Help with Electrical Bill (tariff, cost)

Ernie84

Hey,

Moved in to a property in Oct 2021 with storage heaters, which I was not 100% up to speed on.

My first full 8 week cycle bill was around 300e, which seemed high but hey and the next one was 9 weeks at 534e (electric Ireland) Turns out i had been using the convector heaters within the storage heaters instead of the storage heaters themselves (so tbh my fault).

Im also on the night saver tariff, so was using convector heaters on high day rate.

Fast forward to now and I've just spend 5 weeks with no heaters on at all. So storage heaters not heating up at night and no convector heaters during day (cept for 2 days as an emergency)

Just done a reading and I cant believe it, I'm course for exactly the same cost of bill again (320 for 5 weeks so far) and thats with the heating off.

Assuming the convector heaters being on 2 or 3 hours a day min for 8 weeks, was what caused the high bill previously and by all accounts that was what i was advised, how can not having them on, not save me anything?

To give some data my last bill was:

day 1474 @ 0.22

night 960 @0.11

+standing charge VAT etc

I work from home but live alone, so its laptop on during day, ps4 on at night, use cooker twice a day and lights. The water boiler is still coming on at night (tbf I don't really need that) but I'm just wondering should i try and change to a normal tariff instead of night saver if I'm not planning on using storage heaters till winter again.

electric Ireland are trying to charge be 200+ to switch tariffs so I don't know what to do and i don't get why the bills so high.

any advise welcome sorry for length of post

macvin

Change supplier immediately.

It takes a couple of minutes and will save you about 20%

Change every 12 months.

Storage heaters are simple. But you need to know how they operate. It's quite old fashioned.

Dial on side is the level of heat / thermostat. I'd set at about 3/4

Two dials on top.

Left simply regulates output of stored heating. Turn this to 1 late at night. It will give off minimal heat.

Then turn it up at the times you want more heat. It still won't give great heat late evening

Right dial is storage input level. Level 3 is probably good enough.

Main thing to remember is to turn the output dial up/down and always turn down as you go to bed

macvin

As you come into warmer months, turn it off. Most heat is given out during the day.

The cost you have is not crazy high as it was rather cold.

Just lower the dials and you lower the use.

eeepaulo

I'm guessing you signed up for the 2 year welcome bonus offer? So you got the welcome bonus off the first bill, and looking at the unit rate you are paying that seems to be right. The reason they want over 200 quid is they are taking back part of the bonus pro rata if you switch tariff. (possibly 50 euro fee as well, although if you stick with EI you could ask them to wave that)

You need to be on a % discount tariff going by your high usage. If you switched to EI's 26% discount you would be paying 15.63 cent and 8.24 cent (ex vat)

day 1474 @ 0.22

night 960 @0.11

That's €418 euro just on unit rate, you'll save over €100 a bill based on that usage (although we are coming to the months where you wont be using the night storage), it will still be way way better over the year. Don't go for any of the 2 year deals available at the moment, they are not worth it.

All the companies are likely to put up the prices soon, it depends whether the storage heater costs come down soon or not, i know nothing about them.

Option 1 switch to EI 26% discount immediately, but make sure they aren't charging you the 50 quid early termination cost, say you'll consider leaving if they did.

Option 2 hold on for a few weeks to see what the other companies do with their prices. Monitor what those heaters are using.

You definitely don't want to be on that tariff next winter.

macvin

Between summer warmth and €200 gov subsidy, probably best to wait until September to switch if in a contract.

Biggest savings will be by understanding the weirdness of storage heaters and cutting usage