Electricity bills power creep

Martin Murtagh

For the last month there has been refreshment work done in an adjoining house.

My electricity bills are twice monthly so in January I got a bill of €264.56.

After I sent a reading of my meter for the next bill, I got an estimate of €847.57.

The company is AIRTRICITY.

I'm in a Council house, next store is private.

I think I might be connected to that house, What should I do about this?

Next month I'm getting a smart meter installed, should I wait until then?

finnyob

Have you got previous meter readings that you can refer back to to check if there was a big jump in your KWh usage?

Your Jan bill would be for the highest usage period of the year, was that an estimated reading for the bill? It's possible that it was grossly underestimated and also the additional government electricity credit was applied so without that, the bill could have been much higher.

Your billing being based on metered usage, if your neighbour was leeching off of you, it would likely always have been the case, unless their electrician had access to the meter cabinet. So would they have had access to your meter cabinet and could it have been tampered with?

Have you got external sockets that they or their builder could have been using perhaps?

Perhaps you have a faulty appliance that is racking up a big bill, e.g. a broken door seal on your fridge making the thing run constantly.

Did you leave the immersion on?

So many possible causes, though on the balance of probability, Jan bill was underestimated and your usage was very high for the winter period.

Also you could be technically out of contract with your provider and received the jump in rates that that always entails. You should be changing supplier religiously every 12 months to get the best deal going. Rates from Electric Ireland were the best when we switched in Nov, worth checking bonkers.ie to see what's the best deal you can get.