Electricity Bill is huge.. or is it?

[blu4]

I have moved (with my girlfriend) house recently and we got the key meter changed to paperless direct debit from SSE. The key meter went on the 23rd on January and we got a single phase digital meter which showed a lovely 0 when we got it fitted. It has been 8 days since the change (23rd to the 31st) and the electricity usage is at 184kWh! How is this possible? My girlfriend works all day, so do I- we come at in the evening, watch telly, I do some gaming and we go to bed. I looked up the amount of electricity we used and it's about 26 pounds for 8 bloody days! BTW. This does NOT include the night rate for heating... I am just really that electricity hungry or is there something wrong with the electricity in my flat? What is your usage daily?

[rich_tech]

do you have something like old plumbing with an immersion heater in a boiler ? that can and does cost lots to use to heat water, failing that I would check what appliances you have left turned on if no ones in, see if any particular appliance makes a difference to it.

 

Does your PC have a large wattage power supply ? that can use the juice as my 550w one does here and its noticeable in our consumption when I am home and off work in holidays.

 

(On a personal level, having experienced pre-payment meter's and direct debits here, it was a rip-off for my wife and our usage when we were on DD, they expected us to pay massive amounts more than we knew our average use to be in winter, when our bills were pretty solid and had been for years),when we were persuaded on one property to go on a DD system instead of a pre-pay meter here, we both would be loathed to ever go onto DDs again here.

[timbo343]

That is a lot for 8 days. It might be worth getting a electric usage monitor, one end its in the db and the other shows how much electric is being used.

 

We have been in our new house for a month and we are averaging about 6 to 7 kwh per day. We have electric oven, boiler and led gu10 bulbs.

 

I have started to record our usage for both gas and electric along with the firmukas to work out how much we spending. Since moving in just before xmas, i checked my meter reading online and we have spent £26 this month.

 

Gas is our problem at the momrnt, we have spent £62 this month thats on central heating, showers and gas hob.

 

You must have something that is pulling a lot of energy. Get a meter and tgr go round turning things off. You will gind anything that has a heat element in it uses the most power.. electric hobs, kettle, hair dryer, straighteners, electric power shower (these can be killers - you dont realuse how much they use), irons and strangely, hoovers.

 

The prepay meters (aka council electtic/gas meters) cost a fortune to run. One of my relevites is using one at the moment as a temporary meansb(long sorry) and they say that these things cost you much.

Edited January 31, 2015 by timbo343

[southhamster]

Yikes,

that does seem a lot!

The average UK annual KWh is 3,200 which is around 8-9 KWh per day - you are getting through 23 KWh which is not far off what energy wasting Americans use!

You could get an Owl electric monitor Home | The OWL

which lets you see how much juice you are using - you can go round and turn things off until you find what is wasting so much.

Your meter could be faulty - the Owl is not exact but it will give you a close enough figure.

You can also get plug in energy monitors which will measure how much say your fridge is using each day.

Don't forget a 100 watt load left on all day will use 2.4 KWh per day - 3 or 4 idling devices like PC's TV's, sky box, router etc, etc could add up to that at least.

I binned a mains clock radio which was wasting 25 watts just to tell me the time (badly).

Yes, you may well have some vampire appliance sucking far too much power - some older crappy TV's or fridges waste an awful lot of electricity, even supposedly on "standby"

However, heating anything with electricity is expensive, so it may be that is about right if you are doing that.

What are you using for water heating, cooking and space heating because those will easily use that amount of electricity? If you don't use gas, you're just transferring the cost of heating to electricity which is more. On the other no boiler, rads and cooker means no leaks, breakdowns, annual service and expensive replacement costs.

Do you know anyone with the same setup nearby to see what their costs are?

Good luck!

[blu4]

Everything in my house is electric apart from water lol. The heating is on the economy 7 meter and that only turns on after 23:30 to 6:30. We do have a boiler but could it really take up THAT much juice? I'll turn it off for today and see if it affects anything. Before we moved to the DD we had he stupid key meter and over 22 days we spent 65 quid on electricity- that is without cooking a great deal and me without using my PC or TV at all. I'll be giving my electricity company and my landlord a call on monday because I can't relax about this issue. I will have a look at that Owl device but for now on I guess the boiler is off for today.

[plexer]

How many units is the meter showing?

 

Ben

[pcstru]

Everything in my house is electric apart from water lol. The heating is on the economy 7 meter and that only turns on after 23:30 to 6:30. We do have a boiler but could it really take up THAT much juice?

