Our electric costs have always seemed high....now they are insane!!!

[Woody2021]

I have always suspected our energy (electric) is wrong...way too high.

We have a 3 bed-semi - with 3 adults, me, my wife and my mother-in-law and two toddlers - nothing unusual - no electric car, hot tube, electric heaters etc.

But we have multiples of some household items - we have 3 tv's, 2 dryers (used sparingly), 2 showers, and 3 freezers...but I can't see it would equate to how much our energy company claims we have used in a year.

I've looked on a number of websites and they say the average electric consumption for a high usage family is - 4.3KWH.

But, our house has supposedly used 7.2KWH...nearly double a regular home.

This is why our regular monthly fixed rate was already £218 a month.

We have now finished our fixed term agreement and based on our supposedly 'normal' use habits - our current provider quoted use a fixed rate of £688 A MONTH.

This is obviously outrageous so I have had to shop around. I have found a deal, where we had swap/add other utilities in addition to fuel - its an odd deal, but I needed a new sim deal and swapping house insurance is fine too.

But the monthly tariff is still incredibly high - £460 a month.

I want to know has anyone ever looked into investigating whether these numbers are correct in the first place or is something using a crazy amount of energy or is someone just stealing it...because it feels like we're powering another house.

Any thoughts/advice?

Our fridge freezer is over 20 years old with knackered seals and while it uses more than a modern one, as tested by the plug in meter, it's not so bad that it's worth replacing before it breaks, although I am thinking about doing it fairly soon, but it will only save us £5-10 a month, so a good few years payback on the investment.

Oh ok - I missed the drug growing comment...if that we're true we might be able to pay for the electric ;)

In regards to showering - that could be to blame. Everyone does shower everyday and sometimes my boys maybe showered twice didn't what states they've got themselves in.

Do you mean £70 for the household...you don't mean each person do you?

**In terms of heating, heating is gas and slightly higher than normal but not in line with our electric usage - 18547KWH.

Yes, £70 per household for showering.

A 10.8 kW shower, which is what ours is uses 1.8 kWh in 10 mins, which currently costs 27 p on the price cap, so about 50 p a shower. Multiply by 6 showers a day on average for your household for 30 days is £90 pm just on showering if people are in there 10 mins, which is probably an over estimate to be fair, but if it's right, it's definitely worth looking at. Add on the daily standing charge and you're already over £100 pm before you look at everything else.

But now you've clarified that you've got gas heating on top, that confirms that your electric use is huge so definitely worth looking at. Are people doing lots of cooking/baking in the oven? Do you have any gaming PCs that are left on for extended periods? Old style inefficient lighting?

Everyone bar me...and mother-in-law works from home.

OP do you know how old your meter is? They can go a bit wonky as they get older, also as other people have said a smart meter might help you to figure out where the electricity is being used as you can get an hour by hour breakdown of usage. Ours always peaks around dinner time with all the appliances that get used so in the summer we’ve seen a drop in usage with less hot meals….

Also is there anything that could be on that you’ve forotten about? I mainly ask this because we found an electric radiator plugged in and on in the garage that we had no idea was there: it was 2 years since buying the house that we found it: previous owners must’ve left it on 😡

We are a family with 2 adults and 2 teens. Our electricity usage is 5845 kwh per year. That's without a tumble dryer. We have a large full sized fridge and large freezer. The oven is electric and we have 2 electric showers that get used every day.

A serious comment about gardening- things like pond pumps, lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, sprinklers etc can really add up.

With the conservatory being used as a room, that will likely need constant heating or cooling. For heating, is it on the central heating? For cooling, fans can add up.

That does seem high. For context, I am all electric and am projected to use 5,200kwh this year.

Last year was quite mild so I didn't use a massive amount of heating but that is at least one storage heater (0.9kw so small) on for 10 hours a day from October to April and some additional panel heating.

We also have two freezers and two fridges because our kitchen is quite small and it maximised space to have under counter.

You need to start taking your metre reading at the same time every day and see what makes the difference. If you have a shower, read it again and see the jump. They will add but not to the amount indicated.

Do you have an electric oven? Do you have an immersion heater? Are some of the appliances quite old? You can get special plugs to check usage. Start eliminating possible sources.

Are the bills based on proper readings of estimates? Have you transponder a digit somewhere?

You say your MIL uses your conservatory as a living room........conservatories can be notoriously hot or cold.......she doesn't have an electric heater and/or an air conditioning unit in there does she?

