To think wtf is using all this electricity?!?

[Porthia]

Just got our monthly energy bill. It was £958!
Of that £737 was electricity.

I have been making a real effort recently to switch lights and appliances off, reduce energy usage, turn down the heating etc.

But what the actual fuck?

We came off our fixed rate in November, our supplier went under and then the last bill was £600 which made me fall over so I have been making a conscious effort to reduce things.

I am actually in tears. How is it this much? It’s going to go up again in April. How can we pay £1000 for energy each month?

We don’t have any crazy appliances that I can think would be eating this much energy, in fact our washing machine has been broken so I haven’t even been using that the last month.

We have a tv, computer, oven, lights - and I try to switch off as much as possible. What the hell could be drinking that much juice???

And yes it’s based on actual readings

I hate this because I feel like this money is just being sucked out without anything I can do about it!

Do you have a smart meter? They are helpful for showing where it is used. Is your house all electric, oven and heating? Or do you have gas?

That doesnt sound right, do you have any storage heaters? Those things are evil.

Have you checked your electric utility box?

Cos that sounds like someone has hijacked your supply.

Go round the house and turn everything off for a few hours. Your freezer will stay frozen for longer than you think. See if the counter keeps moving.

Call your supplier and cry at them. They should be able to help work out what is happened.

What's the actual units used?

Are you on a fixed or variable rate?
Energy prices have gone up but that does sound high even so.

Working from home will impact it if you are full time wfh, or if there are two of you wfh. I’ve gone back to the office and my bill has gone down, there’s now no lights on in the day, no heating, laptop or phone charging so it does make a big difference.

Has your actual usage gone up, or just the price per kwh?

Do you have a smart meter or can you see your main meter? You need to unplug absolutely everything the go back round the house and plug things in one by one. When nothing is plugged in your meter shouldn't move.

Big hitters are heating and immersion heaters do you have those?

How big is your house?

£958! For a month!!!! Do you live in Buckingham palace, have your meter connected to Blackpool illuminations? That can’t be right.

Seriously, I pay the electric bills for the company I work for and it’s less than that.

£958 a month! Unless you are constantly running many high powered appliances etc I don't see how either. I'd check the unit price and check your actual readings.

OK, that is a lot. We are a family of four, 100% electric house (heating and water are electric) and I WFH. We spend circa £175 per month right now. I fully expect this be at least £300 (if not more!) when our deal ends.

What is your actual usage on your bill?
What about things like standing charges etc? A breakdown of actual figures will give us a better indication of what's going on, if you use a lot of electricity or are on an astronomical tarrif.

That seems a) really, insanely high and b) really odd considering it's nearly 400 more than the previous month despite you using less electricity (and no price changes have yet come in). Washing machine in particular uses up loads of energy (def more than anything else in my house) so it seems odd the month you don't use it is so much higher.

How many people are in your house? Are the heating/showers all electric?
British gas website says that average electric household cost for a high household (e.g big house with up to 5 people) is £79 a month so for yours to be more than 10 times that without a washing machine seems excessive.
www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html

Is someone growing something in next doors loft and they've stolen your electric?

I don’t know how someone could be stealing our energy - it’s a detached house. Is that possible?

We don’t have any storage heaters. Heating is gas boiler although there is an immersion.

I do wfh 3 days a week and DH 1 day a week. Can’t unplug everything right now as he is on a conf call but will do that later to test!

We don’t have a smart meter because we have no mobile phone signal in our house and I believe they need that to work?? I could look into that I guess.

I am feeling so upset feel like turning off the whole shooting match at the fuse box!

I think it’s the feeling that I’m just being charged without really knowing what I’m buying that makes it so hard!

Will post the standing charge and units. I did a check with one of those compare the market things and it said the variable rate we are on is basically as good (or bad) as any on the market right now.

That is an insane amount of money for electricity, the only things i can think of of the top of my head are..
Electricity being tapped from a neighbour.
Faulty Smart meter.
A faulty appliance, that is leeching /shorting/grounding electricity.
Some one in your household with a PC/mini server or PCs mining for bitcoin and not telling you about it (massive energy usage).

Electricity

Your tariff rates
Unit rate per kWh: 20.871p Standing charge: 24.01p per day

Gas
Unit rate per kWh: 4.055p Standing charge: 26.11p per day

But gas was much less. I mean it was still more than £200 (which was previously the total of our monthly bill for both) but it’s the electrics that is making me cry.

DH does have a small server thing but def isn’t mining bitcoin. I guess it could be contributing though.

Rates have massively gone up, per day or cost has almost doubled. But equally could be something else. We had a faulty meter that was giving bonkers readings. Get in touch with your supplier and ask them to review useage rather than cost if you're not able to do this yourself online and take it from there.

Oh and kids are all primary age. No bitcoin mining there either!

Faulty emersion heater? Perhaps it's been left on for days by mistake.
You're not with nPower are you? We had some real issues with them when we moved house. Charged us £600 for gas when we'd only been with them for a few days as our accounts moved over. Then they tried to make us pay almost as much for electric when the account was switched over in less than a day. Then they kept sending us bills despite the fact we were with SSE. Took ages to sort out.

Sounds silly but have you double checked the readings were correct and the numbers haven't been jumbled up?

So by my back of a gag packet maths you’ve used 3500 units in a month. We use that I. A year and we have a tumble dryer that we use all the time, and underfloor heating. Something is definitely wrong.

Go round and switch everything off. Every single thing, then check what’s happening with your meter. Someone up thread suggested neighbours growing something in the lift on your electric. I wouldn’t rule that out.

Have you got any electric underfloor heating? Ours went wrong and ate a huge amount of electricity. It took us ages to figure out what is was.

How many u it's does the bill say you used?

That's an insane amount of electric. Your unit rate is average.

Did you have any debt from estimates readings?

That's an insane amount of electricity. Someone growing cannabis in the loft kind of insane!