Got a letter yesterday from EDF Energy who supply my electricity. I rent a 1 bedroom ground floor flat in London, have electric boiler, electric cooker and electric storage heaters.

So the letter yesterday informed me that my £38 monthly direct debit is increasing to £161 per month. I phoned today to query it assuming it was an estimation error but they took a meter reading and verified that I had gotten £380 into arrears in the 11 month i have been there.

I dont consider myself a high electricity user, nobody is in the flat during the day and we havent had the heating on at all for months. We cook fairly regulary and use hot water every day but using ~£70 a month seems massively high.

Anyone got any ideas? My options according the EDF:

1: Pay £380 and have a £70 direct debit
2: Pay £160 a month for the next 6 months

Neither of which i find particularly appealing.

Not quite the immediate fix but do the reading yourself over a week/month to see how much is used, and find out the current KWH price and do the maths.

Weve got the electricity consumption meter british gas gives out to old folks for free, tis interesting watching it go up when different things are used. Idles at around 400-750watts, but the second the kettle, iron, cooker, microwave, shower, hoover or anything is turned on the consumption goes up to about 2-3kwatts.

Big tea drinker? :|

4 times? thats soooooooo nothing >< Ours is more like a dozen, its stupid, dad will re-boil the kettle 3 times sometimes before actually getting round to making a cup of tea ><

dont forget prices have pretty much doubled in the last 2 years, If my eleccy bill was that, Id be doing cartwheels

We pay about £90 a month for electric (and we have gas, so its not being used for heating water)

I have a computer running 24/7 and Kirsten is in the house most of the day, so theres also a 40" LCD and a surround amp running most of the time too

Im sure if you give them a bell and explain the situation they would be willing to compromise?

Maybe a lower payment for a longer period?

We have duel fuel paid on DirectDebit from Southern electric.

Our Monthly payments are £50 Gas £96 electric.

We use Gas for Heating, hot water and cooking. (Gas hob and oven)

We use Electric for Washing Machine, Tumble Dryer and Dishwasher (Unfortunately those three items use more electric than rest of the house over the month) Plus my better half works from home and has a laptop, duel core PC (450Watt PSU), 2x20" LCDs & 1x28" CRT TV running during the day.

Power isnt cheap and more things in our live want/need power. Im seriously thinking of getting solar cells to charge some batteries for lighting and device charging. Only problem is the cost of solar cells means saving wont pay for the outlay cost for a long time.

We actually pay a lot more for gas than we do electric; £70 as opposed to £37. We are £130 in credit with the gas at the moment but well use that over winter when the heating is on.