A family asked for help from Martin Lewis as they were facing huge bills
Martin Lewis has offered advice on how to reduce your energy costs if your bills are unusually high. He addressed questions from dedicated followers on his BBC podcast, discussing subjects such as the leading savings accounts and credit cards.
A question was posed by a family being hit with exorbitant energy bills, yet they couldn’t work out why. They reported paying approximately £1,120 a month for electricity and £353 for gas. This amounts to annual energy costs of more than £17,600. This figure is over 10 times the current energy price cap rate, which stands at £1,758 annually for a typical household using both electricity and gas and paying via direct debit.
The person explained that they live in a large property that has solar panels and a smart meter. They also said that the property comes with numerous ‘perks’. Responding to this, Mr Lewis suggested that if they were using an appliance for “heating for pleasure”, this “massively puts up your costs”.
Such luxuries might include a hot tub, swimming pool or sauna. The consumer expert then highlighted the “first thing” he would do to identify the root of the skyrocketing bills.
‘Everything off’
He said: “If your in-house smart meter is functioning, I would be examining how much you are consuming, and I would commence with attempting to switch off everything you can possibly turn off in the house. Everything off, so you are getting down to near-zero usage.
“Then I would be going through each appliance on a one-by-one basis to see what it’s using. I would be doing a search to see what you would be expecting it to use.”
Mr Lewis outlined some of the figures to understand here. He said: “Energy appliances tend to work in kilowatts, or watts. So let’s say you have an appliance that is 1500 watts, so that might be a kettle or an iron or something hot, that is 1.5 kilowatts.
“Energy prices are based on kilowatt hours, so on the price cap it’s typically 28p. So if you had a 1.5 kilowatt appliance and left it on hour an hour, you would expect it to use 1.5 kilowatts, which would cost you about 40p.”
A potential reason for high energy bills
After breaking down the calculations, Mr Lewis offered a suggestion as to which device might be responsible for the steep bills. He said: “That is where I would want to start.
“I would be going round looking, what is this thing that is causing us massive usage. The likelihood is for it to be that expensive, it’s going to be some form of heat-based device that is using a lot of energy and is on all the time.
It could be underfloor heating, it could be if you have a hot tub, it could be something like that is staying on all the time. ” However, if a thorough search of the house yields no results, Mr Lewis suggested that there might be an issue with the family’s meter.
He said: “If none of that is working, I would be going back to my energy firm and making a formal complaint that something must be wrong, that you want to investigate that the meters are working, and whether there is any form of leak going on.” Mr Lewis said that if lodging a complaint with their supplier proves fruitless, they could then escalate the matter to the Energy Ombudsman service.
He even suggested it might be worth hiring an energy consultant to delve into the problem, considering their exorbitant bills, even if this incurs costs of £4,000 or £5,000.