An electric boiler?

 

After a similar situation (£500 electric bill for a quarter, where our heating is gas) I built an arduino/RPi based monitoring system based around Emoncms so I could check the meter was sane! That showed me exactly what was in use where and that the meter was OK, but the high bill was a still mystery. Then I found the fan heaters in Stepdaughters bedroom!

[blu4]

How many units is the meter showing?

 

Ben

 

Well, we got it fitted on the 23rd Jan so it was 0 that day, today is the 1st Feb and it is showing 198kWh.

 

An electric boiler?

 

After a similar situation (£500 electric bill for a quarter, where our heating is gas) I built an arduino/RPi based monitoring system based around Emoncms so I could check the meter was sane! That showed me exactly what was in use where and that the meter was OK, but the high bill was a still mystery. Then I found the fan heaters in Stepdaughters bedroom!

 

 

Well, or a big kettle if you want to call differently £500 you say? I'd go crazy on her.

Edited February 1, 2015 by blu4

[Edu-IT]

Just had a look on my smart meter and I've used £1 today and I've been at home all day and have had the hoover on, the washing machine a few times, the tumble dryer, so this is above what would normally be used in the week. So I'd say £26 is quite a lot.

[rich_tech]

another thing to watch when your on pre-payment meters is if your energy supplier puts a standing charge onto you, we jumped to Swalec on our pre-payment meter, because I think Eon or EDF were charging about £7/8 a week for nothing more than having the service, which equated to about £28 a month with that company, we realised quick enough that it was eating chunks of the money we were putting into it and jumped ship fast there.

[PotNoodleTech]

Is you're meter set up properly? If you're on ecomomy 7 or the like you should have two totally separate rates on your meter, a KWH reading for daytime, a KWH reading for night and a combined reading.

[localzuk]

Are you sure the economy 7 timer is set up properly? I found in my last place that the storage heaters we had were on it, so only turned on during the proper hours, but the immersion heater was on the day rate, so was on all the time until I put in my own timer!

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Also, check your hot water tank. In my last place we had electric everything (Never, Ever again!) and the electric water heater once shorted and went into overdrive without us knowing, it was stuck in full power constantlyand ended up costing us a fortune in electricity for the couple of weeks it was on for!

 

Otherwise, are you sure that you've not had the electric heating on during the day? They sap money like it's going out of fashion (and it has been rather cold lately)

[CHR1S]

Just checked my use for comparison.

 

Average daily use over winter is almost 14kwh per day.

We are VERY high use, OH is home all day with the kids, server on 24/7, CCTV, washing machine/tumble on sometimes several times a day.

 

Yours is not quite right. Turn everything off you own and see if the meter ticks over still.

[Andrew_C]

I'd suspect water, or space heating on when it shouldn't be. Your immersion heater should have two elements; the bottom one fed from the Eco 7 supply, the top one from the "day" supply, but only switched on to "boost" the heat in the tank if you've drawn lots of hot water. Or, if you don't use much hot (elec showers, dishwasher etc) only occasionally instead of heating the whole tank.

 

Some night storage heaters have convector heaters built in supplied from the "day" tarrif; if these are left on consider an extra mortgage.

[DSapseid]

Ive just moved into a new house and i have had one of the owl monitors for a year or so in my last place to help save money. Plugged it in the new house and it was 3-4 times higher than at the old place. Then realised that i have 30 50w halogen bulbs in the house!!! Replaced now with 3w led bulbs so all 30 bulbs for the power of 2 of the original ones!

[Davit2005]

Just ordered one of the Owl Monitors, had a small monitor which British gas supplied but that malfunctioned and they don't supply them any more. By 2020 I might have a Smart Meter according to British Gas.

[Edu-IT]

Ive just moved into a new house and i have had one of the owl monitors for a year or so in my last place to help save money. Plugged it in the new house and it was 3-4 times higher than at the old place. Then realised that i have 30 50w halogen bulbs in the house!!! Replaced now with 3w led bulbs so all 30 bulbs for the power of 2 of the original ones!

What did that cost to do? I've looked at replacing all the bulbs before but it seems quite expensive task and would take a bit of time to recoup back the savings.

[blu4]

Also, check your hot water tank. In my last place we had electric everything (Never, Ever again!) and the electric water heater once shorted and went into overdrive without us knowing, it was stuck in full power constantlyand ended up costing us a fortune in electricity for the couple of weeks it was on for!

