What on earth is going on....gas & electricity bills

[whateverisleft]

Not sure if I'm posting in the right place...happy to post elsewhere if its not.

Ah what a nightmare. Just got another quarterly bill through and our monthly direct debit for electricity has gone up to £109 per month! We're a family of 5, in a 3 bed semi detached house, in Kent. Our gas bill is now at £63 per month. Does this sound normal? We're with British Gas because, being a wally, I missed the deadline for renewal cancel. We're on a 2 year fixed tariff though. Before I do a deep dive investigation, is there anything I should be living for specifically/in general, or is it just British Gas prices that are so high? They started creeping up last Autumn, which doesn't make sense as I started working 3 days a week so if anything I would've thought lower usage meant lower bills. We've got a smart meter if that makes any difference. We don't have any appliances that guzzle electricity or gas as far as I'm aware. I've tried starting to turn things off but we've only got 1 TV, I only use the tumble dryer once maybe twice a week, dishwasher goes on once a day, and they're all relatively new appliances so arguably more energy efficient. It's driving me insane! I may just end up paying to leave the contract early, which I believe is £40 per utility. Any help/advice welcome!

That seems really high for gas in the summer since presumably you’re not using the heating. Do you all have loads of hot baths or something? Does it take a long time for your water to heat up? Do you use the oven several times a day?
There’s only two of us in a 2 bedroom house but our bill is £45 a month averaged across the year.

www.cse.org.uk/advice/advice-and-support/how-much-electricity-am-i-using

This link explains the costs of running different electrical appliances.

Fuel prices are at a high. So you may struggle to find cheaper but it's worth looking at a switch. It's not that much hassle these days. Look at moneysavingexpert

@PattyPan

That seems really high for gas in the summer since presumably you’re not using the heating. Do you all have loads of hot baths or something? Does it take a long time for your water to heat up? Do you use the oven several times a day? There’s only two of us in a 2 bedroom house but our bill is £45 a month averaged across the year.

We are still having the heating on some days. It's bloody freezing this summer! Not every day by any means.

I am with British Gas on smart meter. Last 2 Bill's were estimated when I called was told smart meter isn't working. Apparently they have a lot of smart meters not working was told they are working on it but couldn't tell me a timescale for it to be fixed. Worth checking that your bill is an actual reading estimated.

4 person family in a single skin semi (no cavity insulation). Two adults working 100% from home, tumble drier and dishwasher used as required.

Our combined gas and electric is £118 per month, so I’d say yours is about right.

We switched to octopus recently, it came up as one of the cheapest providers for us, it's costing £138 a month for both, two adults and a toddler and we're not accruing loads of credit line we normally do in the summer so Christ knows what is going to happen this winter. We were paying £100 a month last year, even if we'd fixed with the same provider it would've been over £150 a month. Utilities are becoming ridiculous

Ours is almost £200 per month. Family of 5. All teenage or older.

I nearly posted about this last night! I was paying £72 a month 3 months ago and running comfortably in credit. I upped it on their suggestion to £86 a month ago abs now they are suggesting £96. My youngest is a fan of deep baths every day so I may need to make her shallower ones (which just reminds me of what my dad used to say and I hated!)

I do remember a letter from bulb saying that caps were being removed but it does seem to be a big jump in a short time.

My electric bill is £250 per month in the summer so without any heating etc. I'm in an electric only home so no gas at all I'm the village. We moved here in January and our bill was £700 pm. British Gas came and checked our metre and it was 19% out so put a new metre in but it's still £200 pm.

Energy prices have really gone up this year. We are a family of 4 - two adults, one 17 year old and one 9 year old. Semi detached 3 bed. Lots of gadgets charging, large Tv, tumble dryer maybe once a day, lots of washing etc - we pay £200 a month with OctopusEnergy. We were with SSE until we switched recently and were paying £250 a month (gas was about £60 a month and the rest electric).

It has been a cold year which may be one reason why your gas costs remain high, assuming your heating is gas.

For electricity, the main users will be appliances which heat for a long period of time, so tumble dryer and dishwasher as you've said. Shower and washing machine are also major users - the choice of washing machine cycle makes a big difference - and kettle to a degree though that is on for a shorterpereiods of time. If you have been using any kind of electric space heater, or if you have an immersion heater that has been constantly on, those will be the culprits.

As you have a smart meter, you may already have access to your hourly, daily and monthly energy use via your utility website. If so, you don't need to bother with turning appliances on and off at the wall, you can look at your actual usage and see when it's been happening.

5 people family - £140 month combined. Prices have just risen and we used more heating over lock down. So hoping that will drop a bit next year.
We have a smart meter so I do check our usage and compare prices.
We are with SSE

Agree that smart meters are great for monitoring usage. I look at mine every week as it shows how much you’ve used price wise, so you can keep an eye on it.

We recently changed to Avro. Were with Bulb for quite a while prior to that, but their prices were going up. I always concentrate on the electricity tariff in particular, as we have a hot tub, and that can be expensive to run, especially in winter.

Anyway, had 2 months of bills with Avro. First one was around £100, didn't have hot tub filled at the time. Latest was £135, that includes hot tub. In winter when we've got central heating on and hot tub it can go up to around £230.

I pay £175 per month by DD to hopefully even out summer and winter bills. We live in a 4 bed detached and I do washing and tumble dry pretty much every day (medical condition), but there are only the 2 of us living here.

My Avro tariff is fixed for 12 months, will see what happens after that.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to reply, include links, comparable information and suggestions - much appreciated!

Just to clarify, it's £110 for electricity alone, then £63 for gas, so c.£173 per month combined. I can't believe how much some of you have had to pay, some of those charges seem ludicrous!

