How is my kWh energy consumption so high??! (question for geeks)

[ScillyGirls]

I'm the first owner of a New Build property and have been there for 5 years. The energy is Electricity only - no gas. My flat is a very small 2 bed - 550 square foot with just 3 radiators. I don't have any unusual reasons for using electricity - just the computer and regular kitchen appliances and standard led lighting, and I live alone.

I'm with the company Utilita, and the bills have always been high, but have doubled since the cost of living went up.

Using the past year as an example, my energy consumption is stated on the bill as 8,832 kWh.

According to various websites, the average annual consumption for a 1/2 bed is just 1,800 kWh. Is this true? Can I ask what your annual consumption is for comparison? I don't understand why mine is reading several times that amount.

My bill for the past 12 months was £2,800, which might not sound a lot to some, but I am one person in a small flat, and websites such as British Gas say that average usage for my situation leads to bills more in the region of £660.34 (although that sounds very low to me).

I tried to get to the root of this on several occasions but the customer service from Utilita was hopeless and they wanted to charge £100 for a service person to visit.

Finally today they have agreed to have someone attend to inspect the meter next month, although I have looked at it and it does give the same reading as stated on my bills. I'm wondering if it is an electrical fault of some kind, and perhaps I will need to hire an electrician instead?

Admittedly, practical issues such as these are not my forte, but I would appreciate hearing from anyone else in a similar sort of situation to compare what your energy consumption is. Is mine outrageously high or perfectly normal? If it is normal then perhaps I am just signed up to a monstrously high Tariff with Utilita (It is the 'Smart Energy Tariff' on a 'Standard Unrestricted' Service Type, whatever that means!). Or maybe this is just what we are all being made to pay? Several friends and relatives have indicated that I am paying considerably more than them though. And they have a partner and kids in larger properties.

To be honest, I am hoping that there has been some sort of fault whereby the meter has wildly overestimated my usage and that I will be refunded for 5 very expensive years, but I won't hold my breath!

Thanks in advance to anyone who shares their experience for comparison.

@EatCrow -I was born and bred in the north, if there were no icicles on the inside of the windows when you woke up, summer had arrived😂. No such thing as radiators only extra jumpers!!

Same!! 😀

@Tightasaducksarse

Do you remember when we used to have summers though!

OP, what did the plumber say?

It's your boiler!

That 1800 is for average houses (2 bed, 1-2 prople)with gas heating.
Although the amount doesn't jump as much as I'd expect for those with duel rates (ie E7, which is what many houses that heat with electricity have) as it's only 2200.

Definitely look at the time the water is heating for - see if you can turn the tank thermostat down too. It only needs to be 65C.

Yes, I always remember the 6 week holidays as constantly warm, this was late 70's to 80's, fun times they were.

So it will eventually run cold

It's like boiling a kettle
Your water will get hot and you have all that water to use while it's hot and then warm but leave the water in the kettle without boiling it again and it will get cold

So you switch the kettle (immersion) on before you need it and then off, and use the water
It'll usually stay warm for a while and once you've figured that out you'll know better how to use and time it

Even for all electric that's high.

I am also all electric but have storage heaters. I can use 700kwh in December but not in July (and most of that on economy 7 rate).

I'd expect to be seeing a big difference between winter and summer.

If it's not a daft question, what is your emersion heating? As in do you have a bath everyday (do you even have a bath?) and is the tank appropriately sized?

I needed a plumber to move a dangerous old water tank when I moved in here. One just quoted to move. The second asked why I needed such a massive tank if he was also fitting a dishwasher.

I don't have a bath, have an electric shower and cold fill washing machine so it is for a bit of washing up and washing your hands. I have a 15l tank under the sink that works a treat.

Look at the pattern of your bills as well as overall useage.

While I have no heating on I use no more than 12kwh a day (often a lot less).

YOU KEEP YOUR IMMERSION ON 24/7??!!! Bloody hell, yes that will do it.

This

Mine is on 30m am and 30/60pm

Immersion. When we moved into our current house (July 2022) we left the immersion on 24/7 for 2 months because I wanted to get the oil tank drained and cleaned before getting an oil (for heating) delivery.

OuR electric bill was £900 for 2 months.

We now have oil. We have done many oven switches and the most our electricity uses, even in winter, is £120 (including an electric range cooker).

To heat our water tank uses 12.46 kWh per day in summer, twice that in winter.

