itself.  The IHD has lots of options -  spot demand, use today and  the actual meter reading. - they can confuse.

When was the meter changed -  on it will be a sticker with a date and the removed meter reading - what are these please. The display on the Smart meter is usually illuminated but may need a black button to activate. With that info and a actual meter reading from last Nov or February you can make a reasonable stab at your actual annual consumption

00015.5 kWh  is about 2 days worth of consumption

Where did you get that 15,809 kWh figure from ?    It's rubbish and suggests a daily consumption of 40 kWh.

SusieT

Robin9 said:

Where did you get that 15,809 kWh figure from ?    It's rubbish and suggests a daily consumption of 40 kWh.

I could not believe that either so had to work it out for myself. If you work backwards from the £400 a month (4800 year) that the supplier wants to charge, the quoted standing charge at 41.66 a day is £152 a year and the only way to make up the remainder at 29.48 is nearly 16000kw.  Even if PM22 has the kw and sc numbers the wrong way round it works back to around 11500kw a year which is still crazy for a 2 bed maisonette.