£854 per month gas and electricity

[vinoandbrie]

My fixed rate comes to an end on 31 May.

Scottish Power emailed me this morning to say your tariff is ending, click here to view options.

I have two options, one for £853.99pcm, the other for £854pcm. I’m going to attach screen shots as this amount is so unbelievable otherwise. We currently pay £285pcm.

I should just go to a default tariff right and not a fixed rate?

Gas and electricity will now be costing us more than our mortgage.

Moochio I still recall my DF being apoplectic at the ‘mersion being left on.

I have an electric shower which cut gas usage a lot when it was put in but realistically I’m not sure where else to cut back and our gas bill has ‘only’ just under doubled since 1Apr.

It might be worth checking the meters are both working properly - no word of a lie but in a previous home I discovered that I had been paying my neighbour’s electric for approx four years because of a mix up with meters.

A manager was an utter shit to me when I queried why my bill shot up (when new neighbour moved in & was obviously using away madly since their (aka my) bill was tiny)

Neighbour then got payg meter and that was when the error was picked up as it was my home that ‘ran out’.

So it mightn’t be beyond the realms of possibility that your meters could be faulty - if you really are being careful with gas/electric usage but usage never appears to drop in response.

This thread has a positive in that at least we aren’t all going mad thinking it’s ‘just us being wasteful’. Doubled, or almost doubled, seems to be hitting everyone.

Worth checking out the meters just in case Vino as your bill tripling seems to be an anomaly.

Using my SVR prices of 7.33p/kwh and 27.22 standing charge for gas gives:
36380 x 7.33 = £2666.654
27.22 x 365 = £99.353

For electricity at 27.84p/kwh and 49.38 standing charge gives:
9244 x 27.84 = £2573.53
49.38 × 365 = £180.237

Adding all together gives £5519.77 and dividing by 12 gives a monthly amount of £459.98

Your usage is astronomical , we live in a decent sized 4 bed ( 30 yrs old) and have the heating on loads , do a fair amount of washing and always use the tumble dryer - in fact don’t actually do anything to curb our usage and my yearly totals are nowhere near yours . There was a thread a while ago about turning the boiler down to save money so perhaps someone could link to that .

What’s the variable charge per KW at the moment? I think that’s crazy.

I sympathise OP.

We have a very old 3 bedroom detached house and oil central heating. Our fixed rate for electricity ends next week and the the rate for the next two years will be double what it is today. The oil tank was filled just before prices rocketed but I understand they're about twice what they were.

We had been paying around £140/month for electricity and £200 on average for heating oil. On average for the coming year I'm budgeting £680/month for both. More than the mortgage!

I'd check the proposed unit rate though OP and get a comparison. We recently fixed for 2 years at an eye watering amount but the cap is due to go up again in October and I don't think that the price will come down soon, it's not a short term blip.

To PPs - not all houses and families are equal, add in a larger house/older house/northern location/exposed site and heating costs will vary.

You keep saying "it's not small" but what does that even mean?? You are being a bit obtuse. How many bedrooms how many bathrooms and how many living spaces downstairs? Honestly you're previous rate sounds far to cheap for your "it's not small no" house - you have obviously been fixed a while and are seeing the impact of 2 rate rises - the one last October and the one in April

Our previous rate was not ‘far too cheap’. I say this as we are in credit on it, as per the screenshots given in the OP.

our house is approx 4,000 square feet.

My usage is about the same!! No hot tub nor immersion heater here, but a big house with many rooms, all with computers and lamps, and also we have teenagers and lots of appliances (incl 3 fridges, 2 freezers) and many more deivices, and we also have power to the garage and shed.

I use slightly less gas and a little more electricity than you. I have a large electric oven and a powerful microwave and these are power gluggers. Our 3kW kettle is on 10 times a day at least, and the dishwasher is used always every day. We don’t eat out much and I batch cook so I save cash but use more power at home. I am now line drying for the season but in winter we use the tumble drier. I also have a drying room for laundry too, which has a radiator with an independent thermostat attached to it, so I can use gas central heating to dry laundry. I use this for jeans especially, as well as shirts. We have just fixed a drying pole up very high in this drying room. It is the size of a pole dancers pole! Maybe I should have bought one of those second hand - might have been cheaper! 😂

I try to use the gas hob for cooking whenever possible as my gas price is 7.123p per kWh whereas electricity is nearly four times as much at 27.10p.
Our standing charge for gas is 40.92p a day and for electricity 57.09p per day fixed for two years.

