Average Electricity Costs Poll

emmylu · 21 February 2007 at 7:24PM

Have moved into rented house end of October 2006 and received my first bill up to 18th Jan 2007 and it is for £530.00!!!! When I irst moved in and gave meter readings they said DD would bne £61.50 a month - thought that sounds great. Scottish Power have been out and meter ok apart from I thought I was on economy 7 but am actually on something called twin heat A! Apparently I have cheap rate 4.064p from 3am to 7am and then 1.30pm till 4.30pm. After that am charged at 10.740p. Have storage heaters (8 various sizes) not sure if they are working efficiently or if they are set right. I keep turning the knobs down and son keeps turning them up! Water heated by Horstmann quartz thingy. Have calculated my usage since 18th Jan to 21st Feb as 3,131 units, thats about 95 units a day! Would appear my cheap rate usage is 80% of the bill. Other items are, washing machine on once a day, small freezer, fridge, tv, computer, oven on once a day, microwave several times a day. dryer used only for emergency items (i.e. daughter prior to going out who decides she has to wear something that isn't washed!)

Scottish Power want to increase DD from £61.50 to £180 a month!!! ha. Work part time on minimum wage plus WTC. At this rate will be turning everything off, using candles and will burn furniture in fireplace for heat!!! Will then send kids down the mine to nick coal and forage in forest for wood!!! Help!

In my last rented property had a prepayment meter and was putting about £35-£40 a week in that in winter and only had 3 storage heaters working plus an open coal fire. Even in summer with no heating it was still £15 a week!
(Plus gonna have an excess bill from this as they now say electricity prepayment meter was not set right in Jan 2005 and even though they had been out and checked it, they didn't increase the settings to take into account rate increases!!!)

Do ya think its just me and I'm a wasteful electricity harlot!!!! :eek:

If anyone has any advice would be grateful before I unplug all devices which will unfortunately include my beloved computer!

werngochlizz · 26 February 2007 at 6:02PM

My partner and i have moved into our rented house 3 weeks ago and have already accumilated a bill for £320 just for electric.we have 2 convection heaters which heat 2 rooms of the house, cooker and a fridge thats is all we are running at the moment can't afford to use a washing machine. does anyone have any suggestions for me?

Fizog · 26 February 2007 at 11:54PM

For a normal family house Scottish power have told us that 15 units a day is the norm... we've just queried a huge bill after a year of estimates our meter readings are coming out at 25-28 units a day!! They are coming to check the meter is running correctly as it was replaced 14 months ago. I have two thoughtless teenagers (tv, computers, left on for hours at weekends) but gas c/h, gas cooker, no electric kettle, no tumble dryer. At least I'm hoping the meter is running incorrectly.

madhouseof4 · 1 March 2007 at 10:07PM

I am quite certain that I will have paid too much in gas this year. We were put on a monthly amoutn based on our useage from last year, but have since had our loft & cavity wall insulation done as well as draught proofing through a warm front grant.

I was wondering though if there is a supplier that does discounts or reductions for people in reciept of DLA? Our youngest son gets low rate care and feels the cold due to a heart condition and poor circulation, so it is often much warmer in our house that those of our friends and family.

saryloup · 8 March 2007 at 3:19PM

Im at the end of my tether, we moved here in june 05 and the monthly electric DD was £35 which we thought wasnt that bad.
In Sept last yr we got a bill saying our electric use was 3 times the national average for a 3 bed house-we are in a small 2 bed house!
We got them out to take a reading and they amended our payments to £70 a month.
A faulty water heater was the cause and that was rectifiyed.
However we had a meter reading last week and just recieved a new bill saying our electric useage is continuing to grow and we now have to pay £116 a month starting next month! :eek:
We cant possibly afford this or see where this new rise has come from.

