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

[cupid_stunt]

OVO's website is not installing any confidence in their ability to come up with accurate figures, my balance yesterday is shown as -£136.12 and today as -£194.89, an increase of £58.77 in just 24 hours, they seem to just pluck random figures out of thin air, the useless fuckers.

 

[CH1]

OVO's website is not installing any confidence in their ability to come up with accurate figures, my balance yesterday is shown as -£136.12 and today as -£194.89, an increase of £58.77 in just 24 hours, they seem to just pluck random figures out of thin air, the useless fuckers.

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You mean they are giving forecast balances - rather than balances based on actual bills?
I had some good personal news today though - Thames Water announced that I would use £182 of water this year based on my compulsory new smart water meter.
This compared to the £592 water rates. They did not indicate when their billing would change though.
Makes me feel like Tantalus.......

 

[cupid_stunt]

You mean they are giving forecast balances - rather than balances based on actual bills?

The 'today's balance' is supposed to be based on estimated daily use between meter readings being inputted, but clearly something is very wrong with their system if it can up with figures that are so far apart in just a 24 hour period, how I am supposed to have used £58.77 in a day?

 

[Artaxerxes]

Never had to much problems with electricity and gas but I know the water company once tried to say I had used enough water for a sports centre based on estimates when I lived in a flat.

I think it was like 3 grand a quarter

 

[cupid_stunt]

Never had to much problems with electricity and gas but I know the water company once tried to say I had used enough water for a sports centre based on estimates when I lived in a flat.

My mother got one like that, turned out to be a fault with the newly installed smart meter, surprisingly I found it very easy to resolve with Southern Water.

 

[MrCurry]

OVO's website is not installing any confidence in their ability to come up with accurate figures, my balance yesterday is shown as -£136.12 and today as -£194.89, an increase of £58.77 in just 24 hours, they seem to just pluck random figures out of thin air, the useless fuckers.

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Probably depends on what the daily update from their finance team is on how much they need to rake in from the customers to avoid going bust in the coming days. I think a lot of these energy companies are in such a bad position they are just trying everything to get money in and avoid going to the wall before the wholesale energy prices come down again.

Definitely a climate in which it pays individual customers to argue the toss so you’re not over paying in the short term and over exposed if the company does go into administration.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Probably depends on what the daily update from their finance team is on how much they need to rake in from the customers to avoid going bust in the coming days. I think a lot of these energy companies are in such a bad position they are just trying everything to get money in and avoid going to the wall before the wholesale energy prices come down again.

Definitely a climate in which it pays individual customers to argue the toss so you’re not over paying in the short term and over exposed if the company does go into administration.

Luckily if any company goes bust, your balance is protected.

 

[Chz]

Probably depends on what the daily update from their finance team is on how much they need to rake in from the customers to avoid going bust in the coming days. I think a lot of these energy companies are in such a bad position they are just trying everything to get money in and avoid going to the wall before the wholesale energy prices come down again.

Definitely a climate in which it pays individual customers to argue the toss so you’re not over paying in the short term and over exposed if the company does go into administration.

If you actually have the cash flow to run a balance, I find (for Ovo, at least) they pay a better interest rate on it than any savings account you can get.
We're just coming out of winter, so I don't have much of a balance but they do pay 5% on it!
Unfortunately, their T&Cs do say something about trying to use it as a savings account and you can't just pump it up with money for laughs.

 

[platinumsage]

Centrica and EDF bosses on the news today blaming the administrators of failed suppliers for taking ages to properly transfer customers to them, not informing them of credit balances and setting inaccurate direct debits.

