Is this bill possible??

Brie

Asking for a friend.......

...who has shown me a bill for one month where she has been charged nearly £600 for electricity.  Supplier is OVO.  No I don't have a copy of the bill.  But yes the bill matches the meter and there's no other properties attached so it's not like she's paying for other people's use.

She is the only adult in a 3 bedroom house with a 17 yo and a 2 yo.  She says there's inadequate insulation (lots in the loft but just piled up in a corner rather than spread out).  There is no gas.  There's an immersion heater that sounds like it's not working well.  She's got a dual rate (day/night).

Frankly I think that either something is radically wrong with meter (registering too too much) or somehow something is being a constant drain on it of which she is not aware.  She claims there is nothing left on unnecessarily - lights off when leaving rooms etc.

It's a housing association rental and the HA say there's nothing they can do including they won't put a timer on her meter (not sure why that might help frankly).

I'm thinking she might start by turning every single thing off at the wall to see if the meter still moves.

Any other ideas?

Penguin_

Were both the opening & closing reads on the bill actual reads or was the opening read estimated? 

FlorayG

If the immersion heater is running constantly that could cause it, those things are expensive to run

DullGreyGuy

Brie said:

Asking for a friend.......

...who has shown me a bill for one month where she has been charged nearly £600 for electricity.  Supplier is OVO.  No I don't have a copy of the bill.  But yes the bill matches the meter and there's no other properties attached so it's not like she's paying for other people's use.

She is the only adult in a 3 bedroom house with a 17 yo and a 2 yo.  She says there's inadequate insulation (lots in the loft but just piled up in a corner rather than spread out).  There is no gas.  There's an immersion heater that sounds like it's not working well.  She's got a dual rate (day/night).

Frankly I think that either something is radically wrong with meter (registering too too much) or somehow something is being a constant drain on it of which she is not aware.  She claims there is nothing left on unnecessarily - lights off when leaving rooms etc.

It's a housing association rental and the HA say there's nothing they can do including they won't put a timer on her meter (not sure why that might help frankly).

I'm thinking she might start by turning every single thing off at the wall to see if the meter still moves.

Any other ideas?

Was the previous bill also matching the meter read or was it an estimate? Obviously if this is the first accurate reading  bill in a while it can be under estimates of several months lumped in on this months use. 

Most expensive things to run are heating, either the emersion heater for water or room heating. Given it's all electric then it's likely the emersion has a night and a 24/7 heater - obvious candidate is that the 24/7 has been left on for an extended period. 

Heating is storage heaters? Something else? Do they have mechanisms to "top up" either in the storage heaters or as standalone heaters? 

They presumably have an E7 type supply in which case cheap night electricity but expensive daytime so if they're like my Ex and decided she didn't like the storage heaters and just used plug in fan heaters during the day that would give massive bills

QrizB

Brie said:

Asking for a friend.......
...
Any other ideas?

We can help you get totnhe bottom of this bilur we're going to need a lot more information regarding your friend's bills, meters, household and appliances.

Either you're going to be very busy as a go-between, or (ideally) your friend needs to create an account on the forum so we can communicate with them directly.

Robin9

You need to see a copy of the bill - and then give us a copy with the personal info blacked out.

Lots of possibilities -  inc correct usage   -   large debt carried forward, estimated bill ................

sheenas

The first thing would be to check if the bill was for E7. The as others have said check the readings. I would firstly write down the readings daily as the same time. Maybe for a week. The with the warmer weather turn off the E7 heating and record readings for another week. Compare the results 

Brie

Yes there are massive arrears.  But that is immaterial at this point.  What the problem is is that one month's cost (not expected payment) is about £600.  It sounds from what people are saying that the immersion heater may be to blame quite legitimately.  

Should have mentioned she's on prepayment meters so not paying by DD but that doesn't change the fact that there's a huge charge for a lot of electricity.  

We're trying to get a energy efficiency scheme to look at her set up and see if they can provide someone official about the problem to take to the housing association and hopefully find a solution that way.  

Thanks all.

QrizB

Brie said:

What the problem is is that one month's cost (not expected payment) is about £600.

On a single rate tariff, that would be around 2400kWh which is the sort of quantity that a household might use in a year, not a month.

For a dual-rate tariff it could be more or less than that, depending on how much is on each rate and on what the tariff actually is; however it's still likely to be somewhere in the range 1800-5000kWh, which is far more than it should be.

2400kWh is 80kWh/day for 30 days. The only way you could get close to that with an immersion heater is if someone left a hot tap running for the entire month. It seems more likely to me that space heating is the biggest energy user; 80kWh a day is quite possible.

Brie said:

Should have mentioned she's on prepayment meters so not paying by DD

This confuses me, though, since you don't usually get to run up arrears when you're on prepayment.

Was she previously in DD / credit but has recently been switched to prepayment because of the arrears? If so, is some of that £600 payment towards the arrears rather than payment for energy used?

This is all a bit speculative as we don't have enough information yet to reach any firm conclusions.

Brie

Thanks @QrizB
I'll see if I can get a copy of the bill to look at.

cannugec5

Is the £600 bill including a proportion towards the arrears?