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

[WouldBe]

I think the heating at home is all gas, if I plugged in some electric heaters would they be cheaper?

Electricity is more expensive than gas. You can reduce your gas bill by turning off radiators in rooms you don't use regularly and keeping doors closed. An electric heater in the room you use most might be cheaper if you turn off the gas boiler.

 

[muscovyduck]

Electricity is more expensive than gas. You can reduce your gas bill by turning off radiators in rooms you don't use regularly and keeping doors closed. An electric heater in the room you use most might be cheaper if you turn off the gas boiler.

Ah cheers thanks.

I think I was in a bit of a flap because I've not been on a variable contract before but I clicked this morning I won't be paying what I've had to pay for February every month because I'll be using less over summer

I've also stumbled across this video on Youtube which might be useful for people looking for every last bit of insulating they can do (lets see if I can figure out how to insert it)

 

[MickiQ]

According to British Gas (my old supplier went under) my bill from April will be about 400% of my bill a year ago
I'm still renting so no option to sort myself out with a wood burner or similar
And because of the housing crisis I can't risk moving anyone in with me to split the bills else I'll get kicked out and have to pay double what I'm paying now (which is already a lot)
Am worried I've got a pay cut or redundancy coming at work because the energy bills are causing a massive strain there too


I think the heating at home is all gas, if I plugged in some electric heaters would they be cheaper?

Trying to heat your house with electric fan heaters would be ruinious since gas costs roughly a quarter of what electric does when it comes to heat. Fan Heaters are meant for quick heat and the cost be damned.
What I've done (having just about got over my shock from the emails from British Gas) is changed my CH so that instead of going off at 11.00am it now goes off at 8.00am (around the time Mrs Q leaves for work) and comes back on an hour before she gets home.
Even with the valves in unused rooms turned down it's not worth heating the entire house with just me in it. I spend most of the day in one room with ocasional trips to the kitchen and the bathroom (OK the latter more frequently than the first I am a 64 yo male after all). I've bought myself an electric oil heater from the Empire of Evil which I can plug in if I decide it's too chilly in my office. They take a bit longer than fan heaters to get warm but are more efficient if I want to leave it on for a few hours.
Mine is a 1500W one that cost £50 but they range from £35-£100+ and from 800W-3000W depending on your budget and heating needs.

 

[two sheds]

I agree with that, although my fan heater's 1 kW (hardly ever use 2kW setting) and I have it close to me - instant heat and also 100% efficient.

 

[gentlegreen]

I haven't used my electric radiator once this year - targetted heat is definitely where it's at in addition to the aforementioned lagging ....
Cycling home from work used to benefit me hugely in terms of not feeling the need for heating for quite a while after I got home ... activity will hopefully play a part again in the future ...

 

[Artaxerxes]

Wonder if it’s even possible to get a mass leccy strike going

 

[Puddy_Tat]

read something to the effect that if you're on under 25's rate universal credit, 10 % of your income will go on the standing charges if you have gas and electric



i did sign up to ebico on principle a few years ago in part because they didn't have daily standing charges, but they stopped that a while before they went out of business.

 

[muscovyduck]

Wonder if it’s even possible to get a mass leccy strike going

doesn't look like we're going to have much of a choice the way its going

 

[Puddy_Tat]

for the work-from-home contingent, has anyone tried turning a desk / table in to something akin to a kotatsu? (blanket or quilt covering the table and your legs, small heater under the table)

I did find a fan heater under the desk a good thing in my last job when I went in at weekends (the office central heating wasn't on at weekends) but didn't go quite as far as adding the blanket - desk was the sort that was closed in on two sides underneath which helped.

don't think it would work with my current computer desk arrangement.

also good for keeping kittehs warm

 

[contadino]

for the work-from-home contingent, has anyone tried turning a desk / table in to something akin to a kotatsu? (blanket or quilt covering the table and your legs, small heater under the table)

I did find a fan heater under the desk a good thing in my last job when I went in at weekends (the office central heating wasn't on at weekends) but didn't go quite as far as adding the blanket - desk was the sort that was closed in on two sides underneath which helped.

don't think it would work with my current computer desk arrangement.

also good for keeping kittehs warm

It's my hands and head that gets cold, rather than knees/legs. My study/office is a pretty small room and a 600w oil filled radiator keeps it workable until the dog piles in without shutting the door behind him.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

It's my hands and head that gets cold, rather than knees/legs.

hat?

i used to work with someone who would wear his trilby in the office if it was cold.

if it was really cold he'd wear a balaclava, then put his trilby on top of that

he was a bit odd, even by that organisation's standards...

 

[WouldBe]

I haven't used my electric radiator once this year - targetted heat is definitely where it's at in addition to the aforementioned lagging ....
Cycling home from work used to benefit me hugely in terms of not feeling the need for heating for quite a while after I got home ... activity will hopefully play a part again in the future ...

Get or rig up an exercise bike and set up a generator to make your own electric.

 

[two sheds]

I've thought of it :eek; would only power a 3W lamp though

And local heat is good for keeping me warm but it would be nice to warm up the house as a whole, hence thinking of a heat pump if I can seal all the gaps.

