My electricity bill has just tripled: how about yours? Alternative suppliers?

[cupid_stunt]

I think our bungalows are roughly the same size (detached 2 bedrooms, 2 reception rooms, etc.?) but yours is much better insulated than mine. I think you're also happy with a lower ambient temperature than me. In the rooms where I sit (office - one of the bedrooms, dining room and lounge) I'm heating them to 20°C when I'm in them.

So, my daily cost for the month (takes deep breath) was £7.64!

Yep, roughly the same size bungalows, walls & loft insulated plus double glazed, but 20c would be too much for me, currently I am waking up to 15c and I heat it to 18c in the mornings, it drops to 16c by the time I go to bed, which is fine.

During that cold snap, it would drop from 18c to 16c by late afternoon, so the place was getting another blast of heating to get it back to 18c, again dropping to 16c by bedtime.

My combined bill up to 21st Dec came to £144 up from just £60 in Nov.

 

[cupid_stunt]

My smart meter and the app on my phone tell me different amounts used... it's well annoying.

With OVO the smart meter displays costs inc. VAT, on their website it's ex-VAT on the 'your energy usage' graphs, with the VAT only added later, at the bottom of the bills.

The smart meter display also includes the standing charge, but for some reason the electric SC is already added when I get up, and the gas one isn't added until after I go to bed., so any time during the day when you look at the daily cost only the electric SC is included, which is annoying.

 

[Leafster]

Yep, roughly the same size bungalows, walls & loft insulated plus double glazed, but 20c would be too much for me, currently I am waking up to 15c and I heat it to 18c in the mornings, it drops to 16c by the time I go to bed, which is fine.

During that cold snap, it would drop from 18c to 16c by late afternoon, so the place was getting another blast of heating to get it back to 18c, again dropping to 16c by bedtime.

My combined bill up to 21st Dec came to £144 up from just £60 in Nov.

No cavity wall insulation in my place and the loft isn't consistently insulated. I have mostly double-glazed but some triple-glazed windows and doors.

It gets tricky with further comparisons as I don't heat the whole house up at the same time or to the same temperature - some are set to 18°C and others 20°C. The zoned system means that there's a potential heating requirement from 6:30 through to 21:00 but that could be just one room or a maximum of four (the whole house is never heated at any one time). Whether the boiler actually fires up when a room is active depends on the actual temperature in that room at that time. So, at the moment, the only room which I need to be heated is the office and that is set to 20°C. The boiler has been working intermittently to keep it at that temperature throughout this morning.

 

[gentlegreen]

Bulb seem to be getting the hang of it and have allowed me to reduce my monthly payment to £19.81 so I should have clawed-back most of the surplus by the summer.

I feel inclined to have a bath this month, so in the absence of another crazy cold snap, my usage should average 3.5kwh - or 111 kwh for the month. At the moment I'm averaging 3kwh which includes 0.5kwh for heating my feet and bed.

I've started using a microwave, so I will need to deploy the meter to see if it's saving electricity - and also do a pot of stew on the open hob on a cold day. It takes ages to cook - even with a folded towel on top. In the future I will definitely be looking into hay boxes and insulation generally.
But we're talking about a total of under 0.5kwh or 16p a day.
My greatest use of energy is still my PC by a long way.

I'm going to have a dilemma when it comes to seed-sowing time, but I plan to set it up in front of the window this time so I can use less light, and put it on a timer.
My gardening is going to be on a smaller scale this year with a greater focus on growing food.

I was chatting to someone in Siberia the other day who said they fully expect to wear just a tee shirt in winter and was surprised that I was content with 13C indoors.

 

[skyscraper101]

I wish Shell energy would get a move on with issuing the bill, I submitted meter readings on the 3rd, the bill issue date is usually marked as the "8th" but here we are on the 11th and I'm still waiting for it to appear in my account.

 

[og ogilby]

I wish Shell energy would get a move on with issuing the bill, I submitted meter readings on the 3rd, the bill issue date is usually marked as the "8th" but here we are on the 11th and I'm still waiting for it to appear in my account.

I'm still waiting for my shell bill too. They have made an almighty cock up with my billing going back 2 years and I'm waiting to see if they have sorted it out.

 

[two sheds]

Well I got the infra-red thermometer and it gave me some interesting results. Measurements taken with outside night time temperature about 6-8 C, so not during the cold snap.

I’ve lit the Rayburn with a couple of buckets of wood when it gets dark, so around 20 kWh over the evening. That bangs out the heat nicely into the kitchen and so some upstairs where I am of an evening, plus to four radiators which don’t get hugely hot but do take the chill off rooms.

I’ve used a fan heater upstairs for a couple of hours (so about 3 kWh) which gave me an air temperature of 15 C which is quite warm enough for me. Ceiling temperature was 16.5 (so loft insulation clearly working), wall temperatures 15.5 (so Sempatap insulating wallpaper doing quite well too), secondary glazed window temperature 14 but heavy curtains 16.5.

