High electric bills

[Handsoffmyhamster]

We have had continually high bills since moving in to our current property.
We have had the meter checked by the supplier and it seems to be fine.
We live in a 3 bed semi detached, so not a massive house. We do have storage heaters, so aware our bills will be higher. However we lived in a similar sized property, same supplier, same appliances, less than a mile away and we were only £120 per month.
Over the winter I have only switched on 2 of the storage heaters and used the log burner.

We have been paying £320 per month for electric. Just had bill through (not an estimate) and we are in debt. Basically they are saying we need to pay £410 per month.

We cannot continue paying this much. We have used a lot of our savings towards the bills, I wouldn’t mind so much but the house is always cold!

Does any one have any ideas what I can do now?
Should I get wiring checked? Can you ‘leak’ electricity?

Please help if you can!

I don't remember seeing one that was heating constantly, because the timeswitch is usually in or next to the meter. They do have a thermal link that melts if they overheat (it usually goes when people drape towels or washing on top). Maybe the excess heat was able to escape and heat the room.

The timeswitch for a houseful of storage heaters needs to have, or be connected to, a contactor that can handle big currents. Maybe yours was removed or bypassed?

Any pics of the meters and the boxes and cables around them, please?

Off-peak electricity is usually about half the price of daytime, so it's worth keeping the storage heaters if you can get the timing fixed and have no gas or stove. A radio-controlled meter clock is very common, it gets its signal from the BBC Long Wave transmitter at Droitwich (until it gets demolished, which may not be long).

What colour is your hot-water cylinder?

Thank you for all your help PigletJohn.
It is likely that we would have to just replace them for newer models as we have no gas supply and no room for oil tank.
These are the 3 consumer units.

Meter on left is for General Electric. Right is for heating/ hot water.

Hot water cylinder is white.

White hot water cylinder suggests a modern unvented one, with very good insulation. Heat it up offpeak if you can, they are usually big enough to last all day without topping up. If you tariff has an afternoon off-peak topup, that's the time to do it.

Watch your meter to verify that it only comes on during the offpeak periods. If not, Horstmann do a good timer you could get.

An immersion heater warms about 1 litre of water per minute, and a white cylinder is often in the region of 200 litres, so may take several hours to get hot. Once it reaches temperature, the thermostat will turn it off, so it will not waste electricity. The excellent insulation means that very little heat leaks out.

I can't see a timeswich in your meter cabinet, but there might be a timed meter. If properly connected, the off-peak circuits might be dead during the day, but there are other ways it can be done. Take some close pics please. I suppose you are in the Hydro area, there are regional variations in equipment.

The first meter is the heating meter. It says telemeter on it. From what I understand, a signal is sent by the Hydro to switch the heaters and hot water on at times decided by them. So we do not control it ourselves with a timer etc.

yes, the telemeter picks up the timesignal from Droitwich. The electricity company varies the moment of switching so that not all houses switch at exactly the same time, to stagger the load. So your tariff might notionally start at midnight, but could be a bit before or a bit after. Your total offpeak hours will be the number in the tariff, though.

If the meter can't pick up the radio signal, it reverts to an electric timeclock with a spring or battery reserve to cover power cuts. You may have to watch it to detect the actual switching times yours is set to.

Your grey meter has a black and a red wire coming out of it. They are abnormally small, possibly 6mm. Unless they only supply the clock, they are probably undersized. I think I can also see a very small and undersized earthwire next to the green and yellow.

I rather think you should ask around for a recommended local electrician, to investigate how your wiring has been done, and also to verify the adequacy of those meter tails. I don't know why you have (at least one) storage heater that appears not to be timer-controlled.

I don't know the regulations on your island, but down here, qualified electricians have to be members of a Competent Person Scheme, and you can look them up on the scheme website by putting in your postcode. For example one of the major schemes
Regulations can differ somewhat between England, Wales and Scotland, but I checked that NICEIC has Scottish members.

Thank you so much PigletJohn you have been really helpful.
I have found a recommended electrician, he cannot come out next week as he is on holiday but will come the following week and have a look. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of it soon.
Thanks again.

having read a bit about THTC, it may work differently.

Yours seems to have only one display, but the should be a display button to change between Peak and Offpeak usage. If this is so, I don't know what the grey meter is for. No doubt your local electrician will understand it.

Please post back when you find out.

Look for the Meter Serial Numbers, possibly stamped on and visible through the display window. these are used by the electricity companies as part of the way of making sure that the right customer is charged for the right usage, especially when there is more than one meter. You may be able to see the usage history and the meter serial numbers if you log on to my.sse.co.uk/your-account/login

(I just checked mine - it displays my meter serial number when I go to the "tell us your meter reading" page.

Yeah THTC is quite unique I think, having googled it.
It is for all electric properties. You have 2 meters. The grey one is for standard electric (TVs, washing machine, hairdryer etc) for which we pay a higher amount per kWh (17p per unit)
The other meter is for heating (storage heaters, hot water & panel heaters) the rate on this on this one is 9p per unit.
There is no peak/ off peak, just different meters set at different prices.
Hopefully the electrician can work out what has been happening and I will post when he has been.

The water heater just came on at 4 as expected and I can see this on my new electric monitor! Love this new gadget!
The monitor has been showing 0 usage since I switched the heaters off, so at least I know that the water heater is not heating all the time.

if you aren't at home every day, try to find out the prices for Economy 7 or Economy 10

They have a plethora of prices, often you will find that the Incumbent Supplier charges more than all the competitors.

Martins MoneySavingExpert site has a good energy price comparison (not biased by commission payments) but I'd avoid any company that has a customer service rating less than "very good"

the small suppliers may be cheaper because they aren't obliged by the government to pay subsidies and freebies.

We have that meter (with the orange and green buttons). Previously we had storage heaters (and no gas) although this is no oonger the case. If you press the display button on ours it takes me to 5 different meter readings (three of which are on zero as the meter is new to us and we had central heating fitted as soon as we moved in). When we first moved in we were charged two standing charges as technically it's two meters (or something). The clock on ours is also set completely wrongly (i hear it clicking on and off at random times of day, which bear no relevance to when electricity is cheaper...).

I know you are probably sorted now with the investigation but I do know of case online I read where Neighbours had been using the other neighbours power for a long time, it was done outside the house though and it took years to discover.

The other thing I wanted to say was that our dishwasher was broken for a month and our electricity bill halved. That was a big guzzler of electricity here, but yours is a different league altogether. Your bills are very very high and I hope you get sorted! Good luck.