It is not true to say you only have to turn the immersion on for 1 hour. In our house if heating from absolute cold it takes 3 hours with immersion, but only 2 hours with the hot water boost via oil. In our previous house the immersion would heat it to scalding within 2 hours. Perhaps more modern systems are more efficient, but every system is different. Ours is only 12 years old but my LL installed cheap crap wherever she could get away with it.

Last time I checked, 2 hours of immersion cost around £1.47. It does go down a bit when the water is hot, but it is still very expensive. Imagine having your tumble dryer on 24 hours a day. That sort of cost.

Electric heating is also very expensive.

See if you can turn the temp down on your HW tank. No lower than 55 degrees (or it might be 60, please google it) as that can start to cause bacterial problems.

Thanks very much for all the helpful comments, I am just going through them all and taking advice re immersion heater, I appreciate it and am trying to work out the heater,I've obviously been doing something wrong.

My boiler service appointment has been postponed (the Checkatrade guy apparently double booked me and forgot).

However, if it is the immersion heater being on that is making my bills go so high, does the immersion heater affect the central heating at all (3 radiators)? I ask because my bills go up drastically according to whether or not the heating goes on, here is my monthly bills for 2023:

Jan 443 (£)
Feb 328
Mar 363
Apr 303
May 178
Jun 130
Jul 115
Aug 117
Sep 112
Oct 118
Nov 217
Dec 333

=£2,757

it does indeed look like the heating makes a huge difference. It gives us a bit of an insight as to what it will be like when we start phasing out gas boilers...

I hope I can clear up some confusion here. I think I can see what is going on.

When you quote the low energy consumption for flats (1200ish) and say yours is much higher, you are quoting your total energy use. As I understand it, you have no gas or oil in your home at all.

But your circa 8k kwh is for everything. Let me break it down for you:

In summer I use 12.46 kWh per day (in oil) to heat our hot water tank once a day.

In winter it is more like 22.7 kWh per day. The reason the cost of heating my hot water is higher in winter is because I have a massive boiler that sits in an uninsulated garage, so it has to work its way through very cold pipes and goes underground to heat the house, and it uses more energy to do that. My hot water tank is in a loft that is balls off cold in winter because I basically live in a wind tunnel - 60mph in summer is not unusual.

However, your immersion, I assume, is next to or on a hot water tank inside your flat. The only way it will cost you more to use your immersion in winter is if your hot water tank is in a loft with very little insulation, i.e. some kind of space that is freezing cold during winter. But that still doesn’t explain everything in ££.

So your electric bill varies so much due to HEATING and other use. Another example:

My electricity has a 50p a day standing charge
By lunchtime it is up to £1.20 running fridges, freezers (three in the garage!), lights, two PCs turned on all day
If it is turning my oil heating on and off all day, it adds about another 20-30p per day to my bill
By the end of the day, assuming I have done one dishwasher load and two loads of washing at 30 or 40 degrees, I have had the oven on for 40 minutes and one electric hob ring on for 15, used the toaster twice and microwave once, and the kettle four times, it will get to £3
On the odd day that I cook two or three times, or cook complicated dishes, my electricity is at £5

Electric cookers, especially the oven itself, are REALLY expensive to run.

So now let’s compare the cost of oil versus electricity. Oil gets delivered into a huge tank, but unlike gas, you don’t pay a daily standing charge. Over the last year or two, the cost of heating my home on oil versus gas (which I don’t have) works out about the same.

So last year I used 2079 litres of oil, which is JUST for heating and hot water. Iirc we didn’t get the best prices (it fluctuates as often as petrol does) and I paid around £1750 for it. Those 2079 litres of oil equate to 21,538 kWh. That means I paid just over 8p per kWh for it.

Now let’s take my kWh for last year and pretend I live in an electric only house. As of 1st April electricity was capped at 24.5p per kWh.

21,538 x £0.245 = £5,276. Before cooking or doing anything else. Right now the daily standing charge for electricity is 60p, so If my house went fully electric tomorrow, it would cost £5,276 plus 219 = £5,495 per year / £457 per month for heating and hot water. It doesn’t even come close to the actual £1750 I spent on oil. If we add in what I spend cooking and doing human things, in a fully eclectic house, I would be looking at £6,935 a year.

As it is, I know exactly what I spent on oil and electricity for the 12 months up to Dec 23. It equates to £275 per month. £3.3k. And just to add, the heating systems in my house are horribly messed up and we are both home all day. With a properly working system and us out, it would be about 30-40% lower. Which brings it to not far off what you have spent.

