How much are you spending on your energy bills every month?

[Hungrychocolate]

I am with octopus and just checked my exact energy usage each month. I have used £54 worth of electricity and £111 worth of gas in January. So, the total is £165. Several years ago, we were paying around £95. We are family of 2 adults and 2 very young DC.
We have a 4 bed house built in 1975, it's detached with two living rooms, kitchen and 2 toilets. We have smart thermostats on most radiators which we use to control and set temperature for each room and we are conscious to reduce temperature at night. But, still it feels like a huge bill.
How much are you paying and AIBU to think it's a big amount for the energy we use?

£165 for duel fuel with edf. Me and 2dc, 2 bed terrace house (high ceilings and drafty though so heating on constantly). Water is £35 per month.

What baffles me is that I keep some of the rooms temperature really low pretty much no heating in those rooms when not in use but still usage feels higher than expected

Just to clarify that we keep the nursery at lower temperatures when baby is in living room with us before anyone makes comments on that.

I just got my bill, also with Octopus. Total for gas and electricity came to £140.84 for the month. That's for a single person in a 2-bed semi, 80 square metres.

However, I was hardly out of the house for the month and I really feel the cold (hypothyroidism), so have the thermostat set at 21 or my hands and feet start to freeze. And I'm old - we old folk feel the cold more, you know! I expected it to be high.

The gas alone was £85, but the bit that got me was the standing charge for the electricity. At £16.47, it was more than half the actual electricity cost (£23.86).

When I renewed my contract in October, it was the best deal around, but according to a note on my bill, I could get it cheaper now if I was prepared to pay the £75 per fuel exit fee. I've done the maths, and it's not worth it.

340 a month DD.
5 living in our house. Two of us WFH. EV car doing 35k miles a year.
I have heating some times all day and night i won't be cold.

Bajillions. 400+ the last couple of months. Large detached house with storage heaters, that are getting yeeted in favour of a proper heating system next month.

Electric £200 DD
Heating £380 DD

It’s for around 250m2 (6 bedrooms). Includes separate guest rental, home office, and electric car.

Both DD have increased recently due to rates, but we get a refund every 12 months back on anything not used. Also not uk so heating really needed as much much colder

Two bed semi detached council house. Currently with octopus, paying £121 a month for gas and electric. Still in credit.... which is surprising!!

Wow, Some of the bills people mentioned above are very high for similar size house. I really had no idea what others were spending on the energy. It's a nightmare for everyone unfortunately.

We did spend several grand on replacing the windows as the last windows were very old.

Big 4 bed house which is difficult to heat. £325
Two adults home all day and heating on most of the day.
£150 oil
£90 logs
£85 electricity
We have solar but the sun hasn't shown it's face lately.

I'm on payg, old fashioned meters!

4 bed cold house (victorian, single glazing). 2 adults wfh full time.

Electric stays pretty constant through the year at around £20 p/w, so £80 a month.

Gas is variable obviously. At the moment it's freezing, so I have it on the majority of the day at 21. That comes out at around £40 for one week. A milder week where i use the heating less, about £20. All summer, barely anything. A couple of quid a week maybe for the standing charge and the occasional bath (have an electric shower). So I guess you could roughly average it at £80 per month also.

I don't think that's terrible. We're never cold. It's less than I pay in council tax. And I feel a lot more benefit from it! Energy bills are probably bottom of the list for me in things I think are over priced right now!

3 bed detached bungalow so lots of heat loss potential. 2 adults (WFH 90%), primary aged child and dog. £230 pcm year round to outfox

Other people's payments? Can you explain that, these threads puzzle me, how does knowing what someone else pays (ignoring the issue of fixed DDs) help?

£130 a month for 4 bed detached - new build though so very energy efficient

I meant people prefer to think only in terms of monthly payments because it’s easier, not because it’s better. Obviously there are several factors to consider, but people can’t be bothered with all that. If someone asked, ‘I spent x on petrol last month, is that a lot?’ and gave no further information, most people would think it was a daft question. For some reason, the same doesn’t apply to home energy.

That doesn't sound bad for a house that size. I live alone in an 8 year old, 2 bed semi and I'm with Octopus. January's costs were around £45 for electric and £40 for gas. (But I pay monthly by DD which will be around £65 a month from next month.)

I think your standing charges may be more than you think. I was surprised when I looked at mine!

Huge bill? What? I'm paying £263 every month. 3 bed semi. With Octopus and submit reading once a month for exact bills. I think you're doing ok.

I agree it’s not surprising if we were heating every room in the house all day, but we only have 1 radiator on for 2 hours at the start and end of the day and are out of the house the majority of the time.
Ive just checked our usage and we used 440kWh over the course of Jan - is that extortionate?

The other aspect that confuses me is that our radiators are not electric but should be heated by gas no? Which again baffles me as our electricity usage does peak when I turn on the heating

Sorry when I say I have the radiators on for 2hrs at the beginning and end of the day I do mean 1hr at the start and 1hr at the end of the day.

That’s only an average of 14kWh gas per day, which is very low in winter. A typical boiler can use that in half an hour. You’re sure your radiators are connected to a gas central heating system? Boilers use electricity to pump the water around the radiator circuit, but not a lot, roughly the same amount as a TV,

Yes all the radiators are definitely gas and connected to central heating but we have them all turned off locally and only turn them on when we’re using a room. Ah the fact they use some electricity to pump around the house makes so much more sense with the peaks in usage throughout the day!
Thanks for reassuring me that our usage isn’t that high, but I’m still baffled by the cost of our bills, we don’t even have a TV 😅

Has your usage actually increased or is it just that your bill has gone up? Have you missed that prices have increased massively in the last few years?

I remember when all the small energy companies went bust, we were paying 15 p a unit for electricity and less than 4 p a unit for gas. The price cap rates are now 25 p and 6 p respectively, so nearly double, considering that the standing charge has gone up significantly too. So your bill could be a lot more, even if you're using less.

But comparing with others won't help as there are so many variables. Like a PP says, it's like saying 'is £100 pm a lot to spend on petrol', no-one else can say and what they use is irrelevant to your usage.

£152pm for gas and electric in 1980s 4 bed detached c1250sqft,

Only me and young adult DD here; I do wfh generally 3 days a week and won’t go cold, so heating can be on during the day a fair bit. Never on at night though unless temp drops below 14.