Electricity bill regularly high but with no apparent cause

emujuice

thanks for the fishy advice! i'm glad they made it, I'm very attached to them.
if you think the fridge use is ok, thats great, basically i have no idea.
we've decided to move out as soon as our tenancy is up anyway. we've had enough of everything not working - esp the electric shocks and the shocking electric bills!
only 2 months to go...just need to house hunt. again. sigh!

Phonix

fridge freezer alone costs around 8 or 9 pounds a month to run.

It is, and we've got two fridge freezers and a big freezer in the house. If those cost 30 quid to run alone, that's ridiculous.

Cardew

emujuice wrote:

well we did our experiment. went away for 2 1/2 days and left only the fridge freezer on. which used 10 units. i'm not really sure what that tells me to be honest. at 8-10p a unit, i guess i can estimate that the fridge freezer alone costs around 8 or 9 pounds a month to run. seems a lot to me, but since i've never consdidered how much one normally costs I can't tell if it's a lot. any thooughts?

10 units(kWh) in 2.5days = 4 units per day = 1460 units per year.

That seems to be very high consumption. Particularly as you were not opening and closing the doors in that time.

If you look at the adverts for large 'A' rated fridge freezers they indicate average consumptions in the order of 300-400kWh per year.

Whilst older machines might be less efficient, it should not be by that much. I suspect you may have a faulty fridge freezer.

bunking_off

Looking at it again, most fridge/freezers seem to use 1KWH per day from a quick internet search, so maybe there is an issue with yours....but how old is it, and are you sure it was the only thing left on?

ffym

emujuice
The fact that your getting shocks off things is very worrying. Has the wiring been checked. It sounds like a live & neutral are crossed somewhere or maybe an earth connection missing. If the mains neutral connection (on the suppliers system) has got disconnected that will cause all sorts of strange voltages to fly around and could play havoc with the metering. Bad earthing or a neutral to earth connection (without a main earth) will lead to shocks off appliances. If your main fuseboard is not fitted with a RCD (Residual Current Device or earth leakage trip) be very very careful and get the wiring checked.

emujuice

Hi guys,
i thought i'd give an update.
The electrician came and was initially baffled by it all. when he took the covers of some of the plug sockets there was a load of debris from the walls possibley causing problems.
which is when i had to leave to go to work.
when i got back there was a note saying that wasn't the problem and it was my devices with transformers. which are apparently faulty. they're new kinds of transformers which have switching currents or something, but can potentially shock me. which they were. i'm not sure how convinced i am by all of this, as they dont' shock me elsewhere, but i'm not worried any more.
the landlords have finally bought us a new fridge freezer which came yesterday. unfortunatley it's the smallest thing ever and doesn't even fit half our frozen food in it. bah.
anyway, i anticipate our readings will soon fall. they've been falling recently anyway as we've become more and more obsessed with saving electricity.
i'm hoping for a bill of £25 in the long run.
Phonex, i don't think your fridgefreezers are the problem unless they are faulty. i'm pretty sure ours was, which is why it froze up all the time.
i hope you get something sorted soon.
what have the meter readings for each day been?

ffym

emujuice
I don't think I'd like to come across that electrician, from what you say there must have been a strong smell of Bull!!!

emujuice

just seemed odd that he was convinced it was the house at fault when i left but changed his mind later...but i'm not an electrician so i don't realy know. seems odd that we have so many 'faulty' devices though!