Op, I live in a 5 bed house but with just two adults and two teens. Half the house is unused. But we have an American fridge freezer, chest freezer, fridge freezer for medication, 2 tumble dryers, 3 gaming PCs and 3 tvs. Plus the teenagers hair driers, straighteners etc. my annual usage is 8000kw . So yours is very likely correct.

If you don't mind me asking, does the rate we're paying and been offered sound similar to what you're paying?

OP you haven't given the actual tariff prices so you cant do a proper comparison. Monthly direct debit prices aren't helpful so the price per kwh and standing charge would need to be provided

I'm guessing you've gone with Utility Warehouse?

Fridge freezers use a lot. We've also got 3. One is an integrated one in the kitchen that came with the house (new build). The freezer is pretty pants, but can't turn off just the freezer section, and it's our main fridge.

We then have 2 American style fridge freezers (both owned one before we got together and bought a house). One is inside, and holds most of our day to day freezer goods. The fridge is also very useful as an overflow to the kitchen, and holds stuff we buy in bulk, like blocks of cheese.

The one outside we use for bulk purchases we don't eat all that often (for example, most of the time we follow a low carb diet, but it has stuff for when we're off the diet, like pizzas etc). We're also gluten-free, and food can be expensive, so when we see stuff on offer buy stuff in bulk to keep in the freezer.

We did turn the one that it's in the garage off recently, as the top shelf wasn't working (but every other shelf was), turns out the fan must have been iced up, as now all working fine since turning back on. We did manage to squish everything outside into the 2 inside freezers, but it meant that everything was so squashed we couldn't get to it properly, so that's why we've turned it back on.

Anyway, we've got a smart meter, and it was easy to identify that it was the fridge freezers adding a lot to our usage. So if you also have 3, I can understand why your bill is high.

Immediate wins would be consolidating down to one freezer. Any saving you are making on food will be wiped out by the energy cost. I’ve also seen a worthwhile difference by turning the shower off while I lather. Not sure how I’ll feel about this come winter.

"If you don't mind me asking, does the rate we're paying and been offered sound similar to what you're paying?"

@Woody2021 unfortunately yes. Before the last announcement my electric alone was predicted to be £440 a month when my current fix ends on the. 8th august. Up from £190.... which I thought was bonkers as my rent is only £400. Now I can't even get a fix for below £690!

We use a lot of electricity here, 4 adults all WEF. We were using 20 units a day, we had solar panels and battery installed in March 22, made a huge difference to our electricity bill, we use 2 units on average now, inc using a MN favourite, hot tub. Cost £10k to install, but the way things are going it’s proving to be a good investment so far.

I think the “average” figures you have found are wrong. 4kwh per day is more like an empty house with fridge and freezer and a couple of things on standby

I found these figures and OP is right with what is considered high use for electricity

OP wasn't saying 4.3kwh per day. They meant 4300kwh per year

Because we could see all this coming about 9 months ago, we bought a gizmo that can tell us how much energy each appliance uses per day.

Yes to a chest freezer. Part broken lid. Cost £180 in electric per year. New chest freezer, same size, getting fitted. Cost £50 per year.

Not having our water heater on during summer months. Lukewarm showers. Boiling a kettle sometimes.

Heater for drying clothes. Only on 2 days instead of 7.

Using more wood for heat and less oil.
Bought a bigger oil tank in addition to the one we already have. Will only need to buy oil once a year when price is cheapest.

Wont go into other things we have done in the last 9 months. There is quite a list.

We couldnt see the problem going away anytime soon so have taken substantial steps.
If prices do come down, well we may sell the house at some point so hopefully have made it more appealable in a sale.

With the gizmo, we worked out we need to turn the computers off more.
Phone was getting charged up for far longer than needed.
A couple of wires were on but leading nowhere.
Audit the entire house.
All adds up.

Have you actually turned everything off and worked out whether the figures are actually right? When everything is off, does the meter still move? Turn one thing on at a time, and measure the units used and then work out how long that toom and how expensive it will be each month/year.

Until you do this you don't know if it is real or not.

chest freezers use an awful lot of energy. better are tower ones.

if yoh havd electric showers consider getting a timer installed and/or train your family to switch off water whilst soaping up.

do you have an immersion heater? we had a switch where we didn't know what it does. turns out it was for the (redundant after installjng a combi boiler) immersion heater. you could as well burn 20£ notes.

OP my electric was always very high and I did not understand why. Then old chest freezer broke and I replaced with a new one. Almost immediately I noticed the electric use go down. I think it must have been faulty, although it froze things, and used too much some how. If yours is old I would replace.