I am sorry to tell you that our house is 2,250 sq ft.

So, it’s a combination of you not including everything else: cooking, washing, tumble dryer, dishwasher, lights, etc when you think about your electricity usage, along with electric heating and hot water being REALLY expensive versus using gas to cook and heat your home with.

For the most part, gas is also a lot quicker and more efficient at heating, so kilowatts are getting wasted away waiting for electricity to do its job.

So it’s not your immersion costing more in winter, it’s the absolutely extortionate cost of heating a home that has no gas at all. You will also be cooking more hot food in an electric oven, and that causes energy bills to spike in winter, and/or using a tumble dryer when it’s cold (we don’t have one). Those cost a BOMB to run.

Lots of people trapped in homes that are fully electric are experiencing the same pain as you, I am afraid. It was extremely common to fit flats fully electric five or so years ago when energy was so much cheaper.

Three other things that affect heating costs: thermostats on external walls instead of internal walls, and the temperature you have your heating set to, and if it is on all day. Having your heating on for 2 hours AM and 4 pm with the dial set to 18 degrees will cost a massive amount less than if it is set to come on any time of the day or night whenever the temperature drops below 21 degrees. The warmer you like it, the more it costs.

They were my dad’s favourite words with regards to the immersion heater.

Our daughter has an all electric flat and it was the water heater that ramped it up. In the end she only turned it on when hot water was required. She boiled the kettle for the pots, had an electric shower, and rarely has it on as it’s so dammed expensive.

Thanks for taking so much time to provide this insight, it's very kind of you, (along with everyone else's input regarding the immersion). I guess it does appear that my (electric) heating is the main culprit for the large seasonal rises. I will try to avoid electric at all costs for my next move, because I don't even consider myself a heavy user of heating- everyone puts their rads on a few weeks before me! Cheers.

That's alright. I find that sometimes estate agents adverts fail to mention electric heating. You can find out yourself with a bit of sleuthing.

Find EPC:

https://find-energy-certificate.service.gov.uk/find-a-certificate/search-by-postcode?lang=en&property_type=domestic

Put the postcode in and find the property, look at what's to the right of 'heating and hot water.' If it says anything worse than 'average', it's an energy money pit.

Most electric heating and hot water on EPCs will be marked as 'poor' or 'very poor', especially ones with EPCs done in the last few years.

(NB: they last for 10 years, so it's important to look at the expiry date to figure out what year's energy rates they calculated the total annual expenditure on)

Remember you have to add your daily consumption for just doing stuff on top of it and that the daily standing charges for both gas and electricity would have gone up for all but any EPC done in the last 20 odd days.

I hope you can find a more economical home.

But as a PP said, it's cheaper to boil a kettle to wash up. It costs 5p to boil a kettle; it used to cost us at least £1.50 to have the immersion on in our old house just to top the hot water up enough to wash up.

And, electric showers are extortionate too. So be as quick as you can.

I work for a landlord with some electric- only flats, the flats generally are one bedroom mezzanines (so open throughout, with high ceilings and only doors being to the hallway and bathroom). We have excellent insulation, as you should do in a new build. The average use if electric is approx 5000kwh per year. These don't have an immersion heater however. The two bedrooms use a lot more, but they are in an older, listed part of the building, with very high ceilings, mezzanines, and outside doors.

The stuff that the tenants don't tend to consider until they start getting through massive bills are:
Put a timer on the heating. Don't just turn it on and off, set it for 6-9pm for example.
Watch where your thermostat is. If it's a handheld one, sticking it on the window ledge will mean that it takes much longer to reach he temp you set it at.
Do you need all your radiators on? Heat rises, do you need it on in your bedroom (if upstairs) or can you turn it down/ off in there?
Heavy usage devices- for you an immersion tank, plug in heaters (the instant ones swallow electric), you can get plug in devices to monitor the usage and see if there is anything thats particularly high.
Curtains/ draught excluders/ blankets- use what you can to keep yourself warm, not the space. I think it works out cheaper to sit under an electric blanket than to put the heating on.

I am electric only. I had to get a timer fitted to my water tank as when it was on 24/7 my bills were extortionate. This has made a massive difference.

I pay about £100 a month these days. Was £50 five years ago.

It seems a lot but I cannot get it down and I don't have any heating at all.

Think timer was about £60.