How much is your gas bill?

[Newhousecrying]

We had a smart meter put in on Monday which I now hugely regret. Since it’s been put in our usage (as measured by the meter) is up 5x. Which I think is insane and a fault with the meter. The energy company tell me that the meter is fine and probably my old meter was broken. So for Monday to Wednesday we’ve been charged £13.92 for gas. For context last month we paid £10

£10 a month for gas is nothing - the smart meter reading sounds much more ‘normal’ to me but context is needed - are you in a 1 bed flat/2 bed semi/4 bed detached?!

Mine has been just under £10 a month since May when I've not had heating on and just used it for the occasional bowl of hot water for washing up. Mines closer to £25 a month now with heating on roughly every other day but we live in a small 2 bed flat. I'd expect a house to be much more.

We’re 2 person household in a 3 bed semi.

The meter is for measuring it doesnt affect how much gas you use

There could be many reasons for the apparent difference and your amounts for this week aren't unreasonable if you have gas heating and have it switched on

When you say you paid £10 before is that fr actual meter readngs?

Has your monitor been set up correctly?

What tariff are you on?

A lot more information is needed to make any comment

The £10 was for submitted readings. The monitor isn’t showing my gas usage it. I’ve looked at the app and the smart reader itself. Tariff is unchanged.

I just checked the online bill again. It’s a lot more than 5x.
-5 days before the meter installed 2.3kWh used.
-3 days of smart meter - 125.5kWh used.

Just to be sure, you aren't looking at one reading in units and one in kWh? You've converted the gas reading to kWh already?

No. Both are kWh. The old meter was 7ft3 and the smart meter 11m3

Ofgem reckons the average property uses 12,000 kWh gas a year (so, an average of 1,000 a month, although obviously we're in the cold part of the year now and would be at the high end of that average).

In my flat, which has no central heating and only uses gas for hot water and the hob, I use probably 250 kWh a month.

So it does seem likely to me that your old meter was not giving accurate readings. Whether the new one is giving accurate readings is a whole 'nother question, but they don't seem outrageous against the average.

(Assuming that you have central heating.)

In that case it does seem that the old meter was probably the faulty one. Definitely still keep an eye on the usage going forward

Ours was £88 last month. 3 people in a 4 bed 1950s detached house.

Last month our gas alone was £241. We live in a 1970s 3 bed detached - 2 adults and a toddler. Gas comes on for about one hour in the morning, then in the evening. I keep it off when I'm working from home.

This month - in seven days, it has already come to £77.

Meant "heating" comes on - also minimum cooking on the stove - we tend to use the air fryer.

Both sound wrong to me. Was the £10 without standing charge, as that would be about £7.50 alone. I used 300kwh in November, about 1.5 m^3 (16.5kwh) a day last week, would be higher in the cold snap now. Two people, three bed new build semi.

Sorry, just noticed yours was for three days, not per day. It's likely right now, wrong before.

Check they are using the correct calculation if you have changed from cubic ft to metre, though I'm not sure which way round it would be to make you pay more.

If you look at the threads showing how much gas people used in a day, you'll see that people report using £5-£10 each day.

This is why people were worried about energy bills. £10/month is insanely low. That meter must have been wrong, unless you didn't use it. I use more than that in summer just cooking and bathing.

Mine is about £7 a day having the heating on for a few hours in the evening . It sounds about right what your paying now

Why did you get a smart meter if you had consistently low bills?

Hi all, thanks for all the replies.

we do use the gas for hob, hot water and heating which is programmed to 18 for 2hrs in the morning and then 10 or 12 the rest of the day (so coming on more today and yesterday)

@Athenen0ctua we opted for the smart meter because we think live/ regular updates to energy companies is good data for monitoring usage for energy planning and energy efficiency on a wider scale, which is important in managing a limited resource. And I like having more data to monitor our own usage. And it saves going outside to take the readings.

£10 a month doesn't sound right. We bought a house earlier in the year and didn't move in immediately so no gas used at all. The standing charge alone was about £7 with no gas used and no change in meter readings.

£10 a month is less than what it costs with no heating whatsoever and just the odd bit of hot water.

The numbers you report for the last few days are what you'd expect with the heating on because of the cold snap. Nothing to do with the smart meter, just that it's winter and gas costs about 3x more than it did last winter so your bill will be a few pounds a day, even if the heating isn't on that much.

So your smart meter has done what you wanted it to do, made you realise that heating is expensive, so you shouldn't complain when it does the thing it's designed to do.

Last month our gas usage was really really low. I can't remember exactly what it was. We are low users.

This month the heating has gone on and it's got to - 6 yesterday. We'd used £5 of gas before we even got up yesterday.

We are easily using x 5 as much as last month.

Our bill was more than £10 for last month but this month the cost has absolutely skyrocketed.

I think your bill for last month would have been low but £10 is just wrong. £10 a week is probably not an unreasonable amount. (I think this is probably roughly where we are)

This month you should be expecting to pay a lot more because its below seasonal average temperature and last month was massively above.

£50 for this week won't be an unreasonable guesstimate for us. So about x 5 last month. Our thermastat isn't turned up high either. I was bloody cold yesterday.

I think something is probably off with your readings before but it certainly is likely that you'll be using at least x 3 what you did last month even in a best case scenario.

A huge amount of this won't be the meter it will be the weather.

The other thing I ask is whether you rolled off an old tariff onto a new one when you put the meter in. I'm wondering if your rate has gone up.

7ft 3 = 0.0283 cubic metre

Go and look at average usage of gas for an average house.

That amount is just wrong.