Electric bill excruciatingly high - meter wired up wrong?

markin

On the EPC the will be a date, likely 3-10 years old! It will also say the primary annual Energy for heat and hot water.


https://find-energy-certificate.service.gov.uk/find-a-certificate/search-by-postcode?lang=en&property_type=domestic

Reed_Richards

In my previous house I inherited a single meter that ran on Economy 7.  I left it that way for 20 years because I didn't think I had the option to change.  

EssexHebridean

First up OP, try not to panic too much. we'll be able to get to the bottom of this.

Some basic questions to start with though.

Can you supply us with a photo of your electricity meter please - block out the meter serial number but make sure the photo shows us the area around the meter too - so any cables coming out of the bottom, and any other boxes those cables might lead to directly.

What heating do you have? Storage heaters, ordinary panel heaters, or "normal" radiators which are supplied by a seemingly regular sort of boiler, albeit one supplied by electricity rather than gas? How many heaters do you have around the property that you have previously been using?

How is your water heated - do you have a big hot water cylinder which is electrically heated, or the smaller sort of "instant water heaters" perhaps?

What sort of shower do you have, and how many of them? (Ie standard "electric showers" with a white probably plastic box on the wall, or a shower running off the bath taps which is most likely fed from a hot water cylinder?

Do you use a tumble dryer, and if so how often?

Also - are you familiar with how Economy 7 works? Do you know the on/off times for your off-peak rate for a start? 

Hopefully the answers to all of these might help us to start building a picture of your setup, and then we might be able to work out what is causing your seemingly very high usage. I'm afraid that as others have said though, that EPC may well turn out to be rather a red herring. 

TheElectricCow

Alnat1 said:

TheElectricCow said:

First things first the meter reads situation needs addressing - if they are on a dual rate tariff then there needs to be a second meter reading somewhere as there's otherwise no chance of being billed accurately.

If there's a second reading, wouldn't that add even more to the energy usage?

Potentially, hard to say for certain without knowledge of the exact circumstances though and which readings are being used for what. 

The one thing that can be known with certainty is that if the tariff is definitely E7 the bill cannot be accurate if only a single reading is being used, which can only add to the confusion.

The one thing that would potentially be worse than now finding a second reading to add to the already high usage would be not finding that second reading and having a huge catch up bill in the future based entirely on a supplier estimated opening reading for that second rate.

Of course it might also reveal that the tariff isn’t currently dual rate after all if there is no second reading to be found, which would still be very helpful information for the OP to know if it turns out to be the case.