Posted 2 November 2021
What could cause large, unusual spike in electricity usage?
My parents are old fashioned and still just have a regular electricity meter that they read quarterly and submit to British gas, no smart meter. For the last few years their usage has been a very consistent 650-700kWh per 3 months, they're not particularly high users.
Being older they also don't regularly go online to check their bills and direct debits, they just go out, but tonight my mum said she noticed the usage for June to August was ~1500kWh, over double the usual. I double checked the readings and the value now and it was correct, the meter did go up by 1500 in those three months. Don't know why/how she didn't notice the big jump when giving the reading, but anyway.
In the three months since, ie August to now, it has returned back to the usual usage, 680kWh.
Naturally I've told them to get a smart meter ASAP but I'm still puzzled as to what kind of device could use such a huge amount, that they don't remember? Could the old style meter have simply gone on the fritz? Or did something really drain an extra ~800kWh? Surely that amount would have to be over several weeks, wouldn't it? But they can't think of anything. A pretty normal 3 months of usage like always.
They're phoning British Gas tomorrow but I doubt they'll have any insight.
Being older they also don't regularly go online to check their bills and direct debits, they just go out, but tonight my mum said she noticed the usage for June to August was ~1500kWh, over double the usual. I double checked the readings and the value now and it was correct, the meter did go up by 1500 in those three months. Don't know why/how she didn't notice the big jump when giving the reading, but anyway.
In the three months since, ie August to now, it has returned back to the usual usage, 680kWh.
Naturally I've told them to get a smart meter ASAP but I'm still puzzled as to what kind of device could use such a huge amount, that they don't remember? Could the old style meter have simply gone on the fritz? Or did something really drain an extra ~800kWh? Surely that amount would have to be over several weeks, wouldn't it? But they can't think of anything. A pretty normal 3 months of usage like always.
They're phoning British Gas tomorrow but I doubt they'll have any insight.
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sorted byDid they have a plug in air con unit or multiple fans running constantly to cool them down?
Is their fridge or freezer in direct sunlight so has to work harder to keep things cool?
Do they have an electric mower that they use to cut the grass which tends to be done more in those months.
Hot tub or pool pump?
Electric car needing more charging as we travel more in the summer?
As we were allowed out more at that point did they have friends and family around and cooked more for them during the summer?
Did they go away somewhere and the neighbours all plugged extension leads into an outside socket whilst they were gone?
Are they running a special farm in the loft?
If not, ask for the meter to be physically analysed and checked for integrity. (edited)
British Gas
My elderly mother is with BG for gas and electricity and, after my father passed away about two years ago, I helped her with such matters.
The plan was to switch to another provider and then covid happened and call centres and customer service went to pot.
About the same time, one of the smart meters packed up and mum didn't become aware of this until they started sending estimated bills which, without your own readings, are near impossible to validate.
Then, about six months later, the other smart meter packed up so both bills were now estimated.
I should have got mum to take readings when the first smart meter packed up but didn't - regardless, I checked these bills for mum against the previous years usage and guesstimated that they were (way) off.
Thereafter, I got mum to take quarterly readings which I submitted for her but again, the subsequent bills that came through still didn't inspire confidence that they were accurate. One bill, which was based on accurate quarterly readings, cross referenced usage for the same billing period from several years ago so BG could compare it against what was being used now. When I queried why usage from a few years ago was being compared to usage now, they advised they had no idea - the cynic in me suspects it was because our now accurate readings were generating lower bills than previous ones (when dad was alive and so there was more gas/electricity being used) so they had come up with some ruse to measure it against previous higher consumption to enable them to charge more. I had to threaten opening a complaint with the regulator to get mum a credit of £100+.
Throughout this 18 month/2yr period I ended up complaining whenever a bill would come through and each time I would have to jump through half a dozen SA call centre hoops to finally get transferred to someone in the UK based complaints department and then subsequently have to fight with them to get the bills adjusted. In all, I probably got a couple of hundred pounds back for mum but if you calculated the amount of time spent on this, we were probably at a net loss financially.
By now, I got mum to take daily readings which she would send me so I could record them in an Excel spreadsheet - this allowed me to cross check usage against subsequent bills which were based on our submitted quarterly readings and, by doing this, finally got some control of the bills.
TBF to BG, during this period when I ended up getting the complaint escalated to a UK complaint handler they did offer, on a couple of occasions to arrange for someone to replace the smart meters but, due to the fluctuating covid infection numbers and my mother being high risk we opted to leave things as they were for the time being. I also didn't have time to visit my mother to get the meters swapped out so that was also a factor in why it went on a bit longer than required.
Fast forward to last week and both meters have now been changed to Gen2 smart meters which should hopefully solve the problem. However, I had to really fight the SA call centre to get an appointment as they kept on coming out with excuses to avoid sending someone out and the wait for an appointment was three months.
The plan was, once the meters were changed, to move mum to more competitive suppliers but the energy market has gone to pot and, from what I can make out the advice is to sit tight for now.
From what I can make out from the limited research I did, a lot of billing issues with BG are potentially down to their legacy billing system which is probably not fit for what is now a more dynamic and flexible energy market. However, they swear blind the bills are accurate but cannot provide you with answers when you interrogate them on how the bill was derived.
As such, I wouldn't be surprised if your parents bill could be attributed to a faulty meter but I would imagine proving that is going to be near impossible.
Have you asked your parents if they have purchased and used any new electrical devices in the period in question? How about an existing device that packed up during that time - perhaps it started to draw more power prior to going kaput. Do they have any external power sockets that rogue neighbours could use - did any of the neighbours have building work going on during this time - if so, could the builders have used power sockets at your parents property. I know a lot of these suggestions are probably outliers but just trying to think outside the box.
