Bills not going down despite using less

michael079

BUFF said:

Imperial or metric gas meter?

Just checked, it's metric

Robin9

Electric 532 (day ?)  in a month.

That is where your costs are not the gas

so --  panel heaters,  showers, fish tanks, ponds, greenhouses, fridges (American ?) ?????????????

Spoonie_Turtle

Why is she on Economy 7 when she has gas central heating?

The reason why decreased usage is not resulting in decreased bills is because you'd have to effectively quarter the usage to see any decrease - gas is 3x as expensive as it was before.

Payment on receipt of bill is also 5-10% more expensive than Direct Debit, does her supplier offer variable Direct Debit?  That bills for actual usage but retains the DD discount.

michael079

Robin9 said:

Electric 532 (day ?)  in a month.

That is where your costs are not the gas

so --  panel heaters,  showers, fish tanks, ponds, greenhouses, fridges (American ?) ?????????????

Just washing machine and electric fan heater that's the main electric users aside from tv lights etc. Central heating doesn't warm the house properly, even had British gas round recently to try address the issue and he looked at the radiators and gave some advice but not much changed. I saw that the gas bill was always much higher and because we use the fan heater a lot anyway, decided to turn down the gas more which hasn't made any difference anyway 

Spoonie_Turtle

michael079 said:

Robin9 said:

Electric 532 (day ?)  in a month.

That is where your costs are not the gas

so --  panel heaters,  showers, fish tanks, ponds, greenhouses, fridges (American ?) ?????????????

Just washing machine and electric fan heater that's the main electric users aside from tv lights etc. Central heating doesn't warm the house properly, even had British gas round recently to try address the issue and he looked at the radiators and gave some advice but not much changed. I saw that the gas bill was always much higher and because we use the fan heater a lot anyway, decided to turn down the gas more which hasn't made any difference anyway 

The fan heater is the electric guzzler then.  By turning the gas down you've inadvertently made the fan heater need to use more energy to warm the surrounding space - electricity, which is at the single rate 3.5x as expensive as gas, but even more so if she is on Economy 7 as inferred by the dual meter readings.  Whoops.

That was an expensive mistake, one you'll not repeat again now you know!

michael079

Spoonie_Turtle said:

michael079 said:

Robin9 said:

Electric 532 (day ?)  in a month.

That is where your costs are not the gas

so --  panel heaters,  showers, fish tanks, ponds, greenhouses, fridges (American ?) ?????????????

Just washing machine and electric fan heater that's the main electric users aside from tv lights etc. Central heating doesn't warm the house properly, even had British gas round recently to try address the issue and he looked at the radiators and gave some advice but not much changed. I saw that the gas bill was always much higher and because we use the fan heater a lot anyway, decided to turn down the gas more which hasn't made any difference anyway 

The fan heater is the electric guzzler then.  By turning the gas down you've inadvertently made the fan heater need to use more energy to warm the surrounding space - electricity, which is at the single rate 3.5x as expensive as gas, but even more so if she is on Economy 7 as inferred by the dual meter readings.  Whoops.

That was an expensive mistake, one you'll not repeat again now you know!

I still don't understand it. How can using less gas mean costing more overall.

The Electric for February works out at £10.75 per day and March was £9.40, so it was still cheaper because the warmer weather meant less electric fan use. So might as well just have the gas on full blast every day if it doesnt affect the bill at the end of the month even if on actual usage?

And the bills always seem to be the same each month electric and gas combined, always around £650 no matter what we do. 

Spoonie_Turtle

michael079 said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

michael079 said:

Robin9 said:

Electric 532 (day ?)  in a month.

That is where your costs are not the gas

so --  panel heaters,  showers, fish tanks, ponds, greenhouses, fridges (American ?) ?????????????

Just washing machine and electric fan heater that's the main electric users aside from tv lights etc. Central heating doesn't warm the house properly, even had British gas round recently to try address the issue and he looked at the radiators and gave some advice but not much changed. I saw that the gas bill was always much higher and because we use the fan heater a lot anyway, decided to turn down the gas more which hasn't made any difference anyway 

The fan heater is the electric guzzler then.  By turning the gas down you've inadvertently made the fan heater need to use more energy to warm the surrounding space - electricity, which is at the single rate 3.5x as expensive as gas, but even more so if she is on Economy 7 as inferred by the dual meter readings.  Whoops.

That was an expensive mistake, one you'll not repeat again now you know!

I still don't understand it. How can using less gas mean costing more overall.

The Electric for February works out at £10.75 per day and March was £9.40, so it was still cheaper because the warmer weather meant less electric fan use. So might as well just have the gas on full blast every day if it doesnt affect the bill at the end of the month even if on actual usage?

And the bills always seem to be the same each month electric and gas combined, always around £650 no matter what we do. 

Let's say 100kWh gas, a nice round number.
At previous prices that was ~£3, at 3p/kWh.
At current prices that's more like £10.33, at 10.33p/kWh (roughly, I don't think there's as much regional variation as with electricity).

To get bills *to the same level* you'd need to use 100 ÷ (10.33÷3) = 29kWh.
That's just to get the same cost of the units, not even considering the standing charge.
To get lower bills, you'd need to use *less than* 29% of the previous usage - you probably wouldn't see any significant difference until about 25% of usage.

So even if you were using 50% of the gas you used to when it was cheap, your bills would still be more than before because the cost has increased more than the usage has decreased.


For electricity vs gas, what's the current day rate of electricity? 

BUFF

what type of/how old is her boiler? It doesn't have a permanent pilot does it?
how is the hot water for bath/shower etc. heated?

markin

You are bankrupting yourself using day time electric vs Gas, At the very least you need to switch to single rate electric.

Even if your boilers 50 years old and only 60% efficient vs a more modern one at 85% or 95% it's still cheaper than using even single rate electric at 32p vs 10p for gas.


Single rate electric would be around £4 a day cheaper.

Robin9

michael079 said:

........................ even had British gas round recently to try address the issue and he looked at the radiators and gave some advice but not much changed. ..............

What was the advice ? and did you act on it?

Radiators need bleeding ?  Has you boiler got a room stat ? If so where and what is it's setting.

What is the boiler temp settings ? and the programmer timings?


As other's have said cancelling DD  is not a good idea - switch to a monthly variable DD  such as EDF.  Switch to single rate Elec (unless you are being charged the same rate day and night).

Have you done a Benefits check ?