What can we do??? We are with southern electric.

withalj · 9 March 2007 at 1:41PM

saryloup wrote: »

Im at the end of my tether, we moved here in june 05 and the monthly electric DD was £35 which we thought wasnt that bad.
In Sept last yr we got a bill saying our electric use was 3 times the national average for a 3 bed house-we are in a small 2 bed house!
We got them out to take a reading and they amended our payments to £70 a month.
A faulty water heater was the cause and that was rectifiyed.
However we had a meter reading last week and just recieved a new bill saying our electric useage is continuing to grow and we now have to pay £116 a month starting next month! :eek:
We cant possibly afford this or see where this new rise has come from.

What can we do??? We are with southern electric.

That sounds a lot, our bills have gone up to that amount, which I think is horrendous, but we live in a detached bungalow, which will be much worse than yours. Have a look at the posts on the Electrisave (http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=4551326&postcount=9), which requires an upfront payout but as far as I can see really helps to cut down on cost (and would presumably identify faulty appliances)

saryloup · 9 March 2007 at 4:52PM

The thing we cant work out is our electric usage has fallen as the water heater was fixed and we havent changed anything around the home.

We have storage heaters which only come on at night, no excess wasted all switches are turned off each night.

Yet we have almost doubled our payments?

We have tried switching companies-EDf took us on but has now written saying we our out of their catchment area and so have changed us back to southen electric?
What a nightmare. :mad:

ladysurrey · 16 March 2007 at 5:02PM

We have a normal and an economy 7 meter which is used to heat the hot water. Heating is from warm air central heating which is gas.

We have queried every bill since then as we appeared to constantly have an outstanding amount in the meantime which is growing. They changed our electricity meter as it was due for a change according to their records. They also increased my DD from £40 to £58 per month and took a 1 off payment of £125 out of my bank account. :eek:

We then pointed out that when they entered the readings on their system about from the old to the new meters they had put the Economy 7 meter reading in the wrong place and the other meter readiung where the Economy 7 reading should have been.

Yes I think I am finally going to get this resolved, but this morning to brighten up my day I received a bill for £97 :mad: dispite the fact we are paying £58 for electric and they have just helped themselves to £125.

PQ. · 28 March 2007 at 10:49AM

I can't believe how high some of these bills are - we're a 2 bed bungalow and our bills have just been knocked down to £21 a month (after a lot of meter readings and requests after they've overestimated again and again....)

Admittedly we're 100% energy saving bulbs, the fridge, freezer, dishwasher and washing machine are A rated for efficiency (although they're a good 5 yrs old now so it's probably possible to get better rated ones now). We've got 3 TVs but only one and the sky box gets left on standby - the computers etc all get turned off at the wall when we're not using them (but we use them a LOT)...but we have battery chargers left in a lot of the time so I know there's more we could do to cut down our bills. I reckon energy saving bulbs knocked £5 off a month...and then turning things off instead of on standby knocked another £5 a month off the bill easily (and I used to laugh at my dad for telling me off for using standby when I lived at home:D)

The one thing I refuse to get is a tumble dryer - as far as I can tell most people I know who have tumble dryers have massive electric bills compared to us...

Cardew · 28 March 2007 at 11:45AM

PQ. wrote: »

). We've got 3 TVs but only one and the sky box gets left on standby - the computers etc all get turned off at the wall when we're not using them (but we use them a LOT)......and then turning things off instead of on standby knocked another £5 a month off the bill easily (and I used to laugh at my dad for telling me off for using standby when I lived at home:D)

..

That really is an exaggeration.

Count up the standby consumption of everything in your house, TVs(typically less than 1W to 3W), PC, DVD, clocks on appliances, even the dreaded Sky box at normally 14W and I doubt it will come to 30Watts. Most people(without SKY) much less.

Let us assume even that you never use any of those items and they would be, for the sake of this calculation, on standby 24/7 using the whole 30 watts.

30W x 24 hours x 31 days = 22kWh = approx £2.

For most people the savings would be less than £1 a month.

You(understandably) leave your Sky box and a TV on and yet you claim to have saved "£5 a month off the bill easily".

Care to give us your reasoning?

Average Electricity Costs Poll

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