 

[High Voltage]

Hmm! I've just had our first "new rate" bill in, £105'ish they've based this on an estimated reading for April, which, surprise, surprise, is too high

So, given that I've got nothing better to do, I'm going to give them DAILY readingsa

And in other news, my OWL meter "maybe" reading a little high, but I'm not 100% sure as I've not got a direct comparison, so that's another set of readings I'm going to take . . . OWL vs Consumer unit . . . but the plus is that I may have tracked down the ghost electricity consumption, or at least the lions share of it

 

[cupid_stunt]

but the plus is that I may have tracked down the ghost electricity consumption, or at least the lions share of it

You can't leave it like that, FFS tell us what you think it is.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Luckily if any company goes bust, your balance is protected.

When bulb went bust I was stuck on a ridiculous rate at Scottish Power. I couldn't get out of the contract until they 'sorted' out my account. Not only did they double my DD, by the time I was released, they had wiped out my £200 balance on top of that (and a bit more). This is all before the price hikes.

 

[MrCurry]

but the plus is that I may have tracked down the ghost electricity consumption, or at least the lions share of it

You can't leave it like that, FFS tell us what you think it is.

He’s discovered a lion in his house which has been leaving the bathroom underfloor heating on.

 

[High Voltage]

You can't leave it like that, FFS tell us what you think it is.

I "think" that the OWL meter is over reading by . . . about 90 KWh over an 8 week's period, which would account for the unaccounted for usage. What I'm doing now is I'm going to super carefully monitor, like daily, both readings and submit the consumer unit reading to Bulb, I won't need to do this for very long, maybe a month, before I can see what's going on. Part of me really wants it to be the OWL meter being "out" but then part of me likes having an easy to read unit on the mantlepiece

As always though . . . watch this space

 

[furluxor]

Not really an energy money moan but related: after my green(-washing?) supplier went bust, I got switched to Shell Energy. Almost at the same time, my Post Office broadband became Shell Broadband with no option to exit the contract. I felt like someone somewhere was laughing. I've disentangled from one of the Shells by now but the other one is still sticking to my household expenditure like a bloated, bloodthirsty leech.

 

[two sheds]

Yes I moved away from Post Office broadband then, too.

 

[CH1]

Yes I moved away from Post Office broadband then, too.

I was thinking about changing TO Shell broadband to consolidate my utilities under one roof. But.
During my near-one month disconnection in January under the PlusNet/Openreach régime I became quite enamoured of the Yorkshire way of doing things - especially when they made me a "vulnerable customer" and FORCED the Openreach engineers to do what they cannot ever do (park in a controlled parking zone, come out on a Saturday, reconnect the customer's internal phone wiring etc etc).
To top it all my PlusNet contact turned out to be a Romanian who posts on Facebook about exotic fishing expeditions on the Black Sea coast. Or he did before this Putin thing blew up.

I doubt Shell Broadband provide such a bespoke service.

 

[AnnaKarpik]

Let battle commence; EDF sent me a bill together with usage estimate for the coming year and a revised direct debit. Using their estimated usage they are trying to overcharge by £22 per month (minimum - the skewed day/night ratio is another matter). It always pays to pop their figures into a spreadsheet folks. For those who are accumulating large credit balances, you can ask for it back at any time (over £40 off the top of my head), you don't have to prop up the finances of energy companies, you can let the shareholders do it. I was just repaid £250 by EDF and if they don't want to change my direct debit I will be applying for a refund every time I've got more than £40 on the account.

How to guide for reducing energy direct debits here, might do this instead; https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/lower-energy-direct-debits/

 

[prunus]

8 days in running hot water (50C) and underfloor heating (this still getting to temperature, been on for 3 days - at 19C, target 35C):

29.1kWh in, 145.3kWh out, COP/SPF 5.0

Been running for about a month now give or take, heating and hot water. COP 5.4. Amazing. And warm stone floors are really pleasant to walk on.

