Hi, i was wondering if anyone would know about the average cost of electricity,

I live with my partner in a one bedroomed flat. We only have electricity (NPower) on average we are in the flat 4 nights a week. We use the washing once a week. We do not have a dishwasher. And all the appliances are electrical. There is no gas in the property. We have one electrical heater that we use for around 3 hours per evening. The flat is empty most days apart from Sundays and Mondays.

My partner has a PS3 which he uses around an hour a night.

We have a 42" lcd low energy flat screen, sky, broadband, ps3, computer and 20" tv in the bedroom thats used very rarely. We have an electric oven that is used once a day for around 30 mins to an hour.

Apart from whats listed we dont use anything in excess. However our electricity bill for the period 11/12/2007 to 12/03/2008 is £358.78. Its our second bill since moving in and we were wondering if anyone would know if this is about right? The bill is calculated on an estimate and an actual??

Hi there.

Firstly I would like to point out that electric storage heaters ARE very expensive forms of heating and having them on for 3 hours per night would certainly be more expensive than having a more efficient Central Heating System. If you couple that with the recent 15% increase on fuel then that may go some way to explaining your excessive bill.

Have a look at previous bills (even if only 2) and try to see whether the last readings were "Estimated" and this latest one is "Actual" as previous ones may be innaccurate whereas the "Actual" will be correct...............this could drive your costs up as the readings may not be real-time.

I hoep this helps?

Thank you for your help. I will look into it. I was wondering if maybe it had something to do with the heater we only use the one in the living room but maybe well have to start using extra clothing instead. thanks again

Hi,

I too live in a one bedroom flat with storage heaters. I've been on the phone to NPower this month about my bill. Suddenly in December they upped my Direct debit from £52 to £100 a month as I owed them money apparently. So I gave them another reading this month and they said I needed to change it to £130 a month to pay off the debt and I was using about £100 a month.

After me doing a bit of investigating (NPower were no help) and looking at my bills I noticed something odd happen last May when my day and night KWH usage seemed to switch. Basically they got my day and night readings the wrong way round so I was being charged day rates for night usage which is very expensive!!

To test if this has happened to you, take you readings in the morning before you got to work after 8am then when you come home. Whichever reading has moved on is your day reading. Phone NPower give them your readings then ask which they have put for day and which for night. This way you can see if they've been logign it correctly.

Hope this helps!

hi Lisarevill21,

Minor is correct to point out that storage heaters are not the cheapest form of heating but unless its your own flat and you have the capital to install a gas central heating system I guess you are probably stuck with the storage heaters. Of course we electric heating users might be laughing when the gas has run out and we are warming ourselves with cheap nuclear electricity ;-)

I do think your bills could be way off based on your description of use. I too have storage heaters in a largish 3 bedroom house totally electrically powered except for 1 gas fire in the living room. I run everything possible on cheap (night) rate, space and water heating and washing machine. 2007 quarterly consumption was:

Q1 1171 day units 5205 night units = £373

Q2 466 day units 1989 night units = £273

Q3 552 day units 664 night units = £110

Q4 1100 day units 3149 night units = £256

The one (inefficient) gas fire consumes about £185 of gas per annum.

I hope these figures are helpful.

Energy use obviously does depend on heat losses and if your flat is poorly insulated and draughty then you could use much more than I do in my well insulated and draught sealed house.

I also fell foul of the swapped rates mentioned in a reply to your post. E.on sent me a bill for the 2008 first quarter for £759.90. I rang them to advise that they had swapped the day and night rates but the surly and arrogant call centre person "Colin" refused to believe me and said they could only believe that if I had actualy checked the readings myself for a period of not less than 2 hours that day. I pointed him to our regular pattern of bills over several years but he just wasn't interested.

The meter itself normaly indicates which rate is being used either by a pointer on the old dial meters or by a message on the digital display on the newer meters. My digital meter shows R1 for day rate and R4 for night rate.

I called again and got someone helpful who looked at our previous bills and arranged for a replacement bill for £336.32 to be issued.

This raises the problem of direct debit. I cannot get a cheaper rate unless I agree to direct debit. I am not willing to allow E.on to take any amount they think fit from my account. The mistake they made this last quarter would have pushed my account overdrawn and incurred bank charges and I am confident that E.on would be slow to make a refund.

I also live in a one bed flat and estimate my quarterley bill to be around £380. we have electric panel heater which are 1000w and notoriously costly to run.they cost around 14.5p an hour to run. times that by 4 hours a night...say 6-10pm thats 56p times say per month thats £17. for one heater alone..we have 5 heaters thats £85 on 4 hours heating a night for one month...thats £255 for a quarter and thats not including any other electric you use; lights, cooker, tv etc...electricity prices are just getting silly!

Just to update, I've finally got this resolved with NPower and got a nice credit of £300 back into my account. They have now estimated my direct debit at being £65 a month which seems to be much better than the £100 they wanted to charge!

My advice is if you are sure you're bill is way to high, it probably is and it's worth perservering to get a result. It only took me 4 months!

Avoid electric heaters like the plague! The moment I got rid of them, my electric bill dropped by 35%. For a one-bedroom flat, I now pay 240 pounds for electric. That's per year.

Great, what type of heating do you have now? our flat is a new-build and the builders installed the panel heaters.they are cheap for them to buy but costly for me to use!

I use central heating. Do you have the option of installing them? They cost a bit but it's money well-spent, especially when it comes to savings, and selling your property - electric heating is a turn-off!

bedsocks , if you are heating with day rate electricity , you need to be seriously rich ; on the other hand economy 7 run storage heaters are second cheapest to mains gas

so my advice ,if installing gas central heating is not a practical proposition is

change to economy 7 and install storage radiators [ background heat in the day but you can set to boost in the evening ]; in the short term you could fit the 2.6 kw size on your existing 13 amp power points by using a timer ; you can still find second hand ones about ! on the other hand there are modern alloy based ones available ; they are smaller but the price is bigger

if you do this don't forget all water heating/ wash machine /dishwasher at night as well

I'm having the same sorta problems, maybe worse though. Same sorta boat though, 1 bedroom flat, moved in last january and the bills started as £74 a month, they then upped a few months later to £171.00 a month, now after another meter reading i'm being told £232 a month.

No way! You should install central heating Sharon, It would recoup its cost pretty quick in your case.

232 per month - that's my annual spend!