Vocal Voices

I received my dual bill this morning from the dreaded Scottish power
It was read yesterday
It works out as double same bill from last January
All tho this time if had government payment as well so it's about £100 more
Very glad I'm not the average house hold according to the DM

That's awful

Saundra, I keep spreadsheets... I know....I know.

My bills since October have gone up, yes, but they have just about been covered by the winter fuel payment and the Energy Credit Vouchers. So, the bills are more, but I am not personally spending that much more on them.

Like you I am in nearly all day, every day, and I need the heating on. All I have really done is to turn the radiators down in rooms I hardly use, close doors - and especially curtains at night - and layered up in warmer clothes. I have a 2kW electric convection heater in the living room to kick in if the temp drops to 19 °C (my minimum comfort level) and that's it.

I take all these "average" household prices with a huge bucket of salt. The cap is on the unit price, not on how much you spend.

Kaz wrote:That's awful

I thought it was ok and expected it to be much more
I never put it on till 3 ish then only on 19
WM did you know it's more for a pre payment meter
Been on local tv tonight I had just messaged me he has oil no gas in the house and he has just brought oil it's £120 cheaper than last order in September/october

Saundra, pre-pay is more, but...... I have no choice as a tenant.

However, when I load my electricity meter it shows me my credit. I read this every morning so know I how much electricity I have used as the credit goes down. I am my own smart meter.

I currently average £2 per day for gas and £6 for electricity and the flat is more than comfortable. Come May to end of August they will be pennies.

If people want to wear T shirs, shorts and flip-flops in 25 °C open-plan homes in winter that's up to them. Not much sympathy here.

We’ve been experimenting. We had the heating on between 5.30am and 7.30am and then 5pm to 10.30pm with the thermostat set at 21°. We found we were having to boost it at times during the day and the combined cost of electricity and gas per day was around £8-£9. We now have the heating set to come on at 5.30am and it’s timed to stay on until 11pm BUT we’ve reset the thermostat to 17°. The house is comfortable all of the time and our total daily cost since doing that hasn’t gone above £6. Take today for instance. I’ve done two loads of washing, the oven has been on and the total cost for both fuels on the smart meter in home display is (at 10.54pm) £5.10.

Obviously that includes heating water too, we have a hot water tank so that needs heating up but we’ve cut that down from twice a day to once.

I've just checked EDF here in France. Regulated Tariffs (which I'm on), can go up by a max of 15% from February.

Our heating is a wood burning CH boiler and our local wood supplier has not put his prices up since 2021. So our heating only goes up by the cost of the Central Heating pump +15%

I was going to fit the pellet burning boiler I got at 50% off (€3,000), but the cost of pellets tripled. So it remains wrapped up in the garage until things become more sensible.

We have the gas central heating thermostat set to 19C at the moment like Saundra but (rightly or wrongly) tend to use it in bursts when the temperature drops rather than specifically set the timer, so it was interesting to learn of Jo's experiments.
That £5.10 daily bill equates to around £150 a month, and our energy bills here last month were electricity £54 and gas £154! I hate to think what the gas will will be this month, but we had built up a "credit" of nearly £500 during last summer, so that's now being worked off. As WM says, being oldies, we've had the extra £300 fro the Government this year.
The electricity is incredibly variable day to day depending on whether the solar panels kick in or not, a sunny day certainly reduces the electric costs; usually it's around 4.25 kWh a day but yesterday was bright and our usage was only 3.16kWh. But we haven't had too many of those recently .....

Jo, that is quite interesting and it does make sense. A friend of mine who is a building surveyor also said that esp if you have an older build it is better (and usually cheaper) to have the heating on all the time vs at intervals; reason being something to do with the walls as they absorb the heat and when the heating is off the walls cool down very quickly so absorb the residual heat from inside the house (or something along those lines). Newer builds that should be properly insulated shouldn't have that problem

I have mine on all the time but set for different temperatures; mornings and evenings when I'm usually home it's set to 18; during the day when I'm out it's set for 15 and then at night it's set for 5. Days that I work from home I just layer up



On a different note though, I'm rather jealous that your smart meter display actually works. I had mine installed November 2019 and February following year the electricity display stopped so all I get is the gas readings. It's beyond frustrating and every time I query it I get told it's a software issue. I know loads and load of people have the same problem (and seems that everyone is given one of two reasons: faulty software or the meter is too far from the router / stuck in a cupboard?) but I find it astounding that the developers of the system haven't found a fix. But I digresss.... sorry

I have taken the opposite view to Jo and Ria.

The government has donated £700 to my energy bills - 6 x £67 energy saving vouchers and £300 winter fuel allowance. My view is that I should use that before dipping into my own pocket, so with that in mind I use two free-standing electrical convection heaters for most heating. Electricity currently averages out at about £4.65 per day, but that includes kettle boiling, showers and the washing machine, and that is on a pre-pay tariff.

I only put the gas CH on for one hour in the morning to take the edge off and it averages £1.76 per day. For safety reasons - frozen pipes - the thermostat is set to 12 °C but it never comes on, not even on the coldest nights.

The only smart meter in this place is the one in my head.