Edf bill has gone up ridiculous amount- for our 3 bed, 2 adults and a newborn

[TheCaretakerNadine]

We moved into this house 1yr ago.
Set up a dd with edf - fixed rate til march 2024. Smart meter. Dd set to £200/month for gas and electricity. But for September and October, they have charged a whopping £490!

There are 2 of us and a newborn- I'm on mat leave at the mo, hubby does not work from home but I do- i start back again in Jan and absolutely shuddering at what our electricity bill will be like with my laptop/internet/printer using electricity. We are super careful with electricity. We even turn our tv and internet router off at night.

When I phoned them to explain the bill increase, they mentioned how if i go onto quarterly payments, I have a chance of ending up in debt to them.

How on earth is one supposed to do their monthly household expenditure budgeting if these monthly figures keep changing?

Any advice?

Yikes.

Do you agree with the bill figure, ie have you used that amount of power? Do you look at the smart meter?

Edf also have on their website an 'energy hub' where you can see a breakdown of power use/cost by category, eg heating, lighting, cooking... I find that very useful.

Is your fix HIGHER than the standard variable rate?

Does it fit with the amount you use? In September my energy supplier wanted me to up my DD to £450/ month. I refused. We were £800 in credit.
Ive checked again and they want us to up it to £260, the amount we are in credit has decreased since September so clearly I do need to pay more- especially as the heating isn’t on yet.
So, today we agreed the increase. It’s gone up about £120 a month.

That seems very high. There are two of us in a detached house currently spending £150/month on dd. Is your account in credit? How many KwH do you use in a month?

A high bill would make sense if you have an electric car, run a tumble dryer every day and keep your heating at 24 degrees and on over night.

But if you have normal usage - no car, no tumble dryer, heating set to 19, off overnight, water heating on for an hour a day etc, there is probably something wrong.

What about your insulation standards? Double-glazed windows, fully insulated loft?

You can buy an intelligent plug that allows you to check the usage of each appliance in turn. Maybe something is malfunctioning.

I don’t think it’s unusual for your bill to change so much when you’re new to a property. I’m not sure how they work out what they think you might be using before they have any data for you. Just double check your usage?

It’ll depend entirely on what your fixed rate is, not really how much you’re using. There’s a big variety in what people are paying right now depending on when they fixed.

Yes our account is £1150 in credit- they state that they upped our monthly payments to anticipate for higher energy use in the winter.

The high bill doesnt make sense. We have not even turned the heating on yet! Dont have a dryer. I use washing machine 3-4x a week. No electric car.

I have no idea where to start in investigating why its so high!

Unit rate is 33.02/kWh for electricity
10.237/kWh for gas

Gas was a whopping £525 Feb-Aug and 4421kWh used. Yikes the heating wasnt even on!

Electric was £350 Feb-Aug - that sounds ok.

Hmm...dodgy boiler perhaps?

If you're £1150 in credit, even £200 pm is far too high, so either they're having a laugh or it's actually a debit .

Start by working out what your usage has cost up to now and if the credit (debt) adds up taking into account what you've paid.

Also are your bills accurate? They should be with a smart meter.

Your estimated annual usage should be on your bill, what is it?

It should be in the ball park of the typical use price cap amount, depending on your heating, hot water and insulation type as that makes the bulk of your bill, also the dreaded tumble dryer. Office equipment is pennies in comparison so don't worry about that.

Small household, £490 / month, £1000 in credit. Where have I heard this one before....

Cross posted, that does sound high, can you break it down any more? February and March could be cold, would you have had the heating on then?

Do you have daily, weekly and monthly usage figures? You should be able to see these in either your online account or on an app. Is your water heated by gas and do you have lots of deep baths?

Infographic attached showing relative costs for different appliances in case this is helpful.

I've just got another email off them wanting £547 a month direct debit. We are around £700 in credit but we don't use the hot tub as much over winter so our bills are usually the same all year. We also have recently got solar installed which they know about!

