Heating and electricity bills

[Rob G]

We moved from the UK to Normandy at the end of November. We've moved

into a house with oil-fired heating, and although we expected the

heating to cost a lot more than in the UK, we've had a nasty shock. The

same is also true of our elecricity usage.

Heating

In the last week we reckon we've used about 70 litres of oil. At

the current price (which will probably go up), this is costing just

over 40 euros per week in oil - equivalent to about £109 a month.

Compare this with the UK where for gas central heating we were paying

about £30 per month. Admittedly this was all year round - i.e. total

amount 12 x £30 = £360 per year. Based on our usage in the past week,

assuming we use the heating for, say 8 months of the year on average,

it'll cost us about £900 a year here. Is it normally this much more

expensive?

For info, the heating is on from 6am until 10 am, it then switches off

and comes back on again from 4pm to 11pm. It's off all night. I've

fitted a new digital thermostat which is set to reach a temperature of

20 degrees celcius. Not what you would call excessive usage.

Another question linked to this - how much cheaper would the cost of

heating be if we switched to "gaz de ville"? And does anyone have any

experience of the cost of getting GDF to link a house up to the gas

main in the street? (Our house is on a street where there is mains gas.)

Electricity

We've been amazed by how many kilowatt hours of electricity we seem to

be using. In the last week, our meter says we've used 195 kWh. What I

don't understand is this: we have roughly the same appliances as we had

in the UK (with one exception - see below), and the cost per kWh is

substantially lower here, yet our overall bill is much higher here.

This seems to be because, as I said, nit's showing our usage in kWh as

very high. The only major difference in appliances is that the hot

water here is electrically heated with a "cumulus". This apparently

comes on automatically during "heures creuses".

We've done our best to check that no other appliances are manufacturing

(e.g. fridge not staying on all the time etc.), and have also switched

all the power off and checked that the meter actually stops going

round. Wondering whether anyone else has had a similar experience, and

whether it's the hot water that's making it so expensive. (I've noticed

that when this is on during heures creuses, the dial in the meter seems

to spin round at a terrific rate.)

Thanks,

Rob

[Teamedup]

The abonnement and taxes are expensive extras on the electricity bill. I have had higher bills in France than many of our relatives in the UK for many years. With your alternative heating it may well be worth your while taking out one of the economy contracts with the EDF.

[Rob G]

Notwithstanding the abbonement and the taxes, I'm reasonably sure that something is using more power than it should.

[quote user="Teamedup"]

With your alternative heating it may well be worth your while taking out one of the economy contracts with the EDF.

[/quote]

Not sure what you mean by "economy contracts" - we already have heures

creuses 12h30 - 14h30 and 01h00 - 07h00. What other options are there?

Rob

[Teamedup]

http://particuliers.edf.fr/rubrique12.html

 

The EDF have something called Tempo, which I believe like the old EJP system it is only recommended for those with alternative forms of heating as you have. What happens is that on certain days electricity is more expensive, however, it also means that the rest of the time the tarif is lower and if one juggles with the expensive days a little, ie don't use electric ovens, machinery etc then one can get the bills down.

[chrisbooth]

I am not an expert, but have you checked to see how many kilowatts supply you are being charged for. We have 6kw and the standing charge ia about 100 euros a year spread over 12 months. However if you have more kilowatts then the charges can be significantly more and can go as high 1000 euros a year. May be worth looking at

 

Chris

[zeb]

Rob, have you an alternative heating source? We have the oil heating on from 7am to 9am to warm up bedrooms/bathrooms and it's on a again from 4pm to 8pm but the rest of the time we rely on very efficient woodburner in the kitchen/living room which stays in overnight. Wood costs us 200 euros a year.

I found last year that I was using oil at a terrific rate as the heating was on much more also we carried out more insulation work during the summer. I'm hoping we can get by on 1000 ktrs of oil this year. Obviously if temperatures are -7 the heating is on for longer but luckily this winter has been quite mild so far here in 16.

Yes, as Chris suggests, check your Kw rating - it should be on your bill somewhere - it does make a big difference to the standing charges. We are on 6kw (ordinary tarif) and have most of the normal electrical appliances but no electric oven or hot water tank and our bill is around 70 euros every two months. If I stopped using the dishwasher it would be a lot less as MOH keeps telling me!

[Rob G]

Thanks for comments so far.

We are on a 9 kW power rating. I think it was 6kW when we moved in, but

when I phoned EDF to give them our details they asked me all about what

appliances we have etc, and said they needed to put it up. (Not that we

have more than an average number of appliances.)

While I understand that the abonnement is bound to be higher, what's

bothering me is the amount of kilowatt hours we seem to be using. From

early afternoon yesterday to 9 o'clolck this morning, our meter says

we've used about 17 kWh. This is going to total up to about 200 a week

- like I said, a lot more than we used in the UK, with a similar number

of appliances. The lady on the phone at EDF said that perhaps we had an

appliance that was faulty - but how do you tell? My father-in-law

suggested switching everything off, then turning them on again one by

one while watching the meter to see what speed the dial goes round.

