Electricity meter reading far too high

[starbrightstarlight8888]

I moved house last month and took a meter reading of 3957, I then took one exactly a month later and it was 8192. This can't be right can it? That means a monthly electricity bill of around £700.

We don't have gas, we are electric only. We've had new radiators installed so they are brand new and efficient. We've still got electric underfloor heating in the kitchen and lounge which could be inefficient I suppose but not to the tune of £700per month.

We live in a detached bungalow, not a mansion.

British Gas are useless. They say it could be a meter fault but hey can't send anyone round to check until lockdown is over.

What do I do? We are accruing a bill of £25 per day at the moment.

Heating is on in the mornings and evenings only. We don't use a tumble drier or dishwasher. Washing machine is on a few times a week, nothing excessive. There's nothing I can think of that is costing a lot of electricity and certainly not £700 per month!

We are taking hourly readings and the meter is showing as using between 6 and 20 kWh per hour.

[TravellingTilbury]

You sound fed up and I don't blame you!

I've posted photos of my water immersion heater (unvented electric) and the corresponding control panel.

During the last few days I've had mine immersion on timer (an hour a day) but I've now flipped the rocker switch (left side on the controls) to 'Off' and will just turn it back on for an hour a day (using the boost button) as necessary. At least then I can rule out the immersion being the problem (it still might be the problem, I'm open minded). It seems counter intuitive to turn it to off (because all the experts say to leave it on) but figure it is worth trying. An hour of immersion heater would be about 50p (based on 3KWH x 15p/17p).

Good good!

[BlueTimes]

@MrsMoastyToasty

Is there any chance that it could be an old imperial meter rather than a metric meter, but the electricity company are charging as if its metric?

It’s electricity, not gas. It’s only gas meters that are still occasionally imperial.

[chomalungma]

So how's the meter going this morning?

Have you got meter readings and times?

I hope you get it sorted as 5 units per hour every hour for a month is a frightening amount of money - as you know!

[TravellingTilbury]

Meant to say good luck, not good good ...

[TravellingTilbury]

Now it's a bit warmer (relatively!) it might be easy to turn off most of the heaters for a good chunk of 24 hrs OP.

What is your control panel like? Previously, I had my electric boiler (Amptec, pictured) thermostat (dial in hallway, not pictured) set to 15 and just turned/clicked it up for the odd hour here and there. But I know it will have clicked on over night during the last few weeks as it has been so cold.

Today I've moved the switch on the control panel (pictured) from 'continuous' to 'auto' and the red 'on' light went off. I don't know if it will make any difference but I'll manually move it back if I want the heating back on for an hour. At least I'll know when it is actually on and off.

I'm also taking daily readings and last week my average daily usage was 100 kWH/day whereas it went down to 58kWH/day over the last couple of days. At the moment my money is back on electric heating as a culprit. It's a pain.

[chomalungma]

I'm also taking daily readings and last week my average daily usage was 100 kWH/day whereas it went down to 58kWH/day over the last couple of days. At the moment my money is back on electric heating as a culprit. It's a pain

Wow.

Have you done hourly readings and done a graph to see if there is any kind of pattern?

[WhipperSnapperSteve]

@AndTheMillions

Omg we had this !!!!
It was too high I repeatedly called British Gas and they wouldn’t come out to check it I begged them.

In the end I changed companies and b gas are still pursuing me for the debt. It’s been disputed and they won’t investigate despite the fact I had told them I asked and asked for it to be checked they were useless

Exactly the same situation with British Gas, claiming £3500 for a years gas & electricity in a tiny two-bedroom flat. Changed company and now paying £55 pcm.

British Gas refuse to acknowledge any error despite providing meter readings, refuse to come and read the meters themselves and have passed the "debt" to their collections team. They were threatening install of a pre-payment meter (myself and my partner have disabilities so completely unreasonable) with debt allocated to it. In my mind the situation was untenable so moved provider.

Seems to be very common with British Gas.

[TravellingTilbury]

@chomalungma

I'm also taking daily readings and last week my average daily usage was 100 kWH/day whereas it went down to 58kWH/day over the last couple of days. At the moment my money is back on electric heating as a culprit. It's a pain

Wow.

Have you done hourly readings and done a graph to see if there is any kind of pattern?

Not hourly as the meter box is outside and a pain to access.

Once I've ruled out the electric boiler and electric immersion then I'll be more confident at asking for my meter box to be looked at (a 2008 one). But sadly I think it is the cost of 'modern' electric wet heating (ie normal looking radiators). The electric boiler maybe 99% efficient but still on D rated. It's a problem for many modern houses. On the plus side, my old house was draughty as anything so at least I no longer have that problem.

Like many home movers who have experience similar, our previous usage hasn't changed (eg appliances, gadgets etc) so that only leaves problems with the heating, water or actual supply.

You can see why I'm getting a woodburner ;-)

[chomalungma]

You can see why I'm getting a woodburner

Yes

I love the physics behind all of this and the arguments for different types of heating etc.

Still, we'll probably all have to have some kind of non - carbon based heating system in the future....

[notapizzaeater]

Years ago we got an owl and our usage was mad, we did the switch on and off game (never switched the electric underfloor heating on again) but surprisingly one of our really big usage items was a freezer in the garage. We swopped the freezer out and it settled down.

[starbrightstarlight8888]

I am totally fed up and feel trapped tbh. I've turned all heating and towel rails off since 9am this morning and the meter has barely moved since then so it's clearly the heating. We've just paid thousands to replace underfloor heating with electric radiators as the electricians said they were more efficient. I've turned the timers and temperatures down on them but guessing they're still going to cost quite a bit.
I'm gutted, I've never had to worry about turning heating on before as we've always had gas.
Aren't we all meant to be moving to electric eventually? How can we when it's so expensive?

