How is my electric bill £150, is this normal?!

[wtfffffff]

Posting for traffic.

I previously lived in a one bedroom, one bathroom flat. I had a communal water tank and never had to pay the gas & electric bill as this was included in the rent (Landlord payed for my usage through his service charge). Admittedly, I’m quite out of touch of how much energy bills cost.

I recently moved into a two bedroom, two bathroom and it just so happens, I’ve moved into a property that doesn’t have a boiler yet again. I have a water tank which supplies the hot water but the heating is electric and supplied through these very old school wall panel heaters. I had a thought that my bills would be expensive if all heating comes through the electric but bloody hell.

OVO Energy estimated my bills to be £70 a month. I thought this was probably wrong so increased my Direct Debit to £90. Just got my bill for this month and it’s £150?! Last month it was £125. Is this just life then? Do I just accept that the prices of things have sky rocketed and my usage means expensive bills? Am I out of touch and is that not really an expensive bill for a 2 bedroom property?

I also submit monthly meter readings so it’s definitely accurate. I guess I can’t complain seeing as I went two years with only paying £50 or so towards the energy bills… sigh

Honestly I don’t think £150 a month is high at all really, maybe a few years ago that would have been considered high but I imagine that’s less than most pay now, agree it does feel like a lot though. You can always try to reduce usage where possible.

I pay £120 ish over winter for gas and electric on a 2 bed apartment

Have you had your heating on this month? If so then it's probably this additional cost. Your monthly direct debit is based on an average over the year, so will be a lot lower over the summer months.

Just got our bill in yesterday for October usage and we were £49 for electricity and £46 for gas, in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom semi detached house

We pay £75 per month for a two bed flat and we have gas CH and a combi boiler. Electroc heating and old style electric immersion heaters are expensive to run.

I’m around £200 a month

Electric heating is always going to cost a lot more. That doesn't sound massively unreasonable for a two bed in the winter. If you have a smart meter you can experiment with switching things on and off to see where your usage is going.

I'm fully electric here - that sounds normal to me. We're in a small 3 bed, but only have 2 heaters on and a water cylinder that comes on for 4 hrs overnight.

Are you on economy 7 with storage heaters or are they just electric heaters that come on when they're switched on?

Is your electric water heater on 24/7? If so, that will be eating electricity. Electric heaters are also very expensive to run and might not be automatically set to the most economical settings.
Electric showers are also electric guzzlers, if you have one of those.
My electricity bill (small two bed one bath) was £70 for October. That doesn't include hot water, heating or showers as there's gas for those.

Yes that is true. I assume with a communal tank you have been used to hot water on demand. With an immersion heater you need to get used to putting it on at set time. If it is on all the time, you will bankrupt yourself.

Are they storage heaters, are you on economy 7. Is there an immersion that is being left on all the time.

it does seem high especially as the cold weather is only just starting to arrive.

I wouldn't just assume its down to high energy prices.

Electric heating is very expensive unfortunately and some systems aren't very efficient so take a lot of energy to produce not very much heat.

You probably need to take an overall look at improving insulation and seeing which parts of the system use the most energy and how this can be reduced while trying to keep your home at a comfortable temperature.

Also making sure you're doing what you can to keep yourself warm at a lower temperature - layers, slippers, wrist warmers, long sleeves, blankets when sitting down, moving around, hot drinks etc.

I'm in a fully electric two bed two bath flat and with two people here last winter it was coming out at around £300 pcm (metered so paying for exact usage). Just me this year and I'm budgeting £200 pcm and hoping it comes out a bit lower (ideally closer to £150!).

Editing to add - this is with cheaper overnight rates, overnight heaters and running the washing machine overnight when possible.

It's the type of heating, sadly it's notoriously expensive. If you have to charge them overnight try finding a company that will do cheaper off peak electricity.

I would say it seems a bit high but not impossible especially if you have your heating on more than a couple of hours a day. I had the same set up about 15 years ago. Make sure the immersion heater is doing it's stuff after midnight when electricity is cheaper and you are on an Economy 7 tariff

I lived in a one bed flat with electric heating and had a smart meter so I can tell you confidently that one short shower costs you about £1.20 in 2021 money. So that's over £30 for one person in showers a month. If you have an immersion heater, I dread to think how much it would cost. We had one previously and we only turned it on for an hour a day, showered, washed up and then turned it off again. We paid £50 a month for the pleasure in 2015.
So yes, I think £150 is what I would expect to pay now.

Sorry to hijack the thread but did you have two separate switches for your electric hot water tank? Mine has an Economy 7 switch (that stays on constantly and heats it overnight) and an immersion switch (for intermittent use if there is no hot water in the tank and it's needed).

I often don't use hot water (except for washing up and can boil the kettle for that) so I wonder if I'm wasting electricity by having the hot water tank heat up every night only to then sit there unused. If you only had yours on intermittently nd it didn't cause any issue then maybe I would be OK to switch off the Economy 7 switch and leave the tank cold unless needed (e.g. for a rare bath which I can plan ahead for).

What tariff are you on? You need economy 7 (or economy 10 but that's quite rare now). It means your night rate is cheaper.

Storage heaters are expensive to run but do kick out heat all day if you have the settings right.

But if it is say a 2kw heater on for 7 hours, that's 14kwh of electric.

That will be around 13p a kWh on E7 (24p ISH on normal rate). So that's £1.82 to run one storage heater for the day.

If you are actually in then it's good value, if you at work, not so much.

Personally I'd only pay for a storage heater in a main room like living room. I don't bother for hallways etc.

I'd probably buy an oil filled radiator and plug that in instead for a few hours in evening (assuming you do work out of the house). But if you are on E7 and it's then 30p for the higher rate then you spend up to £1.20 on those four hours.

Your other big expenses are showers and heating water. You want the water heating only off peak and also any appliances like dishwasher set on a timer.

E7 is good if you use it right but you do need to understand it.

Although if you can post a pic of the wall heaters that would be useful.

You have described them as panel heaters which are different to storage heaters but use of 'old school ' normally indicates the latter.

If you have moved in recently, you also have the disadvantage of going straight into the expensive months.

You might pay £80 a month but only use £40 in summer and £150 November to February. I have three very expensive months usually but very cheap the others and spread it out but it's harder when you start the account in winter.

£150 is good there's no way if your on electric alone it would have been 70 lol

It sounds fairly normal but do consider changing your supplier as some are much cheaper than others. Octopus is pretty good.

If you are all electrical- heating and cooking, no gas at all. - then that is probably about right. It's a sign of the times.

I disagree about some suppliers being 'much cheaper than others' the prices are very similar, probably little more than 10% difference tops.

You can save money if you have an economy 7 tariff and the right heating set up to get the most out of it, otherwise the only way to save money is to use a lot less.

I don’t have a storage heater so there’s nothing to heat up overnight. I have a panel heater which is slightly different. Interesting to read the comments about how much other people’s energy cost them each month.

I guess I’ll amend my Direct Debit to £150 each month and try to use as little heating as possible. My problem is that I love a cosy flat!