I didn’t really check the downstairs temperature but it was bloody cold down there in the cold snap. So am now wondering about extra insulation. I do wonder whether to insulate a couple of internal walls - I've assumed they absorb heat only to release it again, but also wonder whether that temperature release is during the night when I'm tucked up in bed.

It will take loads of measurements to get a real picture of the house. An imager would be better to show cold spots, although I did check a couple I was suspicious of and they seemed fine. Still must check the roof temperature during a cold snap though.

 

[CH1]

For all Shell customers and those who can heat their houses on one 40w light bulb, here are my Shell gas stats for December 2020. December 2021 and December 2022. [December only! - gas only, electricity brings the total December bill to £507.98
The odd thing is the meter readings are roughly the same each year even though I turned the thermostat down from 20.5° to 20° this autumn (meaning room temperatures are around 19° in practice).





I have been thinking of downsizing - and getting rid of the responsibility of repairing washing machines, gutters etc, but at prices like these (at Tonic Bankside, specialising in old queens like myself) fuel prices would have to escalate even further to make me seriously consider exchanging being ripped off by Shell and Putin rather than Delauncey/Peabody etc.

 

[MickiQ]

For all Shell customers and those who can heat their houses on one 40w light bulb, here are my Shell gas stats for December 2020. December 2021 and December 2022. [December only! - gas only, electricity brings the total December bill to £507.98
The odd thing is the meter readings are roughly the same each year even though I turned the thermostat down from 20.5° to 20° this autumn (meaning room temperatures are around 19° in practice).



I have been thinking of downsizing - and getting rid of the responsibility of repairing washing machines, gutters etc, but at prices like these (at Tonic Bankside, specialising in old queens like myself) fuel prices would have to escalate even further to make me seriously consider exchanging being ripped off by Shell and Putin rather than Delauncey/Peabody etc.

Somebody is going to to rip you off, you just get to choose who.

 

[cupid_stunt]

The odd thing is the meter readings are roughly the same each year even though I turned the thermostat down from 20.5° to 20° this autumn (meaning room temperatures are around 19° in practice).

That would be down to the system working harder to maintain temperatures during that lengthy cold snap, which was exceptional for December.

My average daily gas use went up 80% during that 10-day period, compared to the average for the rest of month.

 

[CH1]

This is all over the news today, but was fully covered in the i yesterday.
Batch approval of meter changes by magistrates sounds a terrible idea - rather like the American system of "foreclosure" where people get chucked out of their homes for missing a mortgage payment.
How did we come to this?

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

The odd thing is the meter readings are roughly the same each year even though I turned the thermostat down from 20.5° to 20° this autumn (meaning room temperatures are around 19° in practice).

Does your thermostat ever actually hit that point? It will only make a difference in that it will turn the system off sooner when it hits that point. Ours never gets to 20 in winter (at least at the place where the thermostat is) so for us that change wouldn't actually make any difference, might be yours is the same.

 

[CH1]

Does your thermostat ever actually hit that point? It will only make a difference in that it will turn the system off sooner when it hits that point. Ours never gets to 20 in winter (at least at the place where the thermostat is) so for us that change wouldn't actually make any difference, might be yours is the same.

Yes - it goes on and off like a yoyo. The boiler seems to be well adapted to this mode - according to the read-out on the boiler the radiators are commonly running at 30-40°C. Which I understood was the efficient way to run them. That is to say not running the radiators at 60-70°C then cutting out for an hour or two, then ramping up again.
But I'm sure someone on here will correct me.

PS before people start on about single bulbs etc this house is 1867 built (approx) three bricks thick walls at semi-basement level, two above. Roof insulated and fully double glazed. But can't obviously do anything about cavity walls as these are solid.

 

[muscovyduck]

This is all over the news today, but was fully covered in the i yesterday.
Batch approval of meter changes by magistrates sounds a terrible idea - rather like the American system of "foreclosure" where people get chucked out of their homes for missing a mortgage payment.
How did we come to this?
View attachment 359188

Had to help someone who nearly got caught out by this over the winter. All utilities will pile on when someone dies and try and convince the estate to hand over money they don't owe. Energy companies will also send letters to the wrong address and sue former dead residents rather than the current owner/occupier to gain access to the house. They know exactly what they're doing.

 

[cesare]

Had to help someone who nearly got caught out by this over the winter. All utilities will pile on when someone dies and try and convince the estate to hand over money they don't owe. Energy companies will also send letters to the wrong address and sue former dead residents rather than the current owner/occupier to gain access to the house. They know exactly what they're doing.

