Absurdly high electricity bills - faulty meter?

[billswaytoohigh]

Our electricity direct debit is over £500 per month - this is in part paying back arrears that accumulated when our direct debit was lower - but it has crept up steadily from £150 a few years ago to where it is now - for a while it seemed that every month we got a letter saying that our direct debit was being increased.
To give a bit of context: we are in a detached 3 bed cottage, with no mains gas / oil fired central heating, so I would expect our usage to be significantly higher than average - just not this high. We have solar panels for hot water, so we are not using the water heater a great deal (maybe 4 hours a week in the winter months). We have wall mounted electric radiators in main living areas (convection heaters in bedrooms, but don't use these much). We also have multifuel stoves in living and dining room without which the house is freezing (lately we have cut back on coal / wood as we were paying another £100 per month for this, and using the heaters more, and they really do not warm the house adequately, so it is not as if we are paying through the nose to superheat our home).

This does sound ridiculous, right? I can't believe that we are really using so much, but part of me is wondering whether this is just what it costs when you live in a poorly insulated stone cottage.

We are having our meter checked in a few weeks, so I am hoping that they will find that it is faulty and they owe us a massive refund - but I am not really expecting this outcome. Does anyone have experience of particular faults etc causing excessive usage? Can electricity 'leak' from a building? and how could we go about getting this diagnosed and dealt with?

We're desperate to get this under control - any advice would be massively appreciated.

that will be costly to heat on electricity. Usual questions (and if you answer them you'll be a rare bird, most don't...)

• what tariff are you on? If you are on a standard variable (like 60% of the country) you are pissing money away although thanks for supporting the rest of us)
• what is the unit cost?
• what is the standing charge?
• how many units do you use a year?
• have you done a comparison to see if you can cut these costs?

Is it a smart meter? It’s possible it’s faulty. Have you tried turning absolutely everything off and seeing if the meter is still registering usage?

There’s lots of things you can do to reduce your usage, there’s info on your bill if you look.

Yes, turn everything off and then check the meter. Electric heating is very expensive.

The meter itself uses a tiny bit of power itself by the way.

How much are you paying per kWh, it's impossible to judge without knowing that.

Thanks for the replies - not a smart meter (and not an option at the moment apparently)
Situation re tariffs is a bit complicated at the moment, as company recently been taken over, and billing history a bit mangled as a result. We were on a standard variable tariff, and have recently moved to a more favourable one repeated requests to be moved to a more favourable tariff were ignored, but ombudsman found in our favour and we are meant to have been put on a better tariff backdated to Jan 2018 - not clear that this has happened as can't look back at old bills - am about to ring the company about this). I have full details of charges last spring / summer when our bill started getting serously out of hand. In August our daily charge was 20.78 and unit cost was 17.25.
Based on readings we supplied, between August 18 and August 19 we used 21092 units.
We are wth a new company now (due to takeover) so hoping fr better service.

Are they actually night storage heaters that you should be using cheaper night electricity for?

Not storage heaters, no.

We had the same I posted a while back about it

British Gas refused to check our meter and we now have massive debt with them
New company refuse to check it as b gas installed it
We are still concerned there’s and issue and are having to call and email daily but nobody wants to deal
With it

my fix is coming to an end (electricity only so also not eligible for dual fuel discounts) and I've been paying about 13p a unit and 18 p standing charge. Prices have dropped recently so yes, you are being ripped off. (and thanks for giving the actual answers, so few ever do!)

sounds like you were with one of the dodgy small suppliers (Spark, by any chance?) - never use those as they can't cope with billing and go bust regularly, costs all of us more.

That is obviously very high use (10 times mine but I've got oil heating/hot water and a gas hob) so paying 25% more makes it even worse. But 10 times normal use does seem colossal! You can do some sums - kilowatt rating of heater multiplied by unit cost will tell you the hourly cost to run the heater.

run a comparison and go elsewhere (Remember the official savings model is a lie, knock up a quick spreadsheet and compare actual unit costs) and it may well be worth getting the meter checked.

hope things can be improved!!

