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

Alnat1

When is the heating on? Months of the year/times of day/night?
What temperature is it set to day/night?
Do your radiators have TRVs and do you use them correctly, or are internal doors usually open so heat moves around rooms?
Do you cook 1 family meal a day or does everyone cook separately when they want something?
How many showers/baths a day on average? Are the showers long or short?

Sea_Shell

When you (all) wash your hands do you run the tap and wait for the hot water to come through?

With a combi, it will fire up every time any hot tap is opened.

So for showers, the boiler will be running for as long as your shower is.

QrizB

MariaAH said:

GingerTim said:

Based on your actual readings, I make that 18,540 kwh of gas...
The gas use is also very high for spring and summer months.

Our cooker is electric, so gas only used for combi boiler. I just cannot see how we can be using that amount of energy??

Can you read your meters today so we can see how much gas and electricity you have used since May while the weather is hot and the heating it switched off? (I assume the heating *is* switched off?)

At the moment, when we use gas to heat water we're using less than 10kWh/day.

savers_united

michaels said:

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....

Wow, that is alot. We have an EV doing 14k per annum and it adds 3500kwh to the meter annually, luckily its Octopus Go so cost wise it's quite low v Petrol.

How long do you have left on that fix as those rates suggest your already a year or 2 in. 

markin

You need to know your electric base load over night with no one awake, Can you pull the kwh's from the EV's computers 30 days/Total/week?

MariaAH

Mstty said:

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?

1) It is a 4-bed detached house constructed approx late 1980's 
2) Zero electric/power showers. We have 2 showers thermastatically controlled normal mains pressure from the combi boiler
3) We have 2 EVs, both charged approx 1 a week (costs about £14 each time)
4) Heating (combi boiler) set to 21 degrees in the winter (obviously NOT using any heating during warmer months!)
5) We have no immersion heater (Combi boiler)
6) Yes - 3 TVs, gaming PC, Playstation 5, playstation 4, nintendo switch, 1 desktop, 4 laptops, 1 master sky box and 2 minis
7) Don't cook a lot lately as flat out too busy...daughter cooks a lot using air fryer and/or induction hob. Son uses microwave. When we use the oven we use the small oven when we can, rather than main fan oven. Certainly not got oven on for hours and hours. And oven is all electric.
8) No pond/hot tub/sauna/swimming pool
9) No
10) Yes - son uses an air con unit as his bedroom overheats due to gaming PC (but in summer gaming PC helps heat his room and the rest of upstairs)
11) One fridge freezer, I guess you would call it the american kind, has an ice dispenser
12) Yes as me, husband and son work from home

Re the excessive gas usage - we use gas only for the combi boiler - so basically hot water/heating.

MWT

MariaAH said:

10) Yes - son uses an air con unit as his bedroom overheats due to gaming PC (but in summer gaming PC helps heat his room and the rest of upstairs)

Hopefully he isn't running it 24/7 for crypto mining?...

I would certainly view this as one of the areas where you will be spending more than you think, just as a rough guide, he could be using 300-400W on the PC and then the AC costs on top of that.

If it is warm enough to heat the room and the surrounding area then it may be worth putting an energy monitor on the PC to get a feeling for the real use. 300W 24/7 would be over 7kWh a day on its own...

k_man

2 EV charges a week (@£14 per charge, is approx 50kWh per charge) is another 14kWh per day.

As suggested above, daily meter readings, and a plug in energy meter will help track down usage.

MariaAH

QrizB said:

MariaAH said:

GingerTim said:

Based on your actual readings, I make that 18,540 kwh of gas...
The gas use is also very high for spring and summer months.

Our cooker is electric, so gas only used for combi boiler. I just cannot see how we can be using that amount of energy??

Can you read your meters today so we can see how much gas and electricity you have used since May while the weather is hot and the heating it switched off? (I assume the heating *is* switched off?)

At the moment, when we use gas to heat water we're using less than 10kWh/day.

Yes heating is off
I did a meter reading yesterday:
Since 23 May have used 1605kWh of gas, so equates to almost 20kWh/day, double your usage. So that is just for hot water. Approx £1.46/day
Electricity 2827kWh since 23 May, approx £9.80/day

MariaAH

markin said:

You need to know your electric base load over night with no one awake, Can you pull the kwh's from the EV's computers 30 days/Total/week?

That is a good idea!