I'm having a terrible time with BG over my mother's estate atm. It's been so difficult that I took the route of letting the dispute go to BG's debt collectors specialising in accounts where the customer is deceased. Unlike BG, this agency had a very easy method of getting hold of them and sending them the meter readings that prove BG owe the estate money, not the other way round. Contrast this with that I sent BG an online customer complaint last weekend and they still haven't got back to me. The subsequent problems have affected our own account where they started our readings from the vastly overestimated readings of my mother's account and refuse to accept my meter readings now, and instead are vastly estimating ours .

I was present and witnessed the final readings, before the estate closed the account. The meters were also read again just after we moved in. Yet BG is working to its own estimates. It's so stressful and infuriating.

 

[cupid_stunt]

I'm having a terrible time with BG over my mother's estate atm. It's been so difficult that I took the route of letting the dispute go to BG's debt collectors specialising in accounts where the customer is deceased. Unlike BG, this agency had a very easy method of getting hold of them and sending them the meter readings that prove BG owe the estate money, not the other way round. Contrast this with that I sent BG an online customer complaint last weekend and they still haven't got back to me. The subsequent problems have affected our own account where they started our readings from the vastly overestimated readings of my mother's account and refuse to accept my meter readings now, and instead are vastly estimating ours .

I was present and witnessed the final readings, before the estate closed the account. The meters were also read again just after we moved in. Yet BG is working to its own estimates. It's so stressful and infuriating.

Sounds like the situation I had with OVO, only resolved thanks to the energy ombudsman getting me a £495 refund plus a goodwill payment of £150

 

[cesare]

Sounds like the situation I had with OVO, only resolved thanks to the energy ombudsman getting me a £495 refund plus a goodwill payment of £150

Aye. I've found it difficult to deal with because it's tied up with bereavement of course. But getting the debt collector's letter was the final straw in getting BG to sort out its failures. So I've sent the debt collector loads of meter reading photos and info on the gas side. I'm now leaving it for a few days and then doing the same on the electricity. I'm also going to ask the debt collectors to sort it out for our own account which BG's mistake has had on us personally. Then I'm going to the ombudsman as you did.

 

[purenarcotic]

Apologies if this has been discussed, but they keep talking about ‘average use’ or a ‘typical’ household, but what does that mean in reality? Two adults in the house, heating on around 4 hours a day, more when it’s particularly cold, try and keep lights off in rooms that aren’t currently in use, wash everything on a cool setting (probably three washes a week, sometimes more, sometimes less) etc… is that typical use?! I’ve been signed off sick since November 14th so the TV has been on more than usual. It just feels like a really unhelpful sound bite.

 

[prunus]

Apologies if this has been discussed, but they keep talking about ‘average use’ or a ‘typical’ household, but what does that mean in reality? Two adults in the house, heating on around 4 hours a day, more when it’s particularly cold, try and keep lights off in rooms that aren’t currently in use, wash everything on a cool setting (probably three washes a week, sometimes more, sometimes less) etc… is that typical use?! I’ve been signed off sick since November 14th so the TV has been on more than usual. It just feels like a really unhelpful sound bite.

I think it’s based on this usage:

Ofgem estimates the typical household in Britain uses 2,900 kWh of electricity and 12,000 kWh of gas in a year.

Average gas and electricity use explained

Ofgem calculates Typical Domestic Consumption Values for gas and electricity to give consumers an idea of how much energy they might expect to use in a year.

www.ofgem.gov.uk

 

[Leafster]

Apologies if this has been discussed, but they keep talking about ‘average use’ or a ‘typical’ household, but what does that mean in reality? Two adults in the house, heating on around 4 hours a day, more when it’s particularly cold, try and keep lights off in rooms that aren’t currently in use, wash everything on a cool setting (probably three washes a week, sometimes more, sometimes less) etc… is that typical use?! I’ve been signed off sick since November 14th so the TV has been on more than usual. It just feels like a really unhelpful sound bite.

Here's the Ofgem page on average use if that helps.

Average gas and electricity usage

Information on average gas and electricity usage and how it is calculated.

www.ofgem.gov.uk

ETA: Or what prunus has already said!

 

[Leafster]

Also, your bills should include a section on estimated annual usage for your account so that would be a way to compare if you're the average household.

My estimated electricity usage is below 2900 kWh per year by about 4% but my gas usage is above 12,000 kWh by about 6% (according to my recent bill)

 

[WWWeed]

I've just read a really good article on why costs are not coming down that much despite using more wind power. Apparently The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

On the windiest days, we deliberately capped the amount of power our turbines were producing, reducing the total amount generated by 6%. In fact, it’s worse than that: not only did we turn off our turbines, but we paid the owners of windfarms to turn them off. This is called curtailment.

In 2022, a year characterized by extraordinary hikes in energy prices for consumers, we spent £215m on turning windfarms off, and then another £717m turning on gas power plants to replace the lost wind power. In the process, we emitted an extra 1.5 million tonnes of CO2.