Energy prices will go up in October 2022.

When using my electric oven I switch of early and use residual heat. I wonder if I can save 10% this way.

When we had bannisters, like many, I dried our sheets on them.

We have a log burner because I like to have the tv room HOT, but we also have free wood supplies so it is very economical. It was an expensive purchase to get a stylish one though.

Maybe @vinoandbrie you and I should get solar panels? 🤔

You also need to save up for the winter! If everyone comes to me for Christmas for three whole weeks as planned the fuel could cost close to a grand I reckon!!

Sorry, we’re actually slightly in debit (£80), but the amount we have been paying tallies with our usage.

Agreed @Happify we need to get solar everything!

We have two log burners as well on the ground floor, which I thought would take the edge off the heating costs. Goodness knows what the bills would be if we didn’t have them to keep us warm and had to rely wholly on the central heating!

The PP means that the rate you were charged was cheap, not that you were paying too little.
Prices have been steadily increasing for the past couple of years, so if you were previously on a long term fix you wouldn’t have been seeing the impact of the rises, until now.

Apologies I hadn’t appreciated that - agreed, we were on a one year fix from May 2021. I now wish we’d fixed for longer.

@vinoandbrie Have you been on the vino? Why do you think even your first figure is right let alone the last?! To put it in perspective we - a family of 4 - don’t sit in the cold, use a washing machine daily, all have daily showers etc in a 3 bed house and we paid £420 this month for our last quarterly (3 months worth) bill for gas and electric. I do not understand why anyone has a monthly direct debit - it’s a con plain and simple. Instead pay for what you use - I can track by checking online / in the past by reading the meter.

@MrsPear You do realise that paying by monthly DD you don’t actually pay any more or less than paying quarterly? You still only pay for what you use. It just smooths out the peaks and troughs of summer vs winter.

@MrsPear I can also track my usage while paying by monthly direct debit and it means I pay a set amount each month rather than a small amount in summer and a larger amount in winter. I submit monthly readings and get an updated balance each time so I can see if I'm in credit or debit

@MatildaJayne yes because I’m not stupid. If I add up my bills for last year and then divide by 12 it is still less than the first direct debit mentioned let alone the second.

We're not talking about your usage though are we? OP seems to use a lot more than you and will pay more too

The average house size in the U.K. is around 1000sqft so 4000sqft is big - so actually paying £800 a month is about right in this market

Not if you're on the SVR in which case it'd be closer to £460 per month going by the OPs usage

That's some useage!

Our annual gas is 4865 kWh and electricity is 5318 kWh.

3 bed semi detached windy, cold part of Scotland (built 1989). 4 adult sized humans using electricity. (2 adults, 2 teens, 2 x wfh). No tumbles dryer though.

Definitely look at cutting back your useage as part of your planning.

35-40 kWh per day - depends on whether we hot tub or not

~3000sqft detached Victorian house here - last year we used about 40,000kwh gas - but that’s because our house was literally open to the elements on two sides with building work being done and only chipboard over the openings. Since the new doors went in a month or two back the gas usage has dropped dramatically and we’re now predicted to use about 22,000kwh this coming year. Also installing a large wood burner so likely to come down further. We only use about 3500-4000kwh/annum electricity which is interesting as all our cooking is electric and we use our dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer daily, sometimes multiple times - which I suspect shows that high energy rated appliances actually DO make a difference - A+ rated heat pump tumble dryer for example.

OP, I would be focusing on what you can do to improve thermal performance - so draught proofing, insulating where appropriate (and where it won’t cause damp..), chimney sheep up the chimneys, curtains, keeping doors shut etc etc.

And no, don’t accept a fix right now!

Ah. That's huge.

4,000 square feet is about 370 square metres.

My house is only 75 square metres. 105 if I include the attic.

Your house is effectively 5 times as big as mine!

That being the case your electricity usage is fantastic (as it's less than twice ours) and your gas usage is understandable.

Are you sure about your gas usage Romeo? My elec is about the same as yours but the gas is around 18,000 and all I do with gas is heat the house and water. Do you have other heating sources or are you just very hardy?!

I read that Martin Lewis advised to only choose a fixed contract for energy if it’s less than a 75% increase in last years fixed rate.