Help! Why are our energy bills SO high?

[WibbleVonBibble]

I know that energy bills have been going up for everyone, but from talking to friends I really feel that our bills are crazy high - and I’d love some advice about how to work out why.

Last year we used 11,700 kWh. This year we’re already at 3,500 kWh. Last month’s bill was £612. This is just electricity, we have a heat pump, no boiler.

We live in a 3 bedroom semi detached house. We have an electric car, but it only gets charged during the cheaper rate times (we’re on a heat pump optimised tariff).

Neither my husband nor I work from home.

This is a baffling amount to spend on energy, right?

I’m wondering if there’s some problem with wiring somewhere in the house that is causing huge amounts of power to get used for some mystery reason…

What can we do? Would an electrician be able to work out what’s going on? Is there a device or technique we can use to investigate?

thank you in advance for any advice

Is your car charging point securely locked during the day?

Doesn't your smart meter tell you the time of day that most power is being used?

Are your neighbours running a cannabis farm?

I think there’s something wrong somewhere. Your useage doesn’t sound out of the ordinary. And you say your bills were already high so perhaps an electrical fault sonewhere or an appliance chewing through power. Did the heat pump people do an analysis of useage at all to illustrate what you’d likely pay on a heat pump tariff, and did you have the electric car before the pump?

Is your house well insulated?

Check the tariff you are in makes sense for yor usage. I am on the fully agile tariff (have solar and battery) but even before that I planned my consumption quite carefully around low tariff hours. Putting washing machine and dishwasher on timer etc

Even if they were why would the OP have high bills?

A tongue in cheek comment highlighting the possibility of a neighbour stealing another's electricity - it's not uncommon to hack into anothers supply to grow cannabis.

Do you have an immersion heater permanently on, instead of off?

If it was the same issue before and after the heat pump then you can discount that as the issue.
As you mention that the high usage is in the morning when people are getting ready, the most likely culprit is that you have electric showers that don't connect to the heat pump.
If you have e.g. two of them and they are in use for very long showers for several people that could be getting on for 20kwh which would be several pounds and 600kwh/mo. Is that what you're seeing on the graph?
The heat pump would be working much harder in winter, just like the old gas boiler, so I would expect a decent usage there. But my advice would be to look at the showers.

We’ve also got the heatpump electricity only, no gas. We found that the octopus ‘cosy tariff’ just meant our bills were higher. The price out of the off peak hours is much higher than normal peak with the cosy tariff (to offset eg. how low prices are over night when you charge the car). So if you use it then your bills will be higher. We only dud cost tariff for a month, it was almost twice as much as usual.

We’ve also now got petrol cars even though we’ve got the electric charger. They just weren’t worth the hassle and didn’t cost much less in the end.

On top of which the uk contribution to worldwide net zero is so negligible it’s laughable / disgraceful that Miliband et al are costing us all so much money. Whilst making themselves richer and the countryside more built on.

.. until USA, China, Russia, India, Japan etc start reducing their emissions it’s almost pointless.

It doesn't sound right no. So take a morning and switch absolutely everything off and then run each appliance in turn, you may be able to isolate what is causing it. Your smart meter display will glow orange if something is pulling down a lot of electricty (mine tends to do this if the oven or kettle is on).

Generally things that heat water or air or drive motors tend to be the big electricity consumers (kettels, ovens, immerson heaters, washing machines, tumble driers etc..)

I don't think there's necessarily a problem with your consumption, but I do think there's a massive problem with your billing.

Electricity is extortionate. Three or four times the amount of gas. If I put your annual usage into money supermarket, it comes out at £239 per month (for 11.7k electricity per year).

For context, the average home uses:

11,500 gas
2,700 elec

That comes out at £129 per month.

So, you're already paying 85% more for your household energy than a house that has a primarily gas heavy usage. Electricity only users get massively financially penalised.

We live in a crappy house with an absolutely terrible underfloor heating and hot water systems that we have almost no control over, that stays on all the bloody time, and thus far this year, have used 7047 kwh in gas and 729 kwh in electricity.

My bill last month for 25th Dec-25th Jan was £580.

But, here's the kicker.