Most windfarms are either in Scotland, or in the sea. That’s because:

1. England banned the construction of windfarms onshore in 2015 (a move which looks likely to be reversed)
2. Scotland, and the sea, are very windy
3. There are relatively few people living in Scotland (or the sea), which makes it easier to get planning permissions without getting snarled up in NIMBYism

However, as you might expect, most of the UK’s electricity consumption is not in Scotland (or the sea). It’s concentrated in the South East of England, where most of the people are.

This poses a problem, because moving electricity long distances is expensive. You need big cables, which are serious bits of kit – the last large one we put in cost £1.2 bn. At times, we just have more windpower than we have cables to transmit it. The particular hotspot for this problem is the B6 boundary: the bottleneck for electricity from Scotland to flow to England.

When we’re generating more windpower than we can transmit, the National Grid pays the windfarms to turn off, and pays a (typically gas powered) alternative generator, closer to the demand, to turn on. Consumers end up effectively paying three times for the power they’re getting: the original payment to the windfarm for the electricity, the payment to turn off, and then the payment to the alternative generator.

At times the UK was wasting as much wind power as we were using.

On Christmas day, we spent £9.2m on curtailment costs, curtailing a total of 76.18 GWh. That’s enough electricity to power ~11’000 households for a year.

Electricity prices – which are the main way that incentives are communicated to market participants – are completely location independent in the UK. This means that a generator with a wind farm on the Outer Hebrides can sell a MWh to an electricity supplier with customers in Surrey, and neither of them has to worry about how the energy gets from point A to point B 3. Conversely, a wind turbine in Surrey sees no price benefit from selling its MWh to a customer next door, despite the obvious efficiency benefits.

If generators and consumers aren’t worrying about where energy is flowing from and to, who is? The messy, geographically nuanced reality of ensuring enough electrons are flowing to each consumer becomes the problem of the National Grid Energy System Operator (NGESO), who have the final responsibility for keeping the lights on.

It's another example of another massive government failure and that's before you even get into the supplier company mess.

As with many of the challenges this country faces I can't see this going away anytime soon.

 

[WWWeed]

Also, your bills should include a section on estimated annual usage for your account so that would be a way to compare if you're the average household.

My estimated electricity usage is below 2900 kWh per year by about 4% but my gas usage is above 12,000 kWh by about 6% (according to my recent bill)

This estimate should be based on historical usage data which isn't always shared if you have switched between companies (either voluntarily or as a result of being moved to a supplier of last resort).

Also it seems to get messed up for various reasons (crap system calculations, bad data sampling, revoked/reissued bills, etc) so I would treat it as a very rough estimation. It's better than nothing but not much.

 

[alex_]

I've just read a really good article on why costs are not coming down that much despite using more wind power. Apparently The UK is wasting a lot of wind power







It's another example of another massive government failure and that's before you even get into the supplier company mess.

As with many of the challenges this country faces I can't see this going away anytime soon.

This problem will have been completely obvious up front

 

[CH1]

This problem will have been completely obvious up front

But not presumably price critical 10 years ago, or whenever the contracts were drawn up.
This is what happens when the country is run by accountants and lawyers rather than engineers!

 

[WouldBe]

But not presumably price critical 10 years ago, or whenever the contracts were drawn up.
This is what happens when the country is run by accountants and lawyers rather than engineers!

There might be more wind turbines in Scotland but there are large wind farms off Northumberland, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire?, Norfolk and lots of other places.

 

[CH1]

There might be more wind turbines in Scotland but there are large wind farms off Northumberland, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire?, Norfolk and lots of other places.

And the point is? I though the OP was saying that it had been thought cheaper in lower cost years when the turbines were installed to have them switched off at times of peak demand to avoid having to increase the capacity of the Nation Grid distribution network (ie installing more pylons and distribution cables)
Or were we reading different articles?

 

[alex_]

But not presumably price critical 10 years ago, or whenever the contracts were drawn up.
This is what happens when the country is run by accountants and lawyers rather than engineers!

Lawyers and accountants value future risks though, and you don’t spend billions on a wind farm without knowing exactly what the wind is like there.

This is a massive failure by ofgem.

This is being paid because it’s in the contract so people knew this could happen, but either no one forecast how likely it was or didn’t do anything about it.

For ref that article says that this increased electricity prices by 1bn gbp in 2022, the fix costs 3.2bn gbp and the problem is going to get worse as more Scottish wind farms are being built.

 

[teuchter]

The article does also point out though, these incentives (via the contracts) are probably part of what has helped the amount of wind power in Scotland to increase so rapidly, and in the longer term that's a good thing, because even if the transmission infrastructure isn't keeping up with it right now, it can be built.

 

[story]