Oct price cap increase likely to push energy bill to over £10k... for a family of 4...

Mstty

This isn't an EV verses combustion engine thread this is all to get to the bottom of the OP energy usage and to help them understand why it is what it is and for them to then reduce or accept it as it is.

So many threads go off at tangents and it's not necessary.

@MariaAH

Good luck investigating today and getting to know your baseline usage with the kids out👍

markin

On the current cap you bill could be around £5k, Elec 8000kwh  £3600, Gas 20,000  £1400

£8K if it was to hit 65p Elec and 14p for gas???? Still far of the £10K.

 

macman

markin said:

On the current cap you bill could be around £5k, Elec 8000kwh  £3600, Gas 20,000  £1400

£8K if it was to hit 65p Elec and 14p for gas???? Still far of the £10K.

 

I don't think the OP will be celebrating much if it's 'only' £8k pa...
If the leccy usage did not fall when the son was away, then that blows the gaming PC/aircon theory out the window.
I would now bite the bullet and request tests on both meters. The cost incurred if they're within tolerance is relatively trivial compared to the potential rebate if they're not.

markin

Looking back at the bill posted earlier, For 7 months 8619 / 7 = 1231kwh X 12 months = 14,772 kwh, Either the 3rd EV was using lots, Or the house uses lots, Or the meter is jumping. 



 

Mstty

@markin

You probably need to read the whole thread about a high powered gaming/development software engineer PC (maybe the hint of crypto mining in the past) and an Aircon unit going to cool the room the aforementioned desktop PC is in. As well as all the other household devices etc.

Taking the 9 months

The EV's have taken 4500kwh, the software engineer desktop and setup with Aircon could well be another 2-3000kwh. That's already 6500kwh-7500kwh of the 9 months accounted for loosely leaving 1000-2000kwh for everything else which is normal usage 

gt94sss2

MariaAH said:

Mstty said:

@MariaAH aI think this needs pointing as well on your journey to money saving

So 4483 kWh for approx 8400 miles that's 1.9 miles per kW

EV's are like any other car in that if you drive them a certain way they will be less economical.

It is also worth checking tyres are at the correct pressures.

I only bring this up as I don't think you are on an EV tariff(correct me if wrong) so don't get cheap charging overnight for your EV's and you want to cut down costs.

Getting the miles per kWh to 2.5 will save you 1500kwh for 9 months and 2000kWh for the year.

We are not on an EV tariff for 2 reasons 1) we need a Smart Meter to get on an EV tariff and BG say we are not eligible yet and anyway they have supply chain issues 2) even if we had a Smart Meter, BG are not offering that tariff at the moment. 

You have a smart meter even if it's working in dumb mode at the moment. Most should eventually be software upgraded to work as a smart ones again.

However, given the scale of your usage, I would not wait for British Gas and suggest you change supplier to Octopus Energy who also offer time of day tariffs - and seem to be better at dealing with older smart meters and still install new ones.

You can also get £50 if someone refers you to Octopus 

QrizB

MariaAH said:

... it has a watercooling system (which he tells me is economical)...BUT my Tapo energy monitoring plugs have arrived today...so I will find out for sure.

I'm almost certain that you will shortly discover there is no such thing as an economical water-cooled PC!

MariaAH

Mstty said:

pochase said:

My experience from having electric cars for three years (Leaf 24KWh and Leaf 30KWh  from early  2016 until late  2019) is that best I was able to get out of it was about 4.5 miles driving mainly at 60mph on the highway.

Normal use in town with aircon/heating and especially preheating or pre aircon was more like 3 to 3.5KWh.

Also I never tried to squeeze the last 0.1 miles by driving extremely careful.

Less than 2 miles per KWh sounds really bad and expensive. That soon will be a cost of over 30p per mile. Going from a current price of 8£ per gallon a car better than 26mpg will beat the cost of the electric car. And that does not take into account the higher cost of a EV, or that it will be very costly to replace the battery.

Good luck with the plans for only electric cars soon. Who will be able to afford this? Don't forget that tariffs like Octopus Go are loss makers and they are still testing the market here.

It's good to get real life comparisons and direct comparisons as I did think 1kWh to 1.9 miles was particularly bad👍

Just pulled off some consumption stats from my Zoe; since 28 May 22, 1622.9 miles with average electric consumption of 3.9 miles/kWh which is much better than would be suggested from the Hypervolt app of how much energy has been used in the last 9/10 months vs the mileage done. 

MariaAH

macman said:

Although I refer to it as a Gaming PC, and he does do some gaming, the top spec graphics cards etc are required for his business (software developer, Web3 etc) and it has a watercooling system (which he tells me is economical)...BUT my Tapo energy monitoring plugs have arrived today...so I will find out for sure.

Sorry to repeat myself, but if that is the case, all this is deductible as a business expense. You just need to quantify the cost.

Yes, great suggestion - I am in the process of sorting this.

Vincero

MariaAH said:

Just pulled off some consumption stats from my Zoe; since 28 May 22, 1622.9 miles with average electric consumption of 3.9 miles/kWh which is much better than would be suggested from the Hypervolt app of how much energy has been used in the last 9/10 months vs the mileage done. 

Don't forget that the conversion of energy from the grid to the car is not 100% efficient - hell, even the charging units themselves will likely have ~90% efficiency. The act of charging the battery is not quite 100% efficient - some energy is lost in the process which is why they need cooling for fast charging as that inefficiency manifests as heat - that cooling is another thing that uses energy itself which if course the car will not be counting.

When all is said and done, that 3.9m/kWh is just the car energy usage from the battery. The hypervolt app may be showing the bigger picture.