The MSE guide to all things direct debit should be helpful.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/lower-energy-direct-debits/

We're on a pay for what we use tariff and this month's bill is double what we paid this time last year, usage is the same though. It's dreadful. I don't know how we'll afford it come December and January.

I'd say based on your summer gas usage they are estimating that you will use much more than that in winter. Your yearly estimates should be on your bill.

Mine at the moment with 2 people working from home, washing machine and tumble on alternate days to dishwasher.
4 bed 3 storey house.
heating only on between 6pm and 7pm
£4.70 a day approx on smart meter.
I pay £280 a month and am trying to build enough credit to up the heat in winter.
im with utility warehouse.

They may have historic data relating to the property which does indicate that usage in winter months increases.

You may be able to go to quarterly billing and come off the monthly budget plan. That may see your payment drop for some quarters but increase a lot for other quarters. The budget plan is supposed to help spread the cost over the year, building credit in summer months to help pay for the extra use in winter.

With the Government intervention on standard variable pricing, that tariff may be lower than your fixed rate. The cap, and the fixed rate, both fix the unit price and standing charge, not the price you pay for usage. The more you use, the more you pay. I know most people understand that but I still often see on Facebook groups of people thinking there is a cap to their total cost.

Has your bill been calculated with actual meter readings at the start and end of the period?

If those are correct whilst a dodgy meter is theoretically possible it's fairly unlikely you need to address your useage

If either or both are estimates then you can't be sure but you can use the reading you took when you moved in and today's figures to work out if in total over the year you've been charged the correct amount.

They may have historic data relating to the property which does indicate that usage in winter months increases

That's true, I read somewhere that the utility companies have 5 years of usage data for just about every property in the country and use this, along with algorithms that take the weather into account to predict bills. Although I don't know how it accounts for change of occupancy or the likely cutbacks that many people will be making.

Perhaps the previous occupants were higher users?

But you have a right to pay a sensible direct debit in proportion to what you use, but you'll need to go through your usage and bills to work out what that should be.

Yes our account is £1150 in credit- they state that they upped our monthly payments to anticipate for higher energy use in the winter. wow! Ask them to reduce the monthly payments?

We are with EDF ( not through choice, our supplier went poof) and our account said £700 credit. So I asked to change to quarterly bill when they tried to increase thinking the £700 was better in our bank than theirs..
They then made a bill which absorbed all the credit, in fact we ended up paying £50 .
What I'm saying is that I'm not sure the credit figure is actual credit, but instead is the amount of money you have paid since your last bill was calculated.

I’m on pre pay
45.9 per kWh ( should be paying 32.9 but smart meter won’t accept that rate so while im waiting for my complaint to get this fixed I’m stuck on this stupid E7 single rate

anyway 3 adults
someone is always at home
electric is no more than £30 a week I use around 8 -11kwh a day so £120 a month
rarely use the dryer and I have air fryer

gas is 10.2kwh pre pay and I’ve been putting the gas on in the evening for a few hours and not using more than £15 a week - £4 of that is the standing charge and we have at least 3 -4 showers a day

your is probably estimated and not what you actually use

If you are in credit by thst amount then just say no to an increased direct debit. Did they increase the direct debit without notifying you first as that's against the direct debit guarantee too.

Your bill should have a figure for estimated annual usage and you can use that to work out a reasonable monthly amount taking into account the credit balance and the £400 everyone is getting towards their bills

Electricity Annual consumption based on estimate = 1777kWh

Gas annual consumption based on estimate = 14583kWh

We dont use the tumble dryer- ive probably used it less than 5 times in the last year.

Our bills are supposed to be accurate as we have a smart meter. Ive never actually physically checked the readings on it but edf assure me it sends them readings. Im starting to think maybe there is something wrong with our boiler settings? Our shower does sometimes get extremely hot putting it onto an eco mode may help?