A family had a question for Martin Lewis about their soaring energy bills
Martin Lewis has shared some tips about energy bills(Image: ITV)
Martin Lewis has shared some guidance about how to potentially bring down your energy bills. He answered questions from loyal fans on his BBC podcast, looking at topics such as top savings accounts and credit cards.
One question came in from a family who were facing very high energy bills, and they were trying to work out why. They said they were paying around £1,120 a month on electricity and £353 a month for gas. This adds up to total energy bills of over £17,600 a year. This is more than 10 times the current energy price cap rate, which is £1,758 a year for a typical household that uses electricity and gas and pays by direct debit.
The person said they lived in a large house that had solar panels as well as a smart meter. The person also said that the property comes with lots of ‘perks’. Picking up on this, Mr Lewis said in response that if they were using an appliance that uses “heating for pleasure” this “massively puts up your costs”.
This could include such luxuries as a hot tub, a swimming pool or a sauna. The consumer expert then pointed to the “first thing” he would do to try and work out the cause of the soaring bills. He said: “If your in-house smart meter is working, I would be looking at how much you are using, and I would start with trying to turn 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 explained some of the numbers involved 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.”
Having broken down the maths, Mr Lewis shared a tip for what device may be the culprit for the high bills. He said: “That is where I would want to start. I would be going round looking, what is this thing that is causing is 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 scouring the house doesn’t work, Mr Lewis said it may be that there is something wrong with the person’s meter. He explained: “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 if making a complaint with their supplier doesn’t work, they could make a formal complaint to the Energy Ombudsman service. He said it may even be worth getting an energy consultant to come and look into the issue, given their extraordinary bills, even if this costs £4,000 or £5,000.