What to do Electricity bill could be £10,000?

[floridapalmtree]

I have read the meter and think we are over 30,000 kw's over. I have been asked for a meter reading and think it's going to come to around £10,000. What do I do give them an accurate reading now? Or wait a year or so to give the correct reading hoping prices will come down?

The reason it is so much over is my mil was living here and had electric radiators on all day in her room and didn't care about the cost as long as she was warm. Plus there is a problem with the boiler and we have had the emersion heater on often continuously to heat water.

I just don't know what to do, any advice?

Somethings not right with the readings. We don’t use anywhere near that much and we have a pool with a heater and filter running constantly. We also have no gas so everything is electric - cooking, heating, cooling, hot water.

Takethegirloutofwales
Martin Lewis says do not do this.

We have a water heater - I'm not sure whether it's immersion or not but the energy usage spike when we turn it on is crazy. It uses way more energy than anything else so we only put it on for an hour in the evening. We left it on overnight by mistake once and it did kind of "settle down" and use less energy but it was still a lot (we have solar panels and a box that measures our input and output so can see total energy usage. The big spikes come from the water heater, the electric shower and the air con).

Hope you manage to work something out with the energy company. You do sound as if you're blaming your MIL for something that isn't her fault though.

@takethegirloutofwales

We have immersion only for hot water as our old boiler decided it would only head the rads and not the water - my husband tells me it’s better to leave immersion on 24/7 as it then only heats up when the thermostat drops below a certain temp whereas turning it on and off means that heating from cold can actually be pricier. I don’t know what’s true or not. Any ideas?

My dh says the same

But I think it makes more sense to have on for an hour or two heating water up

If someone wants to find something to prove he’s right ……

EDF now charges us 50pence per Kwh, and we can't change tariff. We have a bill of over 4000 pounds for the last 4 months, running 2 electric 2kw heaters as we had our central heating replaced. We were working from home and had builders in who also needed some heat, least to get paint and plaster dry. I now only put the 2kw heaters on 1 bar, using 1.2 or only 0.8kw per hour running time, but for 2 little heaters that's still 1 or 1.5 pounds/hour, and they are on 16 hours/ day, so still over 600 quid a months for sitting in a very cold house with 2 tiny lukewarm electric heaters. The new energy tariffs are killing us!

I accidentally used the immersion and it added substantially to my bill every month. So say it was £75 normally, it was coming in at £110. Maybe a 25% increase.

When to put the immersion heater on - the renewable heat engineers said to leave it on all day - but we can't afford that. On all day is inly cheaper if you actually use it throughput the day. If you have all your baths/showers at the same time, either in the morning or evening, I would only heat up the water once a day - or even only bath/shower every other day and then only programme it on for that window. Boiling a kettle for washing up is cheaper.

@NellyBarney

EDF now charges us 50pence per Kwh, and we can't change tariff. We have a bill of over 4000 pounds for the last 4 months, running 2 electric 2kw heaters as we had our central heating replaced. We were working from home and had builders in who also needed some heat, least to get paint and plaster dry. I now only put the 2kw heaters on 1 bar, using 1.2 or only 0.8kw per hour running time, but for 2 little heaters that's still 1 or 1.5 pounds/hour, and they are on 16 hours/ day, so still over 600 quid a months for sitting in a very cold house with 2 tiny lukewarm electric heaters. The new energy tariffs are killing us!

Have you recently fixed? That's a very high tariff.

This is what we are all facing from 1 April. Remember to read your meter on 31 March and send it to your company .

@NellyBarney

When to put the immersion heater on - the renewable heat engineers said to leave it on all day - but we can't afford that. On all day is inly cheaper if you actually use it throughput the day. If you have all your baths/showers at the same time, either in the morning or evening, I would only heat up the water once a day - or even only bath/shower every other day and then only programme it on for that window. Boiling a kettle for washing up is cheaper.

I think it is because once the water is hot then it costs less to keep it at a steady temperature than it does to letting it go cold then heating up gallons of water each day

Yes, Kenny, that's the case with a large water tank, to compensate for large heat loss is more expensive than keep topping up. But at se point it becomes cheaper heating up a small water tank only very occasionally (every two to three days) than keeping it hot all the time. Also better heating water to 50 degrees rather than 70, and only heating it to 70 to kill bacteria every 2 to 3 weeks.
We moved house, so had to get a new tariff, and only variable tariffs were available to us where we live which gave shot through the roof.

50p is on a business tariff,so that is what B&Bs, hotels, small cafes are facing! Ridiculous.