I've got a couple of days off of work so I'm going to sit down and have a proper look at bills, usage etc for the last couple of years. Maybe I'm kidding myself but I honestly don't think we're high energy users. Husband and I shower every morning, the kids have a shower a few times a week sometimes a bath but the 2 youngest will share and it's never particularly deep. Tumble drier is on once or twice a week, dishwasher once of an evening, and white goods are all pretty new. I was more conscious of heating usage over the Winter and have the thermostat set so that the heating only comes on when the temperature falls below 17/18 degrees. We have no additional heaters. The children's tablets are only charged once a week, if that, and phones are charged overnight. Our electricity usage is about 90 pence by the time we get up in the morning (~6am).

Sorry, going off on a tangent. I'll do some investigating and see if I can figure out what has been/is going on. Thanks again to you all.

@safariboot and @ahoyshipmates, rather than switching all appliances off individually, can I instead switch everything off at the fuseboard and then check the meter? Will that have the same effect?

EDF did come and do that when I first queried things & it is mainly the electric usage that has almost tripled in 6 years, but immediately from when we moved.

When we first moved they based it on past bills as we stayed with the same company, so our 1st dd was £90pm, but within a year it had gone up to £265 pm and it now stands at around £300- £350 pm.

At 1st I thought it was maybe the old meter as it was originally a small bungalow so had expected it to be cheaper to run, but our dd had already climbed to £265 pm.

After the renovation to turn it into a house, and despite it being a much more energy efficient property, our dd has continued to climb to over £300pm.

Our property is supplied via overhead cables, so I can't see how someone else could be tapping into it and as part of our renovations we had all the electrics redone and the old meter resited outside (it was one of the really old ones) and replaced with a new smart meter.

When they turned everything off the meter 'dial' actually went backwards and when I queried that, he said it was fine.
Their checks said it was running at 102% which means I pay 102p for every 100p of electricity used, but that this was within their tolerance levels.

Our electricity usage is about 90 pence by the time we get up in the morning (~6am).

Some will be standing change but that still seems high, unless it's including usage from the previous evening if you stay up past midnight. How do you heat your water? An electric immersion heater on all the time is the most expensive way to do it. Electrically-heated showers are also expensive, though that wouldn't be running before you get up.

Phones and tablets are negligible. Your main electricity usage is anything that heats.

safariboot and ahoyshipmates, rather than switching all appliances off individually, can I instead switch everything off at the fuseboard and then check the meter? Will that have the same effect?

That will check the meter reads no consumption as no consumption. But it won't check the meter reads consumption correctly. There have been meter models that severely over-read the consumption of certain appliances such as LED lightbulbs, with the meter measuring up to five times the actual energy consumed.

We have a 3 and a half bed det., fairly large, 1920s, cavity walls mostly not insulated as it isn't suitable, and a lot of it only one-storey (therefore most rooms directly under a roof, so harder to heat than if it was all 2-storey). Three adults, 2 working from home, with 2 unusually powerful desktop computers on all day (you'd be surprised how much leccy those critters use). 2 dehumidifiers, one in utility for drying clothes, one in garage as it is used for storage. We don't use the tumble drier cycle on the washing machine. Fridge and freezer just replaced, including replacing two small fridges with one large one, so I suspect that may help. Dishwasher run once a day, like yours. I use the oven a lot as I make all our bread in it as well as normal cooking. And we heat a greenhouse in the winter months. We keep the house at about 18 degrees. Our gas + electric costs about 160 a month on average. My parents, 2 elderly people who need their house what seems to me as hot as a furnace, 3-bed 60s detatched, no cavity wall insulation, gas + electric 110 a month.
Comparing your usage to ours as best I can, I can only think that showers may be the culprit in your case, especially if they run on your electricity supply ( that is, rather than using water from the gas boiler as our current one does). I'm told the real culprits when it comes to power are usually things with heating elements- fires, kettles, ovens, showers.

[quote Inthesameboat2]**@safariboot* and @ahoyshipmates*, rather than switching all appliances off individually, can I instead switch everything off at the fuseboard and then check the meter? Will that have the same effect?

EDF did come and do that when I first queried things & it is mainly the electric usage that has almost tripled in 6 years, but immediately from when we moved.

When we first moved they based it on past bills as we stayed with the same company, so our 1st dd was £90pm, but within a year it had gone up to £265 pm and it now stands at around £300- £350 pm.

At 1st I thought it was maybe the old meter as it was originally a small bungalow so had expected it to be cheaper to run, but our dd had already climbed to £265 pm.

After the renovation to turn it into a house, and despite it being a much more energy efficient property, our dd has continued to climb to over £300pm.

Our property is supplied via overhead cables, so I can't see how someone else could be tapping into it and as part of our renovations we had all the electrics redone and the old meter resited outside (it was one of the really old ones) and replaced with a new smart meter.

When they turned everything off the meter 'dial' actually went backwards and when I queried that, he said it was fine.
Their checks said it was running at 102% which means I pay 102p for every 100p of electricity used, but that this was within their tolerance levels.[/quote]
That seems astonishingly high. Have you tried switching suppliers?

We recently renewed our fixed deal and struggled to get anything below what we’re now paying for £110 for gas and electric. Previously we were paying £82 pm for both.

There are 4 of us in a largish 4 bed with all mod cons in a commuter town in the south east. Prices seem to have gone up a fair bit recently.

We don’t have gas, but I’ve just shopped around for a new electricity deal. The old deal (from April 2020) was something like 19p / day standing charge and 11.5p per kWh. The best current deal I can find with a known supplier is 20p / day standing charge and 18.5p per kWh.

Working from home has upped our usage a bit as well.