Help! Why has my smart meter increased so much?

[BlueEyesUltimateDragon]

So since the bill hike my smart meter tells me that around 6am when I get up I've used around 75-85p and usually on a work day when I'm out of the house I'm on nearly £2 at 5pm and by the time I go to bed it is between £3-4 depending on what I've used for dinner etc. I have the heating on for 1 hour in the morning and 2 hours in the evening.

My mum visited this weekend to watch the kids and accidentally set it to "All day" setting at 7am. I had a very warm house! I realised and turned this off by 9:30am but by the end of that day I had spent nearly £12 (I had used my cooker a fair bit and also the tumble dryer though). Since them, each morning at 6am I've spent over £2! Nothing is different so I don't understand. Now, at 6pm these evening, I've spent £6 already. But I've only had the heating on for 1 hour this morning, out all day so no lights etc and I used my stove and air fryer for 20 minutes for dinner.

Does anyone have any insight into what's going on? Is the smart meter just working off of what it thinks I'm using from the day the heating was on excessively? Its 14 degrees in my daughters room and I have to put the heating on this evening but it'll add so much more 😭 help!

Can you see the breakdown of your usage online?

1. The 75p when you get up is the daily standing charges plus whatever you used over night (fridge/wifi/lights etc..)
2. In terms of the other costs we are heading for £5.50 today and we have showered(2 people), made breakfast (tea and toast), lunch (heated up beans and grilled toast), had the radio on all day, charged laptops and mobiles, had the dehumidifier running all day, did a short wash, had gas central heating on for 2 hours in the morning and 4 hours tonight, cooked a quick Thai curry and boiled rice.

Has you mum accidentally switched on something else like an immersion heater?

Also if you're looking just at the in home display they're not always accurate.

You're best off looking at how many kwh are used, not the cost.

My suppliers website and app don't update my electric readings til the next day, and the gas doesn't show at all.

I use the loop app loop.homes/ which updates every few hours and shows use and approx spend separately for gas and electric and its really useful.

Is your oven/shower/hot water/heating electric or gas?

I’m on a meter too and that’s about the same as mine without having the heating on more than we need to

i feel your pain

If you've had your heating on for longer lately, it may be the pump.

I've noticed the same with my meter. I've had the heating on all day, but set for 16 degrees and the pump seems to be constantly switching on and off and has coincided with an increase in cost.

I was told anything with a motor, or heating something, uses the most power.

Is you r boiler set to pre-heat water, OP?

My heating is on 24/7 and I don't generaĺly use more than 2kwh a day of electricity for everything in my flat.
Obv use more gas, but the impact on my electric bill isn't huge.

Sorry that was in response to @Hallmark1234

Op I'm in the same position, I posted about this the other day because my gas usage had gone up through the night when I was asleep.
It turns out it's the frost setting on the boiler, it turns itself on when it gets below a certain temperature to stop the system freezing! It cos me £4 over two days and I hadn't used any gas!
Apart from that I have roughly the same as you showing on my IHD when I get up in the mornings.

It's possibly just because it's been so much colder the last few days - the heating has to work harder to heat the house. I've definitely noticed a bit increase in our gas usage without actually changing the amount of time the heating is on for or the temp it is set to.

Can you clarify what you mean here ?

"My mum visited this weekend to watch the kids and accidentally set it to "All day"

Are you talking about a thermostat here as you say smart meter in your op?

What did she set to all day?

The outside temperature has really dropped this past week, are you sure it’s not just higher because of that?

Where I live in the northwest the outside temp had dropped by nearly 10-15 degrees in a week. Because of this, it's taken a lot more energy to get the house up to a cool 14 degrees. Could this be the reason?

Hiya sorry, so by all day I mean that my heating and hot water are set to auto to turn on and off at pre-set times. You can also put it on for +1 hour or you can set it on, off or all day. My mum set this to all day for the heating.

I've had a look and my previous bill from Aug 2022 says my gas usage was 3.862p p kwh. My new tariff (that says it started on 11th Dec so coincides with this rise) says it is 35.06p p kwh. So nearly 10x increase if I've read that right

Does that sounds about normal? I'm in a bit of a panic now and DH is away with work so no one else to worry to 😨

are you sure that you weren't previously just looking at the electricity usage on your meter? My IHD shows gas on one screen then electricity on another and then another screen has them combined. maybe you had previously just had it showing the electricity usage (very similar to my elec usage) but now its showing both usage combined?

The current unit price for your gas certainly doesn't sound rught.

These are my current price cap rates (they'll vary slightly between regions and suppliers) - the higher one is electric, the lower gas.

yes that gas rate is not correct. just checked mine and its 7.48 p/kwh and 27.22 standing charge per day. are you looking at energy used instead of cost per hour?

@BlueEyesUltimateDragon the daily charges have increased significantly and so has p kWh.

Okay so I got that totally wrong. My smart meter has my tariff at 36.060p electric and 10.309p for gas

so what's the screen with how much today has cost you?

@itsmeagainagain

how long have you had your heating on for? My heating started coming on randomly in the early hours since this freezing weather and it does turn out we have an automatic frost protection on the boiler but it was turning the heating on even when thermostat was off so I've played around with the boiler and put it on a timer mode for 2 hours per day one in morning one in evening so that it doesn't put the heating on in middle of night! its meant to protect the water in the boiler from freezing but I think we have an error where it doesn't then tell the heating to go off as the water is warm enough - I spent about 3 hours googling that I may need a pipe stat fitted to a pipe but for now my fiddling seems to have done the trick that's probably not helpful though!

@itsmeagainagain so at this point the heating had been on nearly 3 hours total (same as hot water as they are on the same timer) I'll have to take a look at the boiler tomorrow and see if that has something on it - the house does make noises during the night like something is running but I've never noticed the radiators actually warming - I'll check tonight when it does it!

I've also turned off radiators in non-used rooms and as many switches off as possible to see what happens in the morning 🤞🏻

The thought that this could just be life forever now is miserable isn't it?