 

[two sheds]

three and a half units a day is bloody good for that. 50C sounds hot enough, although I read that it should reach 60C occasionally to kill off any legionnaires who may be lurking

 

[Pickman's model]

three and a half units a day is bloody good for that. 50C sounds hot enough, although I read that it should reach 60C occasionally to kill off any legionnaires who may be lurking

when i was involved with the working group seeking green accreditation for my employers i was told 60c was the minimum water temperature to prevent legionaires running through the pipes

 

[magneze]

Got an energy monitoring socket and tested a few things. One surprise was an old amp on standby which turns out was using loads of power - virtually the same as when it was 'on'. The TV seems to use a fair bit when on standby too which was also a surprise as it's not that old. With the new price rises these cost quite a bit over the course of a year. Well worth getting or borrowing a monitoring socket - it's already paid for itself a few times over with these discoveries.

 

[two sheds]

Yep mine too. I found that 'suspend' on Linux Mint takes about as much power as when the computer's running. I recently noticed a 'PC on/off' button on my keyboard though, and that closes things down to 10W which is very handy. It means I don't have to press the on/off switch which is a bit fucked and I often have to hit the casing for it to work.

 

[teuchter]

It's prompted me to get out an old monitoring thing, programme the new electricity prices into it, and have it running for a bit. I think of myself as someone who's already quite energy efficiency conscious but watching it has drawn my attention to a few things, such as lighting. Nearly all my lighting is LED but that fact has made me a little complacent, because although it doesn't use loads of power compared to what it would otherwise, it does still add up. Seeing the "price per month" if you were to leave it on all the time is quite a good motivation to turn stuff off when you don't need it, and I've already started being a bit more proactive in turning off lights that don't need to be on.

 

[prunus]

three and a half units a day is bloody good for that. 50C sounds hot enough, although I read that it should reach 60C occasionally to kill off any legionnaires who may be lurking

when i was involved with the working group seeking green accreditation for my employers i was told 60c was the minimum water temperature to prevent legionaires running through the pipes

It heats itself up to 70C weekly (programmable but that’s the default) specifically to kill off legionnaires. The French won’t be able to invade us.

 

[two sheds]

aha perfect then

I'm still looking for an air-to-air heat pump, although I do still have a winter's worth of wood left for the rayburn. Not using the rayburn for cooking has really reduced the amount I burn.

There's supposed to be a grant up to £5000 for air-air heat pumps (£6000 for ground source) as I recall, runs out March 2024. Drilling holes through the 3-foot thick stone/clay/stone walls could be the problem. A neighbour told me that you start with a 6-inch hole on the one side and end up with a 2-foot hole on the other side. I've got a small window that doesn't do a lot that I could put the heat pump in but haven't really found one that will fit yet. And as has been said on here, noise can be a problem.

 

[prunus]

aha perfect then

I'm still looking for an air-to-air heat pump, although I do still have a winter's worth of wood left for the rayburn. Not using the rayburn for cooking has really reduced the amount I burn.

There's supposed to be a grant up to £5000 for air-air heat pumps (£6000 for ground source) as I recall, runs out March 2024. Drilling holes through the 3-foot thick stone/clay/stone walls could be the problem. A neighbour told me that you start with a 6-inch hole on the one side and end up with a 2-foot hole on the other side. I've got a small window that doesn't do a lot that I could put the heat pump in but haven't really found one that will fit yet. And as has been said on here, noise can be a problem.

Sounds like you have the same Cyclopean walls as I do - 3 foot of random rubble mortared with mud and straw Drilling holes has been no problem, you just need to use core drill bits and a very powerful drill. And I also used a professional to operate it . Takes a good couple of hours to get through, but the holes are clean and neat.

 

[contadino]

I got in touch with a couple of fairly local companies about getting a rooffull of solar electric. Unsurprisingly, they're backed up and wouldn't even be able to book a site survey and quote until end-July.

A rush of renewables installations can't be a bad thing, right?

 

[MickiQ]

I got in touch with a couple of fairly local companies about getting a rooffull of solar electric. Unsurprisingly, they're backed up and wouldn't even be able to book a site survey and quote until end-July.

A rush of renewables installations can't be a bad thing, right?

Tradesmen generally seem to be backed up for months these days.

 

[teuchter]

Tradespeople.