That does seem absurdly high. We're in a 3 bed detached newish build cottage with sole electric powered (air source heat pump) heating (hot water radiators upstairs and underfloor heating downstairs. solar water as well. We have a wood burning stove for when it gets really cold. Our unit price until now has been 13.556p and standing charge 20.444p, and we're on a £120 per month direct debit. Our insulation is probably better than yours, and the radiators possibly more efficient, but even so....

I feel your pain, coronaworry. Trying to get anything out off these volcanoes is like getting blood from a stone. Even once the ombudsman found in our favour, we had to go backwards and forwards for months getting them to actually act on any of it.

I would suggest getting something like a Wattson so you can keep a record of what you’re actually using.

I’d read the other meter on a daily basis as well. It sounds like a mess though from a billing point of view!

I used to work for one of the big energy suppliers (10+ years ago). Apparently it was very rare for meters to develop a fault and electricity metres tend to stop working completely if faulty, so more likely that you’re either using more than you realise or an appliance is faulty. Would second a pp’s suggestion of getting a monitor to check your usage

Your tariff is high, at least 20% higher than one for example so try and get that down then you can start on reducing your usage.

Utility suppliers can be very difficult to deal with, good luck with that.

21,000 units in a year is a lot. We have a largish but well insulated house and an electric car and we are using around 7,100 units but our space and water heating is by gas, where we use around 22,000 units though at a gas rate of 2.86p as against the 14.1p per unit we pay for electricity.

It could be that you have something that is consuming power under the radar, but it sounds like you are using the most expensive source of energy to heat an old and poorly insulated home.

Unfortunately, any fix is going to involve laying out money in the short term. What is likely to be the best thing would be to improve your insulation, so that you hang on to the heat you have paid for. Techniques for insulating old stone buildings have improved but there are a lot of cowboys in the insulating trade so you need to be careful. You could move to Economy 7 but that is likely to mean swapping your existing heaters for storage ones.

Beyond that if you have space for a tank, you could put in a stored gas or oil system or you could have a biomass (wood pellets) system, an air-source heat pump or if you have enough land a ground-source heat pump. Heat pumps and biomass boilers can currently qualify for subsidies under the renewable heat initiative, but there are some really dodgy operators in those markets so you would need to be extra careful. (DW has a friend who was ripped off royally for her biomass boiler and it looks like things are going to end up in court.)

Also look at this page on Martin Lewis's Money Saving Expert:

www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/grant-grabbing/

Do you have insulation in your loft ?

Do you have double glazing ?

Do you have thick curtains ?

Put a pole & curtains Infront of the outside doors, to conserve heat ?

What KW per hour do you pay, it will say on your bill
Swap to a cheaper supplier
You can compare the KW per hour on comparison sites

Are you providing the electrify supplier with regular meter readings eg daily, weekly, monthly ?
You should be able to provide them online or via phone

That's a lot. We have a 7 bedroom house

We use about 21000. We pay £160 a month for gas and electric.

I was with EDF. I had to stay with my mum for 6 weeks so turned the power off at the mains before I left. Got a bill for £336 for the month I was away. I queried it, they were adamant I owed it, even with my meter reading, then they passed it on to Themis.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am thinking that the most likely explanation is poor insulation (we do have double glazing and loft insulation, but it's an old stone cottage, the floor is always freezing, and I'm sure a lot of heat leaks through the walls too).
Ho hum. I guess I need to start reading the meter daily and experimenting with turning things off and seeing what happens.

Even things like making sure your freezer isn’t all iced up can help. Obviously tumble-drying stuff and using the oven a lot will push it up. Don’t leave anything on stand-by.

A couple of years ago I lived in a very small property with electric only.
I spent most of my time away
I had a fridge & freezer on constantly, washing machine once a week, electric shower, electric cooker used rarely, dishwasher used rarely, hot water, no electric heating ( used coal or wood)
The monthly electric bill was £14 to £25 per month
I provided regular meter readings on line
I found a cheap electricity supplier via comparison sites

To compare with your bill

Suggest do not get storage heaters

They are old technology