Eta I'm lying

Pedaling a bike at a reasonable pace generates about 100 watts of power. That’s the same energy-per-time used by a 100-watt lightbulb. So if you pedaled eight hours every day for 30 days (no weekends off), then doing the math, you’d generate 24 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy.

so almost the computer, but define 'reasonable pace' though

 

[Elpenor]

Long johns are handy. When I lived in a flat with no heating and an enormous single glazed 8x 10ft window I used fingerless gloves too

 

[two sheds]

A couple of mates insist on turning the central heating up to 20C or more during the winter and sitting there in shorts

actually gives me a headache that warm, and I have a feeling they'll be adding extra pullies soon.

 

[WouldBe]

I've thought of it :eek; would only power a 3W lamp though

Have used the dynamo on a push bike to charge a motorbike battery before.

 

[WouldBe]

A couple of mates insist on turning the central heating up to 20C or more during the winter and sitting there in shorts

One of my neighbours are like that and even have the heating on while out at work.

Neighbours on the other side seem to think the way to regulate the heating is to open the windows further.

 

[gentlegreen]

Get or rig up an exercise bike and set up a generator to make your own electric.

I had a half-hearted attempt to make one in 2020.
Runkeeper has clocked me up to a couple of hundred watts on rides...

 

[two sheds]

Would make gaming very difficult not to mention typing

 

[gentlegreen]

hat?

I even wear one in bed.

 

[two sheds]

I'm sat in the conservatory at 10C because I have a new dog and don't want to leave him on his own. I have my quilted jacket on and it's actually not too bad. Fingers are a tad cold mind.

 

[WouldBe]

I'm sat in the conservatory at 10C because I have a new dog and don't want to leave him on his own. I have my quilted jacket on and it's actually not too bad. Fingers are a tad cold mind.

Get the dog to do the exercise then snuggle up to the dog.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Neighbours on the other side seem to think the way to regulate the heating is to open the windows further.

is there a way you could harvest some of the hot air as it escapes?

 

[geminisnake]

Let's have a look at the electric then

Bulb have us on an "estimate" annual usage of 5200KWh per year - which meant nothing to me, until a quick Google later informs me that the average annual consumption for a family of 3 is 3200KWh per year . . . Gulp!

Wtf?? 2 adults in a 3 bedroom house with a coal fire, we have solar panels but only some of that reduces out bill cos the council cream some of the money off, our annual usage
Your Annual Usage
1520 kWh (Actual)
The basts are doubling my standing charge on the 1st of April though, cnuts, sorry if the font has changed, no idea how to sort it

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Everything is going up except my paycheck.

 

[High Voltage]

Wtf?? 2 adults in a 3 bedroom house with a coal fire, we have solar panels but only some of that reduces out bill cos the council cream some of the money off, our annual usage
Your Annual Usage
1520 kWh (Actual)
The basts are doubling my standing charge on the 1st of April though, cnuts, sorry if the font has changed, no idea how to sort it

No. Our estimated usage was 5200KWh not 1520KWh

But now I've done some digging I can get it annual usage below the average

 

[MickiQ]

Standing Charges are just Legalized Theft cunningly disguised as Legalized Extortion.

Let us use the Q household extortion demand (sorry estimate) as an example. They're quoting £1381.93 paying 44.75p Standing Charge and 27.627p per KWh.

So the standing charge comes to £163.34 per year or £13.62 a month which is before a single electron flows through the wire. The rest works out at 5002 Kwh (I used 4411Kwh last year so they haven't exactly used much imagination in the calculations)
if the standing charge was absorbed into the cost of the electric itself it would go up to 30.89p per KWh so someone would get 528Kwh by paying out the same amount as the standing charge as opposed to the current system of paying the standing charge and getting FUCK ALL.

Granted that 528KWh per year doesn't sound a lot and indeed isn't but the Q home is a detached house in the suburbs which up until recently had 5 adults in it so our electricity consumption is necessarily larger than someone living in a small flat on their own. There are lots of people who will be a lot closer to that break even point than we are.
With standing charges we are going to have people going to bed as soon as it gets dark and eating cold beans most meals yet still shelling out £20+ a month for next to nothing.

 

[danny la rouge]

 

[platinumsage]

Standing Charges are just Legalized Theft cunningly disguised as Legalized Extortion.

Nonsense. Standing charges pay for the fixed costs of the distribution network such as metering, cables, pipes etc. These costs are created by you simply being connected.

The alternative of allowing landlords of empty properties to pay nothing while actual consumers have the costs added to their bill in proportion to their usage would be inequitable.

 

[Chz]

I was unsure when I renewed at a fixed rate last year if I wanted one or two years. Bloody happy I took the two now!
Being in a masionette with neighbours on three sides, double glazing, fairly new boiler, etc our gas usage isn't really all that much. It's the 'leccy that kills us. Especially in winter with a dehumidifier (cheap bastard double glazing has no vents in it!) and the tumble dryer (heat pump, but even so...) in use.