This seems very hit-and-miss to me - the dial doesn't seem to go round

incredibly fast anyway, apart from when the hot water is on, which is

only during "heures creuses". But something is obviously causing us to

use more power than we should be during heures pleines as well as

heures creuses. Grateful for any ideas....we can't afford these kind of

bills every month!

Interested in comments about alternative fuels - wood burners etc.

Making 1000 ltrs of oil last a year sounds great, but impossible at the

moment. I reckon we've cut back on the heating about as far as we can

without freezing all day, and we're still using 70 litres a week. What

sort of wood burner do you have? The only sort I can imagine is a

free-standing one which, while it might be very efficient, will

probably only really heat one room?

Rob

[Liz]

[quote user="Rob G"]
Electricity

We've been amazed by how many kilowatt hours of electricity we seem to be using. In the last week, our meter says we've used 195 kWh. What I don't understand is this: we have roughly the same appliances as we had in the UK (with one exception - see below), and the cost per kWh is substantially lower here, yet our overall bill is much higher here. This seems to be because, as I said, nit's showing our usage in kWh as very high. The only major difference in appliances is that the hot water here is electrically heated with a "cumulus". This apparently comes on automatically during "heures creuses".


Rob
[/quote]

I've just had the reminder from EDF to send in our reading for Electricity for the last 2 months.  It is 641 KwH for the period, so, say 8 weeks, that makes 80 per week.  There are 2 of us, we have the usual appliances except no dishwasher.  Our water is heated from the oil central heating. We use a thermostatically controlled electric stove in the sitting room most evenings from about 6pm to 11pm.  I try and remember to turn off the TV completely but hardly ever do!  Electric oven which I don't use much but the microwave gets a lot of use.  We do not have any plans or heures creuses, just a straightforward 9Kw abonnement and payement per KwH and the bills don't seem too bad at all.

Hope this helps.

Liz

[Liz]

I've just posted the same message twice because the first time I clicked 'post' it came up with 'page not available'  I have tried to delete this second one but got a message to say that it was outside the time limit.  As I tried to delete within less than a minute of the postings there is something wrong somewhere [*-)]

Liz

[zeb]

Hi Rob - yes, it might be worth checking the appliances. Obviously things which heat use more electric and one of these may be using much more power than it should. Everyone uses their appliances in a different way. We have an electric kettle but mainly use the kettle which sits on the woodburner. I use the dishwasher almost daily but the washing machine (both cold fill only) is used every other day. Do you have an electric oven and hob? We have a gas range and the bottle (21euros) last around 5 weeks.

Also, I note that you have oil central heating and also an electric hot water tank. Doesn't your oil boiler also heat the water?

Woodburners. We have a 35sq mtr kitchen/living room (it was two rooms before renovation) which we can happily live in during the winter. We have a free standing Supra 11.5 woodburner and never need to put the rads on in the kitchen. It's going non-stop (virtually) from September to April. We have had the same wood supplier for 4 years and use a mixture of oak and hornbeam, it burns efficiently and can be shutdown every night.

Gaz de Ville. Maybe worth asking someone along your street with the same size house what their bills are and if it's much less, ring GDF for a quote for connection. May be worth changing your boiler.

Good luck.

[Rob G]

[quote user="zeb"]Obviously things which heat use more electric and one

of these may be using much more power than it should. Everyone uses

their appliances in a different way. We have an electric kettle but

mainly use the kettle which sits on the woodburner. I use the

dishwasher almost daily but the washing machine (both cold fill only)

is used every other day. Do you have an electric oven and hob?[/quote]

We have an electric kettle but don't use it all that much. The

dishwasher is on once a day during heures creuses. We have an electric

oven with an induction hob. I know this type of hob uses quite a lot of

power, but it's not on all that much, and it's the one that the

previous owners left - and EDF tell us that their usage was a lot lower

than ours - so it still doesn't explain the difference.

[quote user="zeb"]Also, I note that you have oil central heating and

also an electric hot water tank. Doesn't your oil boiler also heat the

water?[/quote]

Good question! - we haven't been able to figure out quite how it works

yet. Both the previous owner and EDF told us that the water is

electrically heated, and comes on automatically during heures creuses.

However, I can see that there is also a small pipe going between the

water tank and the boiler. So I'm wondering if perhaps the boiler also

heats some water when the central heating is on.

[quote user="zeb"]Woodburners. We have a 35sq mtr kitchen/living room

(it was two rooms before renovation) which we can happily live in

during the winter. We have a free standing Supra 11.5 woodburner and

never need to put the rads on in the kitchen. It's going non-stop

(virtually) from September to April. We have had the same wood supplier

for 4 years and use a mixture of oak and hornbeam, it burns efficiently

and can be shutdown every night.[/quote]

Probably won't go for a woodburner, as we don;t really have an ideal

place for one, and I think they need their own flue. What we do have is

a fireplace in the lounge/dining room. We've only used it a couple of

times, and have had the smell of smoke in the kitchen through the

cooker hood. However, we are now thinking of paying someone to come and

look at it and see what needs to be done to make it fully usable. In

this way, we could minimise the amount of time the central heating is

on - just use it to warm up the house morning and late afternoon - and

light a fire the rest of the time.