@NellyBarney

50p is on a business tariff,so that is what B&Bs, hotels, small cafes are facing! Ridiculous.

Yikes

Kennykenkencat in reply to Nelly re: immersion heaters:
I think it is because once the water is hot then it costs less to keep it at a steady temperature than it does to letting it go cold then heating up gallons of water each day
...............
That's what I thought, Kenny, but have been told on here I am wrong. It doesn't matter to me now because I no longer have an immersion heater or tank but when I did, I left it on. It was convenient to always have hot water on tap. I remember my mum turning it on and off and sometimes we'd have to wait for it to heat up, which was a bore.

I went back home to live with my mother for about twenty months before buying first house and getting married. I persuaded her to leave the immersion on all the time which she did, and said it wasn't any more expensive.

Things may have changed, that was a long time ago.

With the one we have if we leave it on all the time at night when everything is switched off the smart metre reads 2p per hour. However if we have switched it off and someone wants immediate hot water from the shower it can read £2+ per hour when the water is going.

It's never occurred to me to read the smart meter in that way, I'm sure I'd be quite confused by it. I only read it when I got an estimated bill :-); was glad I did because my direct debit payment went down after I submitted a reading.

@Kennykenkencat

With the one we have if we leave it on all the time at night when everything is switched off the smart metre reads 2p per hour. However if we have switched it off and someone wants immediate hot water from the shower it can read £2+ per hour when the water is going.

Oh. That’s interesting

We don’t have a smart meter as some say don’t get as hard to swap providers with them

So I do monthly reads when they email me to say bill is due

@floridapalmtree there is a law that they are not allowed to charge you more than a year in back payments. Speak to CAB who will advise & confirm.

I can't believe they only read it once a year! That's outrageous. In Australia and they read every 3 months. Sorry no advice though, we don't need heating here as I'm in the sub tropics and we have solar power. Wishing you the best of luck with sorting it out but try and get some efficient heating if you can.

@CKMc2b

I can't believe they only read it once a year! That's outrageous. In Australia and they read every 3 months. Sorry no advice though, we don't need heating here as I'm in the sub tropics and we have solar power. Wishing you the best of luck with sorting it out but try and get some efficient heating if you can.

Most people are able to read their own meter and enter their own readings. (Excluding the old style dial meters which are terrible)

Negotiate a settlement payment for it. 50% or less.

My mother used to have her place set on hell temp year round. Crazy expensive but she still paid it.

It does really pay to have appliances and heating/cooling/water systems checked every so often and make plans for updating them to newer more economical ones.

Most people won't' though as they have if it isn't broke why bother, even though they could be saving thousands.

How long has your mother in law been staying? My grandmother had to have an electric fan heater as a source of heat in the winter and an electric immersion and bills were about £270 a month. (It was turned off at night though). £10,000 would need a lot of heaters going day and night! Perhaps there is a meter fault. If it does come back at £10,000, you could always ask them to investigate.

I can't believe they only read it once a year! That's outrageous. In Australia and they read every 3 months. Sorry no advice though, we don't need heating here as I'm in the sub tropics and we have solar power. Wishing you the best of luck with sorting it out but try and get some efficient heating if you can.

I'm in NZ and before I had a smart meter the electricity company read the meter every two months and estimated the alternate month. I really struggle to understand the seemingly complicated way electricity is billed in the UK.

I really struggle to understand the seemingly complicated way electricity is billed in the UK

It's really not complicated. We just seem to have a lot of people who can't manage or don't bother with a simple task.

Most suppliers ask their customers to submit monthly or quarterly readings and send someone every year or so to check the meter, although obviously that's probably lapsed during covid. But even in normal times, you'll probably go for years without someone seeing the meter if you're out or don't answer the door when they call.

The OP says her DH didn't bother to check that the bills were accurate (it says on the bill that it's estimated, often in enormous font that you can't miss) and the electricity company didn't know that they'd suddenly started using way more than they normally did.

OP if you're still around, if you've used the electricity, it needs to be paid for. You might be able to get the supplier to recalculate the bills and put some of the usage in the correct year when prices were lower, but seeing as it seems that bills were DHs job and it was his DM that used so much, perhaps he needs to deal with it?

Agree with above post. Never accept an estimated reading (a very odd thing to do) just submit correct readings quarterly and pay only for what you've used via direct debit. Don't pay them a regular monthly amount (why give them your money in advance?) but, if you're worried about not having the funds each quarter, open a separate bank account and transfer money monthly to cover it. I think DH should be doing the worrying as it's his mother!