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

maisie_cat

NeverendingDMP said:

Just to say I did the maths a few weeks ago and we will be firmly with you in the fuel poverty club on Oct first or earlier if we fix. Rumour has it it's gonna be a popular club. We are almost at it now but not quite. I'm also trying to reduce what we use but we still are meant to wash eat, see in the dark at times. 

We've technically been in the club for a couple of years, there will be a very largewe moved from scary expensive oil to biomass last year and for a short period the energy costs were sub 10%. It's now back to 13.5% and would have been 16.8% from October had we not fixed in May.  We reduced the electric by 20% earlier this year and use 3400kWh electric and 10600 in biomass so I'm not sure we could reduce more without it affecting our quality of life.
Luckily I'm an organised type and we are prepared for winter, we have food stores and warm clothing thanks to many years camping. I can flex the food shop easily, I rather do that than give up satellite tv or our tenner a month mobiles, hubby is on board eating more beans and veg instead of meat as long as I keep coming up with tasty meals, thanks to the internet for the inspiration.

Alnat1

All those beans - natural gas- time to pipe hubby up as a fuel source 

MariaAH

michaels said:

Sorry to keep hijacking your thread MariaH

Honestly, I don’t view it that way! I genuinely appreciate all the contributions in this thread…and hearing other’s experiences for comparison really helps! 

MariaAH

Been using the TP link monitors and we have some unidentified daily kWh that it’s hard to pinpoint…

both kids were away for a couple of days so was an ideal opportunity to measure minimal use. During those 2 days, everything was off in son’s room (gaming PC) and no EV charging was done. Both days were approx 12kWh each day. 

so what did we use…

TP monitor showed freezer as 2.3kWh (double what it should be)
TP monitor showed TV stack (TV, PS5 etc) as 1.9kWh (watching TV several hours in evening, hubby on PlayStation for couple of hours)

I’m struggling to see how the remaining use adds up to remaining 7.8kWh..,
> boiled kettle 2/3 times each day (we have a pump thermos flask so am boiling full kettle and filling flask to see if that is cheaper)
> used the hob (induction) for 10 mins to boil pasta in one pan and peas in another on one day (using water from thermos flask to save energy). Oven was not used either day. Second day we ate at IKEA (cheap meals). NB lunches were sandwiches or similar using no energy 
> microwave for 2 mins each day for milk/porridge
> toaster used once a day for 2 slices of toast.
> dishwasher used once each day on auto setting (adjusts for volume and level
of soiling)
> washing machine used once each day
> TV in our bedroom watched for and hour or so each day
> iMac used for 8 hours on first day, but only a couple of hours on the second. 

Honestly, does that really seem about right?

btw, am cooking vegetable stew in slow cooker and delicious smell wafting through house..,

Sea_Shell

It's a bit of a puzzle, that's for sure.

I've just looked at my spreadsheet of daily usage.

Our heaviest electricity days are on our "chores" days.   Usually 2 loads of washing and 30 mins vacuuming.   Sometimes we'll have used the oven that day too.

Over the summer months our highest usage on "chore" days has been 4.69kwh, and that INCLUDES our fridge and freezer in the background (large separates), and our router/sky/soundbar set up on standby.  We do have a gas hob.

DH has toast most days, and we probably make about 5 rounds of hot drinks a day.

Our highest day's electric over winter was 6.2kwhs, so will include lighting and the heating pump.

We haven't even got low energy bulbs everywhere either (yet!)  (slap my wrist!)

We are a couple who are usually in the same room (watching TV) etc, so not spread about the house.   And i don't do much ironing or hair-drying etc. so that might account for some savings.

Mstty

I have to agree our absolute heaviest day in the last three months was Thursday this week at 12.4kWh but that included three washing machine loads (2.4kwh), two tumble dryer loads(2kwh), legionella burn to 60oC(3kWh) (we are all electric so yes that was electric as well) hob used and oven(1kwh)(first time in ages) as well as the normal background usage of fridge freezer, TV, router and laptops for work all day.

Have you checked there is no electric immersion switch turned on for the hot water burning a few kWh.

Alnat1

@MariaAH Would it be possible one day to turn absolutely everything off at the switches, including FF, router etc. Check meter to see if there's still something using electric.

Hopefully meter shows no use, take reading, one person have their normal shower, check meter again.

MWT

MariaAH said:

I’m struggling to see how the remaining use adds up to remaining 7.8kWh..,

Sorry if I missed it, but did you get a chance to check your overnight use and get an idea of the baseload?

I know that will include the freezer, but you can check the specific amount for that using your TP monitor at the same time...

MariaAH

Mstty said:

I have to agree our absolute heaviest day in the last three months was Thursday this week at 12.4kWh but that included three washing machine loads (2.4kwh), two tumble dryer loads(2kwh), legionella burn to 60oC(3kWh) (we are all electric so yes that was electric as well) hob used and oven(1kwh)(first time in ages) as well as the normal background usage of fridge freezer, TV, router and laptops for work all day.

Have you checked there is no electric immersion switch turned on for the hot water burning a few kWh.

We don’t have an immersion heater..,just combo boiler. 

MariaAH

Alnat1 said:

@MariaAH Would it be possible one day to turn absolutely everything off at the switches, including FF, router etc. Check meter to see if there's still something using electric.

Hopefully meter shows no use, take reading, one person have their normal shower, check meter again.

We actually have an electrician coming on Tuesday to do exactly that…to check which circuits are drawing power. The showers don’t impact electricity as we have a combo boiler normal pressure. Will update again after electrician visit. But if I can’t get under 12kWh a day even with no oven use, kids not here and no tumble dryer, I’m screwed come October!