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Massive electricity bill, advice please!

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  • 19-06-2009 1:19pm
    #1
    Duffman
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,248 ✭✭✭


    Would anyone have any idea what might be going on here? I'm totally at a loss so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

    I'm in the UK at the moment and have just received a massive bill for a flat that I moved into 3 months ago.

    In a previous flat (around the same size, small one bedroom), electricity usage tended to be no more than 5 units per day on average with the same usage pattern and the same supplier.

    The first bill for the new place indicates a whopping 15 units per day. That's £200 for 3 months, more than triple what I would have expected.

    I'm totally confused by this because as far as I am concerned my consumption patterns haven't changed at all. Heating and water are gas and there are no electric heaters of any kind here. There isn't even a television.

    I have been looking carefully at all the appliances I can and nothing really explains what could have happened. Daily readings over the past few days indicate around 5 units per day as I would expect.

    My only theory is that perhaps halogen spotlights in the kitchen may be to blame. There are around 9 50W lights in total. Now these are rarely all used at the same time. But I worked out that if all 9 were on for 4 hours a day over that period, that accounts for say 3 units as a very generous estimate.

    This doesn't explain the massive jump. The transformers for these lights do hum loudly and sometimes they flicker. My question is, is it at all possible that a faulty transformer here or something like that could account for such a huge increase in usage? Is it possible that they could be drawing far more than you would expect 50W low voltage lights to?

    Other than that I just can't explain what's going on.

    Thanks.


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