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.

What are you on a split tariff and are you mostly using the cheap rate?
Normally these are for homes without gas that use electric heating. I'm on economy 10 and use about £4 a day so this is off the charts.

Are you running your immersion heater or other electrical heating at the wrong times?

Can you post how many KWh you are using on each rate so we can see if it's just high use overall or that something is being used wrong or set up wrong.

Have you always been on this? When my new metre went in they transposed the rates so check rate 1 is showing when it should and that rate 2 then kicks in (and that you are being billed the right way round)

So far just today, 21.71kWh has cost us £10.72. At the moment it's as JustAnotherMoan says - background stuff at about 200W/hr. But all we've done is run the washing machine once, we wash up by hand, two showers via electric shower, one on eco setting. It's madness!

Leaky fridge / freezer seal?
Electric showers do use a lot. I can have the dishwasher and washing machine on and my meter dawdles along. Put the electric shower on and the meter goes nuts.

Try looking at the reading before and after your showers.

Oh and smart meters, especially older ones, can have trouble with economy 7 so worth checking what they think your bill is. I may just be applying it all at the high rate on the smart meter, though it still seems high and you need to understand why you are on this tariff and use it correctly (so washing machine, dishwasher etc always timed for cheap electric)

All our heating is gas central heating - elec just for the usual fridges, kettles, TV etc. So I think there's something iffy with the setting, as you say.

Are you with one of the green energy company’s as they didn’t have to drop the unit rate

do you have an E7 tarriff as that’s normally higher in the day than night

if it’s a standard tarrif you should be on about 32.per kwh

i have a hot tub on 24 /7 used it daily
i don’t go around switching stuff off and my electric is around 8-9 a day inc the hottub

We're with Scottish Power...

Are you on an economy 7 tariff and if so, why?

My electric shower costs a fortune. It is a 10.5kw which costs around 91p for 15 minutes at 35p a unit, so if my electric was 50p a unit the cost would be £1.31 for 15 minutes.

I would turn everything off make sure the numbers on the meter aren’t moving
take a reading
turn stuff on and see what spikes it

Scotish power unit rates
so no idea how you are paying 52p
up up to 17p/kWh for electricity and 4.2p/kWh for gas (excl. VAT) from 1st October to 31st December 2022. o up to 31.8p/kWh for electricity and 6.4p/kWh for gas (excl. VAT) from 1st January to 31st March 2023.
www.scottishpower.co.uk › t...
The Energy Price Guarantee | Gas and Electricity Com

It looks as though we are – which we thought had been removed when the Smart meter was installed.

For starters as you have gas heating you should not be on economy7. You only normally only need a dual rate if you have storage heaters. There are also other rates for charging electric cars.

How many kwh of electric are you using a day and what is the split between the day and the night rate?

Size of house, number of occupants and insulation along with electrical appliances will all have a part to play in energy consumption and costs.

Electric showers are very power heavy, as are immersion heaters. Electric ovens and tumble driers are about next on the list. Do you use any supplementary heating such as an oil filled rad or electric towel rails, or any electric underfloor heating?

That's really useful, thank you. Looks as though there's been an almighty screw-up somehwere, plus we're still somehow on Econ 7...

That would explain it
I had the same issue with edf
I had an E7 tarrif was switching to the SVR as I had GCH and the smart meter couldn’t do it

I had to put in a complaint to get it sorted out which took around 6 weeks

I think from memory E7 tarriff isn’t protected from higher unit rates of the average being 32.9p per kWh

We are in a 5 bed 3 storey new build (granted A rated EPC) with 2 toddlers and me at home all day and averaging about £45 per week. That’s with us keeping the heating on 18 over night too.

something definitely sounds wrong to me there.

do you have any emails confirming the new rate that you should be on

if so ring SP put in a complaint
don’t do anything else just put in an official complaint as they should have a system to deal with it

with EDF I had a similar issue and after a few weeks of being told bullshit I just asked to put in a complaint
that way they have to deal with it and get it sorted within 8 weeks
if they don’t you can then go to the ombudsman

To be fair once I put my complaint in they updated me every week by Watsapp and I had the same person dealing with my complaint who was excellent

Contact your supplier and let them know you're on the wrong tariff.
Having an e7 meter upgraded to a smart one won't automatically switch you onto a normal tariff unless you specifically request it.

50p day and 12p night is what we are being charged on our economy 10 tariff at the moment and we have a smart meter too. As others have said makes sense if you have an immersion or ev but otherwise probably needs reviewing.

You need to find out if the smart meter is recording the right amount, i.e is it recording at X5 of the rate it should be for 7 hours of your use.

Then make sure you don't have any energy hungry appliances (like immersion water tank) running on it before switching to a normal rate.

Can you see how many KWh you are using per day? It's just that even at the higher rate it still seems it could be high. Unless the gas central heating was put in recently the tariff doesn't make sense so wondering if there's anything you are not aware of draining energy.

Is your cooker electric too?

@BoiledOwl we are with Scottish power in a 4 bed house , our electric is about £20-£25 a week , something seriously amiss there .

We did what most people did and stuck to standard tariff once our fixed rate came to an end in the summer. Now the title of the tariff is 'Standard Online' but it's clearly an Econ7 type set-up, ie 52p during the day and 12p at night. Just hoping they don't say: 'Oh you should have said, it was your fault for not specifying' when we thought that automatically going onto the standard tariff meant the guaranteed rate 24/7 😩 Feel like we may have been rather stupid...

Is it telling you how much per day based on what you are currently using? If so, that will fluctuate throughout the day and night. £25 might be what you use at the peak but at other times you use £5 so it averages out.

Yeah that’s a lot. Large 3 bed house here, couple kids, more here half the week… use the tumble dryer twice a day! And ours is about £7.50 a day. So yeah you’re is ridiculous

Something is definitely wrong – I know prices have gone up but last december's quarterly bill was £385, this December's quarterly bill was over £2k...