Astronimical leccy bill – is this normal???

[BoiledOwl]

Our Smart meter is telling us we're spending about £25 per day on electricity. Our house is larger than average and houses 3 adults and 2 children, but we're very frugal, turn off lights, turn off stuff at the plugs, iar dry on clothes horse where possible etc.

Is this in any way normal???

Trying to get through to supplier is impossible at the moment, but I'm convinced there must be some kind of mistake. We're being very cautious with central heatinf and gas is more like £4 or £5 per day.

Do you have a smart meter? If so, try turning everything off then back on and see what is draining it. £25 is enormous, about ten times what we’re using (couple in a leaky Victorian three bed terrace).

We are the same sized household and the past 2 months have averaged just over £5 per day for electricity. I work from home so computer running all day, TVs in the evening and gaming machines.

MY gas is a lot higher than yours though. My first thoughts are do you have a tumble dryer running? Electric showers? Those are both high useage.

Check that the unit price for electric/gas is correct on the smart meter. Mine was set incorrectly for electric at 52p instead of 35p per unit when there was a price increase.

Do you have an electric shower, I do and it's the biggest electricity user.

We noticed our underfloor heating was coating is an extortionate amount in electricity, do much so we've had it off now for months and rely more on blankets in our open plan living areas.

Could it be something like this OP?

It's similar to us, our rental property has an emersion (?) tank so if we want heating we have to leave that on and it's £££

Immersion heater?

Our electricity is costing us £5.50 a day and gas about £10 for every day the heating is on. We have a large ish 4 bed house and new heating system.

I think there must be a problem with something in your home - that is astonishingly high.

Do a check. Take a meter reading. See how many units you are using. You will know how much a kw hours is from your bill. This plus daily standing charge will tell you roughly how much your using per day. We use £35 per week. We have no gas just a log burner.

That is a huge amount. I think we are heavy electricity users but ours is about £7-9 per day.

£20 a day in a two bed flat that’s south facing and barely needs the heating on. I’m on oxygen though and can’t avoid that.

Thanks all so far – this is already really helpful. Yes, we have one electric shower in the house but we doen't take long showers and it's not the main one. It's not the immersion. Daily charge info is interesting - just looked and it's .50p per kwh – we're on standard tarriff as I guess most are currently.

That's so high. We have a hot tub on all day at 49 degrees and our electricity is about £12-£15 per day. Gas about £4.

40 not 49 degrees !!!

Do you mean that your standing charge is 50p per day or your electric is 50p per unit. I thought that the price cap means that electric can't be charged higher than 35p a unit.

I pay £7 and have tumble dryer, dishwasher and washing machine plus huge computer on every day plus small area of underfloor heating in bathrooms etc. Underfloor heating could be that expensive if you have a very large area of it on most of the time but otherwise it’s astronomical.

Do you have heated towel rails? My December bill was eye watering as one of my delightful dc turned on the massive one in their main bathroom and forgot to turn it off again, so it was on for most of the month.

underfloor heating is my other culprit, but mostly have that under control (clearly turned it down too far in the bathroom though, hence my dc investigating the towel rail!)

Hello – it must be per unit, because standing charge is quoted separately down the list as 39.02p. It's billed under 'Electricity day consumption charge – 50.218p ... (Night consumption charge is 12.890p)

No, I only wish we did because it would explain so much! But we're quite 'rustic' really – heated rails only attached to radiators, no gaming equipment, no underfloor heating! It's like: what else can we switch off???

By smart meter do you mean the little display in the house? That can easily be wrong.
I'd look at the meter - the actual one in the cupboard - 24 hours apart and calclate the cost from the readings. See if it agrees with the in house display.
50p per unit could account for some of it - you should be paying closer to 35p. But that would still be charges of around £17 a day, which is also high. Whether it's just the display that has the high price, or if you are actually getting charged 50p per unit, needs a bill or a look at an online account to check.

Are you on economy 7 ? Do you have two electric meters ?

Economy 7 or10 is charged different. You need to be doing things like washing drying when you switch over to the lower rate. Your night rate is only 12p. If your on immersion. Check the timer. Is it coming on through the day. If yes change the time to co inside with the night rate.

Have a look at the smart meter and see what the current electricity usage is - mine is around 200 W/hr with not much turned on (fridge/freezer/chargers/laptop). Switch the kettle on and you should see it shoot up to 2.6 kW/hr (or whatever you kettle is rated at). Just check that it is actually working and what your "base" level of usage is.

If you're on economy 7 and not using storage heaters/centering your heaviest consumption around night rate, it might be worth looking at swotching to a single rate bill.

If your base level is high, one by one go round your house turning appliances off at the wall - waiting a few seconds for the meter to adjust - toaster, kettle, microwave, TV, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, fridge, freezer, ....) - this will rule out any faulty appliances that may be drawing a current.

Re it being a mistake,, if you think you have an electric meter fault your supplier will normally ask you to take a week's worth of readings at the same time each day.
You could also switch everything off at your fuseboard for an hour and check that the meter registers no usage during that time.