Reply to: My winter gas/electric bill: the highest yet

[lilelvis2000]

My electric has been £200pm for the last 6 months, not got the gas for the last three months but was around £160pm up until October.

We're making a concerted effort to switch things off (server, printer etc) when not in use. However, my wife leaves lights on all over the place though "because they look nice".

My wife does that too - tiffany lamp do look nice so I don't mind. She also has the fire going when she's in the house year round!
Still our bill was about £300 for gas and £200 for electric.

[psychocandy]

I made the move the other way round (npower to EDF) and I think EDF are worse. Since signing up with them on a fixed rate deal in august they haven't been able to send me one correct bill and took five months to move my gas over completly resulting double bills from the two suppliers ... complete tulip. I prefered npower but I think they are all bad at billing.

Also went to the variable direct debit (you need to put in your meter reading in each month) which changed the direct debit amount by huge amounts which EDF do not tell me in advance whereas the same thing on npower would just change the account balance but keep the direct debits the same as usage drops in the warmer months obviously.

Bills for Dec - Feb have been about £400 but it's a warm house anyway without the heating being on.

Sounds familiar.

If you want to complain dont bother wasting your time phoning them. It takes ages to get through and you;ll end up speaking to some monkey.

Moan at them on twitter and they'll get someone to sort the problem.

Until that is they screw something else up next quarter....
Couldnt wait till my year was up and I could move somewhere else.

[fullyautomatix]

I made the move the other way round (npower to EDF) and I think EDF are worse. Since signing up with them on a fixed rate deal in august they haven't been able to send me one correct bill and took five months to move my gas over completly resulting double bills from the two suppliers ... complete tulip. I prefered npower but I think they are all bad at billing.

Also went to the variable direct debit (you need to put in your meter reading in each month) which changed the direct debit amount by huge amounts which EDF do not tell me in advance whereas the same thing on npower would just change the account balance but keep the direct debits the same as usage drops in the warmer months obviously.

Bills for Dec - Feb have been about £400 but it's a warm house anyway without the heating being on.

Agree with switching to EDF time and effort involved. It took me 3 months. But regards to billing, you can submit meter reading online, which I do the last day of every month and they send you a proper bill and your account stays in credit or debit based on what you put in and what the bill was.

[Zoiderman]

We were looking at complex solutions, with a head of 2m and flow of 3m3, a screw could cost up to £100k (plus about 50k to fit), but generate 50KW, which could give a payback of 6-10 years, so after that, you've got an income of around 25-30k. They appear to have a 30yr + lifespan. Something to think about.

I'd be happy with 5-10kw to be honest, as we'd use low tech so it was fairly cheap to install and maintain. I read a book regarding renewables, and the conclusion was, the only way you'll ever get neutral, would be to install as many technologies as you can, cost willing.

Dream would be an old Cornish Water Mill on about 10 acres. Put a screw in there, and I reckon you'd have a solid business.

[DimPrawn]

But we need an alternative to more expensive oil & gas anyway, though agree wind turbines look like crap. Those pumpy things that go up and down with the waves look better. Personally I'd just exterminate 95% of the UK population, then we could just use renewable forests.

Shale gas.

BBC News - Shale gas firm finds 'vast' gas resources in Lancashire

It said it had found 200 trillion cubic feet of gas under the ground...

[Paddy]

£740 for gas and electric for the 3 months Dec - Feb

So along with my plan to move away from contracting later this year/early next year, I think I'll roll in a plan to get outta this country to somewhere that is less of a hit on the ol' wallet!

Were you one of the people who jumped up and down with excitement when it was privatised because you made £50 profit on the shares?
It’s payback time for the devil. The main reason why the west does not like Putin is because he reversed the excessive privatisation of energy companies so that people could afford to heat their homes but at the expense of energy companies' profits.

[xoggoth]

Enjoy, all part of the Climate Change swindle

But we need an alternative to more expensive oil & gas anyway, though agree wind turbines look like crap. Those pumpy things that go up and down with the waves look better. Personally I'd just exterminate 95% of the UK population, then we could just use renewable forests.

[xoggoth]

Hey! Great business idea! Make a big keyboard that you can use while wearing thick woolly gloves!

[DimPrawn]

My house goes up so much in value everyday, it's all irrelevant anyway.

[Zoiderman]

What output would you expect to get from 2m and have you researched the options for conversion

Not yet, flow is strong, stronger in winter natch, but we thought best get permission before we started looking at it properly. We had someone over, who told us we'd have to get permission, as there would ahve to be a slight re routing of the stream. I didn't have a clue, I thought as it was on our land, we could do what we want, completely wrong.

He did say we'd have enough flow, a range of about 1 - 3 m3 to be able to keep the head as is (about 2m), so we'd not need to do anything crazy.

Using that, we'd expect to get around 10-30 kW, which is on all the time. Obviously, there would be seasonal adjustments, which I hope that's conveyed

[DimPrawn]

How much have you spent in last 3 months on gas/electric?

No idea. I pay by DD and they send me an email saying my bill is available online, but never bothered to login and take a look.

Compared to what I spend on fine wines, dining out, staying in 5* hotels, flying 1st class to exotic holiday locations, it's peanuts.

[Zoiderman]

We left EDF when we realsied they had connected next doors stables up to our electric feed, thus coupling it's bill to ours. Once we noticed the bills had gone up a fair amount, about the same time there seemed to be power tools being used night and day over at the stables by the builders doing their house up, we called EDF to check. They sent someone over who kicked a few things about, said nowt was wrong, told us, quite abruptly that we could **** ourselves (paraphrasing), and that it was up to us to prove he was wrong, etc, so with the builders all there, and our meter going spinning, I simply pulled the plug on the fuses and all the buidlers started to look at their inoperable tools. Quite funny really, seeing the look on his face. Got loads back, including 2 days on the contract for being there when he was checking, and when they fixed it all up, despite working from home.

Then dropped them for BG, before adding all of the renewables.

Everyones on the make, best try and get yourself into a position where it affects you the least.

[Troll]

I have a couple more things planned, with re routing a stream with a 2m head, and once I get permission from Defra/EA, we'll be fully neutral.
.

What output would you expect to get from 2m and have you researched the options for conversion

[redgiant]

Yep. Getting expensive. I though my £600 bill was steep mind....

Moving away from EDF to a cheaper provider now as well. EDF didnt help themselves by getting every single bill wrong in the year I was with them mind. Useless they are.

Trouble is I've moved to npower and should have checked first and apparently they are worse than EDF

I made the move the other way round (npower to EDF) and I think EDF are worse. Since signing up with them on a fixed rate deal in august they haven't been able to send me one correct bill and took five months to move my gas over completly resulting double bills from the two suppliers ... complete tulip. I prefered npower but I think they are all bad at billing.

Also went to the variable direct debit (you need to put in your meter reading in each month) which changed the direct debit amount by huge amounts which EDF do not tell me in advance whereas the same thing on npower would just change the account balance but keep the direct debits the same as usage drops in the warmer months obviously.

Bills for Dec - Feb have been about £400 but it's a warm house anyway without the heating being on.

[BrilloPad]

You are all highly paid professionals FFS and you can't afford to put the heating on or light a room?

Talk about contractor lifestyle...

How much have you spent in last 3 months on gas/electric?