Smart Time of Use tariffs

I'm still struggling to work out how people are using so much electricity that their current bills are well over £100 a month!

My own bill is a lot less than that and yet, as I say to my OH, if a light is on it doesn't matter if you're a single person on your own or a family of 5 you're still using the same amount of electric to light that lamp! Same for using the cooker, it doesn't matter if you're cooking a meal for a full household or just one person. If the cooker is on for an hour then it's on for an hour. Again, same with the TV etc doesn't matter if it's one person watching or twenty!  The only difference I can work out is perhaps the washing machine having to wash more clothes and I guess heating more hot water? A friend of mine tells me that his mate's electric bill was over £350 for the month but again I have to ask, how is he using that much in the first place? Surely it's time for him to reconsider his consumption of electricity? Do they have all their lights on 24/7? 

It can only be heating Lisa. If you're all electric and especially if you've taken out those old fashioned storage heaters and replaced them with the modern, green digital, internet enabled 100% efficient day rate panel heaters. Or tumble driers if you haven't got a garden.

The other way to think about that is to take that  however many hundred per month, divide by the no of hours in a month (about 700 depend on the month  bit ) and compare to the cost per kWh.

so £350 month ->> 50 pence per hour

But  one unit is about 30p under the current cap here as reverse calculated from £1000 for 3100 kwH per year (so much easier if they gave a per unit rate).

So these folk average about 5/3 of a kW (1,6kW ) non stop - between 6 and 7 amps of steady load equivalent at 230v.
Quite possible with immersion heating water and electric room heat. And a lot of folk do stupid things like heat the house and open a window.

M

Lisa Miles said:

I'm still struggling to work out how people are using so much electricity that their current bills are well over £100 a month!

An all electric dwelling could easily reach that, but not in addition to gas. The capped rates of £3,000-odd in total do seem to be unnecessarily high for an average property.

I should have clarified that my bill is a duel fuel so covers both electric and gas consumption. Last month (being aware that it is summer and therefore no need for heating etc however I have had two electric fans running constantly overnight to circulate cool air in bedroom) my duel fuel bill was just under £70. £52 was electricity and £18 for gas i.e. just my hot water and my gas fired hob at the moment (oven is electric).  

I have smart meters at home for both gas and electric and being the geek that I am  I like to monitor my usage.

I worked out that doing three full loads of washing in a 9kg machine plus tumble drying all three loads costs around £1.50 so 50p per load for a wash and a dry. I didn't think that was too bad to be honest! But again as I said to my OH having a larger capacity washing machine means that it's on less i.e. one load in a 9kg vs 2 loads in a 6kg. You're using the 6kg twice as much and therefore paying twice as much in electric for the same amount of washing.....

I did say I was a geek.... 

Do note  that what is actually capped is the standing charge and the unit rate - the figures quoted in the paper and the TV news are always for 'an average  UK house' and are based on 3100KWhr per year.  Of course half of houses use less than that average, and some of us use quite a lot less.

My suspicion is that next year the 'average UK house' will not use 3100KWhr at all, but more like about half that.

Mike

mapj1 said:

Of course half of houses use less than that average, and some of us use quite a lot less.

If only the cap were a flat rate!

I suspect that the distribution is far from symmetrical - there will be a long tail to the right, which includes mansions and palaces.

mapj1 said:

Of course half of houses use less than that average, and some of us use quite a lot less.

If only the cap were a flat rate!

I suspect that the distribution is far from symmetrical - there will be a long tail to the right, which includes mansions and palaces.