High Energy Bills

Gillian_Bendall · 2 January 2018 at 5:50PM

Hi, my in-laws (pensioners) living alone are paying nearly 8000 GBP a year for their electricity. It is the only source of energy going into the house but seems outrageously high to me. I'm living in France so have nothing to compare it to.
Scottish Power came out to look and the representative said that it looked like they had the meters mixed up but nothing happened after the visit. They are on direct debit but when I look at the bill and payment information on their Scottish Power account they are not consistent with the amount they are billing and taking out of their account.
My in-laws are in their mid 80's and this is becoming very stressful for them. Any advice?
They have already paid over 4500GBP and there is now a demand for over 3000GBP for 2017.

molerat · 2 January 2018 at 6:14PM

There is obviously something wrong there. Could they contact the local CAB for some help ? A local senior's help group ? Is there not anyone else who could go round and check the meter serial against the bill ? Who is reading the meters ? Could they be adding the decimal point to the reading ? They also need to be put on the supplier's priority services register.

macman · 2 January 2018 at 6:17PM

You need to tell us the actual usage figures in kWh, not ££. What is their annual consumption, how is the property heated and hot watered, and how large is it? What tariff are they on? Is this dual fuel or electricity only?
You can access all the info you need by logging into their SP online account.
£8K pa is ludicrously high for any residential property.

Cardew · 2 January 2018 at 6:37PM

Are you sure that this is not a case of their monthly Direct Debit being increased dramatically - to around £650 - and they multiply this figure by 12 to produce the £8,000 annual figure.

This often happens when bills have been based on under-estimated meter readings and a large debit balance has built up. The DD is increased to cover the winter consumption and pay off the debt before the review period.

However as said above, just giving money payment makes it difficult to comment - what we need is annual kWh(unit) totals.

ajbell · 2 January 2018 at 7:06PM

At 15p per kwh that would be 6kw constant use 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

Robin9 · 2 January 2018 at 7:40PM

[QUOTE=Gillian_Bendall;7364972_are_on_direct_debit_but_when_I_look_at_the_bill_and_payment_information_on_their_Scottish_Power_account_they_are_not_consistent_with_the_amount_they_are_billing_and_taking_out_of_their_account..[/QUOTE]

What do you mean? Please give details of the meter readings for the last 12 months and indicate where they are actual or estimated.

scones · 2 January 2018 at 9:34PM

This may not apply, but just in case...

If they are an electric-only household, do they by any chance have storage heaters and a dual-rate tariff such as "Economy 7", "White Meter", "ComfortPlus" or "TwinHeat"? Their bills and electricity meter would show two (or more) separate sets of readings - typically one for normal rate (aka 'daytime' or 'peak') and one for reduced rate off-peak (or 'night').

If by any chance this is the case, it is well worth checking that Scottish Power have not accidentally reversed the two readings in their billing. This is a very common cause of overcharging in all-electric houses.

To explain, this kind of setup typically has storage heaters that will be energised during the off-peak period to charge up with heat. They use a LOT of electricity, but this is usually balanced out by them only being switched on when the cheap off-peak rate applies. If the readings are swapped you will end up with the heavy heating loads wrongly being billed at expensive daytime rates. This can easily double or treble a bill!

I've twice had this problem with Scottish Power and their call centre staff were worse than useless at resolving (or even understanding) this. However, if you raise a formal complaint and escalate it is actually relatively straightforward for them to sort out.

(One other scenario in a house with storage heating and dual-rate tariffs is that the billing is correct, but that a faulty timeswitch, incorrect installation or botched meter replacement has led to the heaters being stuck on all day long using up lots of peak-rate electricity. This is probably quite rare though.)

Gillian_Bendall · 3 January 2018 at 4:54PM

Hi, they do have storage heaters and the water is electrically heated too. For some reason there are 2 meters. It is a relatively large property but they are only heating half of it as there is just the 2 of them.
I've added up the consumption from Dec 2016 to Dec 2017 and it is 31,385KW.
Is it a large consumption? Should I be asking for someone from SP to go out again?

Robin9 · 3 January 2018 at 5:15PM

Can you split this consumption between the two meters ?

If this an E7 tariff there may well be two meters.

Could there be heating in the parts they are not using ?

scones · 3 January 2018 at 8:36PM

That would seem fairly high to be though I'm not an expert. I can't imagine 31385 kWh coming out as much less than £3000.

As Robin9 says, you need to split out that consumption so that you know the total recorded on each meter. You can then see how it matches against the bill and check that the right rates are being applied to the right meter readings.

Do you know which Scottish Power tariff they are on? The only current tariff they list as having two separate meters is something called "Comfortplus Control" - but I guess they could have an old or non-standard setup on a different tariff.

(Scottish Power off-peak tariffs are listed in the "Option Table" at https://www.scottishpower.co.uk/energy-efficiency/energy-efficiency-toolkit/electric-heating/.)

Jonesya · 3 January 2018 at 8:42PM

Gillian_Bendall wrote: »

Hi, they do have storage heaters and the water is electrically heated too. For some reason there are 2 meters. It is a relatively large property but they are only heating half of it as there is just the 2 of them.
I've added up the consumption from Dec 2016 to Dec 2017 and it is 31,385KW.
Is it a large consumption? Should I be asking for someone from SP to go out again?

Yes it is a high consumption - typically a household might use around 16,000kWh of gas for heating and around 3000kWh of electricity for other purposes - so if that was all coming from electric, around 19,000kWh in total.

But even though the consumption is high, the bill also seems very high.

If they were on a standard electricity tariff, you might expect to be paying around 25p/day standing charge, say 14p/kWh.
(365 * 0.25) + (31,385 * 0.14) = £4,485.00
Which is still a lot lot less than £8,000

As it is, if they're on Economy 7 or a similar tariff, their average rate should be lower than 14p/kWh, so bills are definitely a lot higher than you would expect.

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