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

QrizB

GingerTim said:

Based on your actual readings, I make that 18,540 kwh of gas, and 8,619 kwh of electricity in just over seven months.

That's an enormous amount of electricity, especially for a GCH home - do you have fish tanks, pond pumps, or any other high electricity usage items about? Electric showers perhaps?

The gas use is also very high for spring and summer months.

I was going to say exactly this. You're using about 3x as much gas as we do (four people, two adults and two teens in a 3-bed semi) and also 3-4x the "average" amount of electricity. Some (possibly all) of the extra electricity will be due to your EVs but they don't explain your huge gas bill.

How much electricity do your electric vehicle(s) use? 2000kWh/yr/vehicle?

Mstty

Hi again MariahAH

So as you can tell you would be classed as a high usage household but it is noted you have an EV. Or do you have two EV's?

You are not the first or last to come to this board shocked by prices and there are a number of steps you can take to help drive down costs.

So far the questions are

1) is your house a large 4 bedroom house and date of construction?
2) do you have electric showers?
3) how many EV's do you have and are they used regularly

4) what temperature is your boiler set to

5) have you checked your immersion is not on constantly

6) is there a lot of individual electrical use as in TV's, gaming PC's and consoles and sky boxes

7) do you cook a lot and maybe individual meals and what methods do you mostly use

8) have you got any pond filters/expensive things like a hot tub/sauna/swimming pool

9) do you use separate electric heaters anywhere in the house

10) do you have Aircon systems

11) how many fridge freezers do you have and are any the America kind?
12) heating on all day over winter?

MWT

If the EV's are only charged at home then you can approximate the electricity use from the mileage, approx. 4 miles/kWh will get you in the ballpark...

Some cars use more or less of course, but this is a rough estimate.

macman

It would be futile to get a paid consultant in just to tell you to turn the CH down, reduce it's hours, and take shorter showers and smaller baths. Unless you also cook with it, then that's just about all your gas usage accounted for: heating and DHW.
Electricity is more complex, as there are far more appliances potentially using it.
Check there's no electric u/f heating switched on, or a bak up immersion ditto.
How is the property insulated?
You really need 12m back bills to get a proper picture of your annual kWh usage, so I'd dig out your previous supplier bills back to August 21 and do the number crunching. 7m is not bad, but given what a mild winter we had, I suspect that a 12m analysis will hike the heating projection up even higher.
Concentrate on heating and hot water, that is what most of your usage is for.

MariaAH

GingerTim said:

Based on your actual readings, I make that 18,540 kwh of gas, and 8,619 kwh of electricity in just over seven months.

That's an enormous amount of electricity, especially for a GCH home - do you have fish tanks, pond pumps, or any other high electricity usage items about? Electric showers perhaps?

The gas use is also very high for spring and summer months.

No fish tanks/pond pumps, no electric showers. Just the usual IT equipment, TVs, washing machine, dishwasher. I totally agree that it seems very high. Our cooker is electric, so gas only used for combi boiler. I just cannot see how we can be using that amount of energy??

MariaAH

Ultrasonic said:

MariaAH said:

We switched Electric Vehicles in October, but cannot switch to British Gas's EV tariff without a Smart Meter. 

Are you going to get a smart meter fitted? If you haven't already it may be worth checking out what Octopus could offer you too, since they're usually recommended as the cheapest option if you have an EV.

How much do you use you EV? If you're driving a lot then bear in mind the relevant cost for you to compare with other households would be their home energy plus petrol/diesel costs.

Do you have electric showers or use electricity for any heating?

British Gas say we are not eligible, and not say supply chain issues..so cannot get one fitted

MariaAH

xzibit said:

Between 22/10/21 and 30/12/21 you almost used as much gas as we do in a year and you used quite a lot more electricity than we do in a year.

We live in a detached 4 bedroom house, 2+1. 

You need to address your usage.

I agree...but I cannot see how we are using that much as we do not seem to have anything high usage?

MariaAH

Ultrasonic said:

MariaAH said:

We switched Electric Vehicles in October, but cannot switch to British Gas's EV tariff without a Smart Meter. 

Are you going to get a smart meter fitted? If you haven't already it may be worth checking out what Octopus could offer you too, since they're usually recommended as the cheapest option if you have an EV.

How much do you use you EV? If you're driving a lot then bear in mind the relevant cost for you to compare with other households would be their home energy plus petrol/diesel costs.

Do you have electric showers or use electricity for any heating?

And we don't charge the EVs that much as do not do a huge amount of miles. May be 2 or 3 times a month and I think approx £14 to charge.

michaels

We are 5 in a 5 bed semi and use about 28k gas and 12k electric which includes 10,000 EV miles.

Gas breaks down into about 10-12k hot water and the rest heating (this can be worked out roughly by comparing summer and winter usage - summer will be pretty much all hot water although the colder incoming water temp in winter means you will need a bit more for hot water at that time of year) .  If you do the maths on 2 showers per day x 5 people then that is how much energy you need for the hot water.  Heating obliviously depends no how much of the house you heat, how warm and how many hours - do you need to heat all day?

Electricity beyond the normal suspects, PCs (especially gaming type or 24/7 home servers) and consoles are surprisingly thirsty as is running the oven if you do several different meals each day.  EV, as mentioned above, though probably safer to work on 3-3.5 miles per kwh once you have factored in charging losses.

If we had not fixed our bill would have gone up 6 times from 2k pa combined at 2.3p/10.2p to 15p/60p October cap so £12k pa....

MariaAH

QrizB said:

GingerTim said:

Based on your actual readings, I make that 18,540 kwh of gas, and 8,619 kwh of electricity in just over seven months.

That's an enormous amount of electricity, especially for a GCH home - do you have fish tanks, pond pumps, or any other high electricity usage items about? Electric showers perhaps?

The gas use is also very high for spring and summer months.

I was going to say exactly this. You're using about 3x as much gas as we do (four people, two adults and two teens in a 3-bed semi) and also 3-4x the "average" amount of electricity. Some (possibly all) of the extra electricity will be due to your EVs but they don't explain your huge gas bill.

How much electricity do your electric vehicle(s) use? 2000kWh/yr/vehicle?

We have 2 electric vehicles, Renault Zoe, and they cost approx £14 for a full charge. We charge each no more than once a week, so over a year is approx £1,456 - this still does not account for the extreme usage.