Can I ask about your electric bill.

[Dontgiveamonkeys1350]

A while ago my electric company put my bill up to £160 a month.

We live in a two bed house. There are two adults and a 15 year old. We have two storage heaters and an electric shower. I turn everything off and I mean everything I can bar the fridge freezer. Even the tv etc gets turned off. All the plugs in the kitchen as well. Everything.

Everyone is out during the day. My son has an Xbox which he goes on after school. But that is all turned off every night ( he is really good at that )

What am I missing that is costing so much. I have the fridge freezer and a washing machine and dishwasher. I feel like I’m missing something that I don’t realise is costing a lot. Or am I just being naive About how much electricity cost now.

I meant to add we are on cheaper electric over night for the storage heaters. We had the electric company come out to check the meter to make sure it was correct.

We have since moved supplier and they have put us at £115 a month. But I don’t want this to creep up again and have a huge bill to pay like last time

Your bill sounds incredibly high!

When you’ve turned everything off go and have a look at the metre and see what happening.

Is the last bill an estimate or a reading?

Have you shopped around?

Is it a pre-pay card?

Storage heaters are extortionately expensive. My Nan in a one bedroom flat was paying more than us in a three bedroom house.

It is an actual reading as my husband does it. We have changed but I feel like I’m either missing something or something I’m using is costing way more than I thought. We have three storage heaters but I never use the one on the upstairs as it is too hot. So only to storage heaters downstairs. I turn the electric shower off in between showers so it doesn’t sit on standby

I was thinking it maybe the storage heaters. Even in a cheaper night tariff. If it is that I can’t afford to change it though.

Yes it will be the storage heaters.

It will definitely be the storage heaters.

We're in a 4 bedroom house with 2 bathrooms incl. underfloor heating and play £120 a month for gas and electricity combined.

We're with Ovo and they send you monthly statements which are handy.

Try getting a smart meter installed so you can monitor when you're using most electricity.

Do you have actual meter readings so you can work out how many units you use a year to see what your monthly/annual bill actually is?

Your direct debit should reflect this within a few quid, but sometimes the companies get this wrong, either deliberately, or because they don't know what your usage is for some reason.

But yes, electric storage heaters are expensive unfortunately, even when used correctly, and they're not great when you're out all day, because some of the stored heat is lost before you benefit from it when you're in in the evening.

Another thing that can use a lot of electricity is certain types of lightbulbs used in spotlights - not LEDs, but the older kind. If you have a load of these, it can be like having another heater running.

£160 pm is high, but not ridiculously so, and unfortunately, it might be somewhere near correct - the average annual power bill is around £1200, but that's when people have cheaper gas heating.

Are there any energy saving measures you (or your landlord if you rent) can do - cavity wall or loft insulation, are there any grants to improve the heating system etc?

That’s not your bill, it’s the direct debit amount.

You need to look at your bills to see what you’re actually using. It may be that you’ve been paying too little for a year or two and the new higher payment reflects how much you are using - say £100 a month - plus an amount to repay what you owe.

We were with Eon for gas and electric and they wanted to increase our monthly direct debit to £170 but I’ve changed to Bulb and it’s £89 per month for both. There are 3 of us in the house. Shop around as you could be on a rubbish tariff.

Do you have an immersion heater? I couldn’t understand why I suddenly had a massive jump in my usage at a normally ‘quiet’ time of year - and found the guys from the company who had done the electric inspection and gas safety check for the boiler etc on behalf of my housing association had switched the immersion heater on (no one had ever done that before during the safely checks) and left it switched on - thankfully it was only about 2-3 weeks between the safety check and the bill arriving so I was able to hunt out what they’d done!!

Change suppliers? Are you definitely on the best tariff?
We switch at least twice a year as we have a high usage (electric car, electric air source heating) - we shop around continuously to get the best deal.

But storage heaters are very pricey to run.

We have a large 3 bed eco house and my electric car does 15,000 miles a year and our bill is never more than £120/month for very high usage (about double the average home).

We are a four bedroom house and our monthly direct debit for BOTH gas and electric is £110 and we end in credit every year. Sounds like storage heaters are silly expensive... can you change?

We've recently switched to British Gas and had a smart meter fitted, we pay £75 a month and are already quite in credit with them, even after having £60 refunded from the credit. That's for gas and electric and we live in a 3 story, two bedroomed, old townhouse

All electric is unbelievably expensive - we moved from a 3 bed house and our gas and electric was £60-70 a month. We moved into a 3 bed flat that has no gas and I am gobsmacked by the difference in price. When we moved in, the company estimated us at about £50 a month and before we knew it, we were hugely in debt and our direct debit had increased to £225! We made some changes, stopped using tumble drier in the winter, didn't use all the heaters in the flat etc. and we managed to beat the debt down. We moved suppliers and the direct debit is £72 a month, that was with us actually giving our annual useage, we are now back with a £600 debit on our account and I'm going to have to start increasing the monthly payment drastically.
The upshot is is that electric is so incredibly different to gas/electric combination and the minute you need to heat, costs just spiral out of control.

Also for comparison, there's only 3 of us in the flat and we still don't use tumble drier etc.

Ido you have an immersion heater, they are very expensive to run.