[JustLyra]

You need to turn each thing on one thing at a time, work out what it uses in an hour and then you'll be able to find out if it's just expensive or if there is a fault with something.

[IstandwithJackieWeaver]

We found an electric towel was on when we moved into our house five years ago. It was wired to the same switch as the saniflo for the ensuite in the attic meaning the damn towel rail was on 24/7. DP disconnected the towel rail and lo and behold, the electricity bill dropped significantly. It dropped again when we replaced all the light bulbs in the house with led bulbs. Obviously there's a cost to led bulbs but if you have lots of inefficient light bulbs I think this is worth doing.

[TravellingTilbury]

Oh @starbrightstarlight8888

Try not to panic about the sunk costs. We're coming to the end of UK winter so it will be easier to keep the heating costs down and work out a longer term plan.

In the meantime, I highly recommend this little gem. We've had ours years, it costs about 10p/hour to run, easily portable and throws out a surprising amount of heat. It has a thermostat dial so it can click on/off as necessary - but is cheap enough (to run, I appreciate it is still ££ to buy) so you don't have to think about leaving it on in a room. It's lovely to have under a desk etc too. www.reviews4you.co.uk/dimplex-ofrb7n-0-7kw-mini-oil-free-radiator-reviews/

Chin up.

[Reallybadidea]

@JustLyra

You need to turn each thing on one thing at a time, work out what it uses in an hour and then you'll be able to find out if it's just expensive or if there is a fault with something.

Agree with this, but ultimately electric heating is horrendously expensive. With hindsight it might have made more sense to install an air source heat pump or even an oil-fired heating system - most people in areas without mains gas are on the latter or calor gas.

[Lexilooo]

@starbrightstarlight8888

I am totally fed up and feel trapped tbh. I've turned all heating and towel rails off since 9am this morning and the meter has barely moved since then so it's clearly the heating. We've just paid thousands to replace underfloor heating with electric radiators as the electricians said they were more efficient. I've turned the timers and temperatures down on them but guessing they're still going to cost quite a bit.
I'm gutted, I've never had to worry about turning heating on before as we've always had gas.
Aren't we all meant to be moving to electric eventually? How can we when it's so expensive?

Unfortunately your electrician was talking bollocks. All electric heating is 100% efficient. Expensive electric radiators cost the same to run as a £20 plug in fan heater.

The difference is how they look, how adjustable/controllable they are.

The only way to get cheaper electric heating is storage heaters and Economy 7 or Economy 10.

The other option if you don't have gas is a ground source heat pump. That's what I would get if I was going to upgrade my heating.

You could consider solar panels and a feed in tariff to offset the costs.

Most people with electric heating are VERY careful about when and how they run it as it is ££££££.

[MountainPeakGeek]

I still think there's something in your heating system not working as it should.

In your OP you're describing using ~137kWh per day. That's huge!!

We used to have all electric heating here in Canada (4 bed detached in Northern BC) and looking back at old bills I can see that in the months of December and January, when we regularly experience -20C (and sometimes as low as -35C) outside temperatures, our consumption was around 150kWh/day at most. This was with frequent use of the tumble drier and dishwasher and we also have an electrically heated hot water tank (on a thermostat but no timer.)

In March here, which I'd say is comparable to the colder months of the UK winter, we used no more than 100kWh/day.

We didn't have the heating on high, though. What would yours usually be? Ours would have been set to around 19C daytime, 15C at night - so maybe that (and better insulation in Canadian homes) makes more difference than I'd expect...?

[PigletJohn]

The hot water cylinder looks like it might hold areound 250 litres. Each immersion heater (you normally only use the lower one) is 3kw, and heats the water at a rate of about 1 litre per minute. So from fully cold, it would take around 4 hours. heat loss on yours is very low (and doesn't matter in winter because it will contribute to warming the house) so they are most often run on "economy 7" or similar tariffs, with the timer set to "on" throughout the cheap rate period, and the large cylinder will typically hold enough hot water to last all day.

I gather you are not on a dual-rate tariff so the timer is probably irrelevant.

Only if you had a fault, such as a hot-water leak or a faulty thermostat, would the cylinder be heated continuously.

[PigletJohn]

btw I have solar panels, and they are not a good investment in purely financial terms.

Also, they produce most of their power on sunny summer days, when you have no need of heating, so will not save you much there. In your case, since you are all-electric, you would save money on hot water in summer, maybe an average of a pound a day in summer.

[starbrightstarlight8888]

So I've left the immersion on a timer the last couple of days, set to twice a day which is the same as the previous owners.
I had a shower and my son had a bath both in the period that the timer was on. My dp had a shower 30 minutes after the timer had gone off and his shower was cold.

What's going on? Surely it should still be hot by then?

[TravellingTilbury]

re: the immersion, I don't know because I still keep getting caught out with cold water so I assume I'm not leaving enough time to heat the tank. But I'm concentrating on the heating cost issue first then will look again at the water heater. I'll consider buying a new unvented immersion heater if necessary - some heat from cold in 20 mins etc.

[yetanothersenmum]

As you've only recently moved there should be an EPC which would include expected costs. Does this shed any light? What did the assessor predict it should cost to run the house?

[TravellingTilbury]

EPC for me was concerning, yes, - a modern house with a D EPC. So I knew it was an issue I'd have to deal with!

[IstandwithJackieWeaver]

How long was the immersion heater on for and when did you have your shower and your son his bath?

[pomacentrus]

My house is all electric.

Large 4 bedroom draughty victorian in the midlands.

I could say my bills are £150/month but thats averaged over the year.

So say £30/month in summer.

This last month, where its been sub-zero, and we've all been home 24/7 computers for working/heating/coooking etc. £400. (1000 kWh ish/month)

Thats heating to 19oC.