The other thing you might want to consider if you have time, is speaking to BG on behalf of your parents as, trust me, they will quickly wear down your elderly parents.
Regardless, good luck dealing with them - if my experience is anything to go by, you are gonna need it.
EDIT: TLDR: BG are a bunch of shysters. (edited)
First thing I checked, obviously.
Ah yes - thanks. Your comment has just made me realise my explanation above was wrong - I was mis-remembering due to this all happening back in 2018. It wasn't that my econony 7 timings changed, but rather my electronic immersion controller box was replaced with a manual one.
My meter is still the original one from 1993 and I've remembered my Economy 7 was likely always 22:30-00:30 and 02:30-07:30 because I have a vague recollection of my old storage heaters coming on at 10:30pm each night. Ripped them out years ago but pretty sure that was the case.
So yes, this all started happening after my immersion heater control box died. It was an electronic automatic thing where you simply set the current time of day, and whether it was GMT or BST. Somehow the immersion heater automagically came on during off-peak, as did my storage heaters. So am I correct in thinking that the circuit the storage heaters were on and something in my immersion heater controller was triggered by something on the meter?
Anyway, when the control box died, we replaced it with a simple manual controller. Kinda similar to the manual heating timers you get, but rather than set the on/off times using an easily-accessible dial with dip-switches on the front it was a "set and forget" thing where you removed the faceplate and manipulated some fiddly dipswitches at the back with a screwdriver before replacing the faceplate.
So, when it was installed, we did some Googling and the internet told us that the usual Economy 7 times for the north west was 00:30 - 07:30, so we set the switches accordingly.
After many weeks of taking readings and finally getting confirmation from my supplier, we realised it was split across 2 periods and I adjusted the dipswitches to come on at 2:30am instead.
Sorry for the confusion there. The general gist was there but I got the finer details wrong
Anyway with regards to the questions
- No special farm that I know of, haha. Although It's a wonder British Gas themselves didn't wonder if they'd suddenly started one with such a sudden, unusual increase.
- No outside sockets on the house so no naughty neighbours.
- They don't really have friends round for eating, no.
- No electric car, hot tub, or anything big new like that.
- Electric mower yes but I doubt they used it significantly more that previous summers.
- Same Fridge freezer they've had a few years in the same place in the kitchen, so unlikely. Same with other things, they said they bought no new major appliances in that time.
- No air con, they did buy one of those tower fans but it's not like it was boiling hot that often this summer, I doubt they had it running that long. But I know those do use up a lot, so it's really the only contender at this stage.
Maybe I'll get them to run that fan for a set time and check the meter before and after.
Emersion heater switched on by accident and left on
Underfloor heating on.
Could be anything so start switching off things that aren't being used.
Halogen light in loft and left on I seen once. Big flood light burning electricity for no reason.
Mother in law left iron going in spare room for months. Kept smelling burning but could not find what it was as smell would go for a few days only to come back.. (edited)
They didn't make me aware of this, so when my immersion heater timer switched on at 00:30 as usual, the first 2 hours when the water was at its coldest was using the peak electric rather than off-peak. This had a huge impact on my peak usage - my average peak usage is usually 50-60 units per month, but when this change occurred I was using that every 5-6 days.
Took me almost 2 months to get to the bottom of this, as my supplier was adamant that my economy 7 period was still 00:30-07:30. I ended up doing a spreadsheet of meter readings throughout the day and night over a few weeks along with photos until they checked again and confirmed they'd changed.
However, if they aren't on a peak/off-peak meter than that's all irrelevant to you, but thought I'd mention it! (edited)
Much to the dismay of the haters I'm sure, I actually have no issues with my smart meter. Got it a week ago, can see by the half hour what was used, so very easy to tell if it's a spike or a constant drain that is a problem. My house 'standby' is nearly 500w/hr, so I'm going to start looking into this!
turned the immersion heater on to permanent rather than timed. good news is that it seems to have stopped but yes, get a smart meter and then they can see their daily useage. i resisted smart meters but the new ones i got for my dad works very well.
So it could be a dehumidifier, faulty PIR light, oven left on for a week, all sorts - but it's unlikely to be a fridge or fans causing that amount of consumption.
Turns out a visitor had accidentally turned on the hot water "boost" switch outside the bathroom thinking it was the light switch. (electric water heater)
Unless you have proof for the 6 months meter reading or photos its not possible to pinpoint the issue.
I'm with octopus and don't have a smart meter. Think the smart meter is required only for certain tariffs.
Am I right in saying that short of plugging a massive floodlight from a football ground or something ridiculous in there is no way this is something that just happened on one day though, right? That amount extra had to be over an extended period of time, right?
Couldn't even speak to British Gas, at all, they seem to be swamped with switching in new customers from all the collapsed ones at the minute so for now I'm just going to have them check the meter reading weekly. At least that way if they do see a big spike it'll be easier to remember anything they've had on that week, rather than a 3 month block.
They would have had to change the meter for this to happen
Except for this one, where they obviously expected it to be far lower, yes. But my mum submitted the real one days after and it was billed from that. I think she didn't notice the higher bill because she was already in credit so the actual payment was about normal, the rest came from the credit.
The meter definitely went up by ~1500 in that three month period either way.
I had to ring BG about my metre readings a couple of weeks ago. They took about 30 mins to answer but they do answer eventually.
I rang four times throughout the day, got the spiel about being busy and then the line just went dead each time.
Mind you I/they don't really need to speak to them anyway, not like they'll be able to tell what caused it. Mainly just need to get their DD payments back down but I should be able to do that online.
That's OK I understand now and see what you have done