 

Otherwise, are you sure that you've not had the electric heating on during the day? They sap money like it's going out of fashion (and it has been rather cold lately)

 

That is exactly what happened! I turned off the boiler and voila! PC all day, lights, cooked dinner twice and did washing and it took 1.50 for the day. I've got the Owl today and will be testing the usage because it's still bit too high. I believe the boilers thermostat is broken and it is on all the time hence the immense power consumption. The boiler is 10 years old now and after looking up the model it takes up 15kWh to heat up... That was on.. ALL THE TIME :|

 

Ive just moved into a new house and i have had one of the owl monitors for a year or so in my last place to help save money. Plugged it in the new house and it was 3-4 times higher than at the old place. Then realised that i have 30 50w halogen bulbs in the house!!! Replaced now with 3w led bulbs so all 30 bulbs for the power of 2 of the original ones!

 

How accurate is the Owl?

Edited February 2, 2015 by blu4

[pcstru]

When I was doing the emconcms project, the (obvious) fact that surprised me the most was that a 1w appliance operated continually was costing me £1 a year. All those little wall warts I never gave a second thought to, I started giving them the evil eye. I don't leave PC's on nearly as much either.

[DSapseid]

What did that cost to do? I've looked at replacing all the bulbs before but it seems quite expensive task and would take a bit of time to recoup back the savings.

 

I got them from amazon, was £15 for 10 bulbs there not the brightest though, fine for bedroom etc but not for living areas so i got some 9w ones for that. I had to get the ones with the 3 bulbs that you could see, you can ones with lots of little leds that give a better light coverage but my gf has really sensitive eyes and they set her migraines off.

 

How accurate is the Owl?

 

I reckon its pretty accurate. With the virgin box, tele, and maybe a lamp on as well as fridge/freezer etc. it sits 400w. You can input how much you pay per unit of electricity as well so it gives you the accurate cost which does show about what my bills come in at.

[pcstru]

That is exactly what happened! I turned off the boiler and voila! PC all day, lights, cooked dinner twice and did washing and it took 1.50 for the day. I've got the Owl today and will be testing the usage because it's still bit too high. I believe the boilers thermostat is broken and it is on all the time hence the immense power consumption. The boiler is 10 years old now and after looking up the model it takes up 15kWh to heat up... That was on.. ALL THE TIME :|

If it was on ALL the time with a broken thermostat, that would be well beyond what your bills are (15kWh*24 = £££££££EEEEK!!). If it is heating for a couple of hours a day, that would explain the amount being racked up on the meter.

[blu4]

If it was on ALL the time with a broken thermostat, that would be well beyond what your bills are (15kWh*24 = £££££££EEEEK!!). If it is heating for a couple of hours a day, that would explain the amount being racked up on the meter.

 

Yea.. Got a bit ahead of myself here.. Well, it's the boiler anyway, now that your brought this point up I don't know what's wrong with it.. I best give my landlord a call.

[Nibiru]

I have moved (with my girlfriend) house recently and we got the key meter changed to paperless direct debit from SSE. The key meter went on the 23rd on January and we got a single phase digital meter which showed a lovely 0 when we got it fitted. It has been 8 days since the change (23rd to the 31st) and the electricity usage is at 184kWh! How is this possible? My girlfriend works all day, so do I- we come at in the evening, watch telly, I do some gaming and we go to bed. I looked up the amount of electricity we used and it's about 26 pounds for 8 bloody days! BTW. This does NOT include the night rate for heating... I am just really that electricity hungry or is there something wrong with the electricity in my flat? What is your usage daily?

 

Two of us in a little stone built farm cottage out in the windswept wilds. All electric apart from a coal fire - leccy bill is about £350/quarter. The coal is horrendously expensive these days, although it is being eked out this year thanks to a tractor bucket load of free logs off the farm after one of the winter gales.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yeh I've replaced the GU10 halogen spotlights with LED versions from tescos - big power savings there as the spots used 50w each and the LED only 5w each and the LED actually a bit brighter! Also - with a shelf life of 20 years or so you won't be constantly replacing blown bulbs all the time. Much much better. You'll get the cost of the LED back in 6 months to a year, from then on it's pure profit and no more changing bulbs!

 

If you rent, in my experience landlords seem to love fitting halogen spots everywhere, in my previous house I had 6 in the kitchen, 4 in the bathroom and 2 in the en suite - or about 600watts worth!!