I'm stuck on a business rate. I think my electric is around 14% more than consumer. I get charged a climate change levy and 20% VAT for my gas as soon as even one day of the month goes over 145kwh of gas usage, for the entire month's usage. This means my gas gets charged at 44% more than it would get charged to a consumer.

It's not your usage that's wrong, it's your billing.

3,500 for two months' use of a heat pump that has to be on ALL THE TIME sounds pretty darned dreamy to me. But, you should be paying circa £240.

Scrutinise your bills with a fine toothcomb.

Other people have mentioned electric showers and combi boilers: I'd just like to add, if you have built in fridges and freezers and they don't have vents at the bottom, those will cost you 3-4kwh a day in summer to keep cool and 7kwh per day in winter, because they're constantly overheating and cooling down. Especially if you're unfortunate enough to have poxy UFH that you have no control over (I imagine the muppets who own my house installed the F and F over the UFH pipes, given all the other grave errors throughout the house).

I'm with Octopus, I live in a 4 bed Victorian terrace, gas boiler. I use the washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer daily. I pay £250 per month and I'm hugely in credit. Either you are on the wrong tariff or your heat pump is functioning incorrectly or you are doing something like taken long showers.

As an aside, how do manage to only do 1 load of washing per week? What about bedding and towels, even if you only have 2 beds that's a load in itself.

You’re spending a crazy amount per month as you already know, and there are some great suggestions. We’re two adults in a four bed Victorian on octopus and pay about £90 (summer) to £150 (winter) a month for our gas and electricity. Our home is the usual story of old house and massively inefficient with heating but we just wrap up, use things like electric blankets rather than heat the whole house and only have the central heating on for really cold days or when guests come round.

With your electric car, how often are you charging this in reality? Have you audited it through the month? At £whatever it is per charge this can add up through the month. Unless someone has tapped into your supply, it’s really unlikely you’re ‘leaking’ electricity anywhere. You can check your smart meter when most things are off - we hover around 200watts per hour overnight with 4 TV’s on standby a few sky boxes and bits and bobs like PlayStation and the such also on standby. If you are up into the kilowatts over night then yes something not right.

Do you have underfloor heating?

We came from a 4 bed detached house with an extra private 1bed unit in the garden and our bills were around £360 per month in the winter gas and electric and nearer £120 in the summer and the house was heated to “tropical”

Sold and rented a terraced house that was 3bedrooms and much smaller and all electric. We had a smart metre and we watched the amount rise each day We would try to keep it at around £12-£15 per day but we froze at that amount. Ended up turning off the radiators and getting small oil fired heaters to turn on in the bedrooms an hour before bed.
Only time since childhood do l remember waking up to ice on the inside of the windows

Can I ask how deep your windowsills are because the rented house we lived in was single skin and had no insulation.
Have met someone who lived along the road and they moved for the same reason

I also think that all electric is such an expensive way to heat a house.

Not too sure about heat pumps because for every person saying how much savings they have made, I have found 2 or 3 who say they are extremely expensive to run.
I like to wear shorts and t shirts in the house and not much else and I like the heat. Which seems at odds with how much heat a heat pump puts out.

Now in an Edwardian house and our bills are tiny in comparison because our walls are 3 times the thickness and even without heating on all the time the house stays warm
We have never experienced the extreme cold that we felt in that rented place. Even when we were renovating in the thick of winter

OP there are lots of Facebook groups dedicated to running heat source pumps efficiently. Maybe find one dedicated to the make you have.
Often they are not set up the most efficient way by the installer.

Now work it out per person

Yeah it’s still minimal for the uk

Slightly above average at 5 tonnes
India is actually a lot lower
China and Japan are high making stuff for us

That’s less than twice what we use KWH in total ( gas plus electric , EV) - so right ball park - not totally baffling because we are quite light users with just the two of us, and now tumble driers or game machines etc etc

it will be high at this time of year with the weather - and you can see that in your usage too

and the cost is way more than us because electric is more expensive than gas and it looks like it’s your heat pump using a lot of electricity at this time of year ?

is the main unit facing south?
how warm is your home ? We are 19 roughly on average and would use a lot more if we ran at 20 or 21

and how long are the showers - when DD is around we rack up an extra £1 a day just in showers

am not convinced anything “wrong” but savings may be possible

Martin Lewis had a question on very high energy bills..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0n0zg22?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Ed?