With regards to wood supplies, how do you find a suitable supplier? And

your mixture of oak and hornbeam, how do you light it - do you have to

use kindling or buy some other type of "petit bois" as well?

[quote user="zeb"]Gaz de Ville. Maybe worth asking someone along your

street with the same size house what their bills are and if it's much

less, ring GDF for a quote for connection. May be worth changing your

boiler.

Good luck.[/quote]

Yes, we're definitely going to investigate this. Might call GDF anyway

and get them to quote for connecting us to the main. Anyone know what

GDF charge per cubic metre or whatever the unit is?

Thanks,

Rob

[LesLauriers]

Rob, I do not know if this helps, but as a comparison we use;

25kw a day on average, but heat water by the oil central heating boiler.

I budget 1100€ a year for electricity on the Tempo system. We are high users in the spring and autumn when the pool heater kicks in and we use up to 50kw a day, and of course the pool pump is running throughout the summer.

I budget 1600€ a year for oil but suspect that this year that will rise to 2000€ due to the price of oil now.

Gas, I am told, is very expensive.

[Georgina]

We too are finding that we use about the same amount of oil and don't think that one tank will last a year as we thought.  This could be down to the efficiency of the boiler perhaps and the fact that we have not finished insulating as yet.  But I was shocked at the amount of oil we were using.  We have used a quarter of a tank in about six weeks and it holds 1000 litres. The thing about the UK is that you usually pay a set amount each month and don't think about this too much, but when you don't know how much you are going to be paying, you can become a bit paranoid about it. However I decided to keep the bottled gas for the hob and feel this is a big saving.

When I work out what other bills we have saved ie council tax, it pales into insignificance.

Georgina

[bejay]

Rob

A few points to consider

As I understand it you feel that your electricity consumption is too high. This is quite difficult to estimate in a short time but let us assume that you are correct .There is no electrical fault that can mysteriously use up large quantities of electriciy undetectably, something somewhere will need to be very hot for a long time. Which brings us to the water heater. How hot is the water,  thermostats fail and people are often not precisely aware of just how hot their domestic hot water is. This actually happened to me many years ago and I wasn't aware of it until an electricity bill something like five times the normal turned up It was at a time when I could barely afford to pay the normal bill and was a real disaster.

If your water is not heated by your oil fired boiler it almost certainly should be.

How old is the boiler, some older devices are I believe very wasteful of fuel. This will need advice from a local heating engineer.

bj

[Quillan]

Rob - Before you get too carried away do you know what is using the power? Might I sugest you go round and switch everything off and see if the meter is still going round. If it is then switch all the breakers off on the distribution board and see if that makes a difference. Assuming that with all the breakers off the meter stops then try switching all the appliances on that you have switched off then go back and turn the breakers on but watch the meter. If you switch a breaker on and the meter starts to whiz round turn it off and continue to turn the rest on. Go back again and turn your suspect breaker on to see if you get the same result and if you do then leave it off and wait till somebody complains about something not working. At least you will know what is drawing all the power then you can decide what to do.

Of course if you turn all the breakers off and the meter still goes round then you either have a meter problem or somebody is 'borrowing'  some of your electricity, not unheard of round here. A guy was found to be running his small house of a long extension lead connected in to a neighbours house and nobody knew, he had been doing it for years apparently.

[Payrac-man]

Hi Rob,

We  have Oil heating in Gloucestershire, the house is 250sq metres and we use about 3500 litres a year. I have reduced it to this from about 4000 with lots of insulation and a programmable thermostat which allows different temps at different times of day/night. I must add that this is a new Grant furnace which is 95% efficient, some old ones are as low as 80%.We are having a new house built in Payrac and this will have electric heating whilst we use it for  a holiday home. however we intend to move permanently in 6 years time so I am having the under floor pipes installed in the build and will the have a heat pump fitted as we have a large plot and can easily install the exterior piping.With the ever increasing price of fossil fuels I think that heat pumps are the way to go, also if you install the reversable type you can have air-con too.Something to think about if you are staying put for a good while so as to recoup the initial outly.

All the best  

[Mikew]

Buy an 'Energy Check 3000' unit from someone like Conrad.fr.

 This will plug in behind your appliance plug and can be

programmed to measure your use of electricity and give you the cost, if

you know the unit price. Once you have used this item on a few

appliances, leaving it on for a couple of weeks or so, a spot of

arithmetic will give you some idea of running costs per year .....

Instructions are in French, but I found English instructions on the conrad uk website!

[Rob G]

Useful to know - thanks mikew. Thanks to all for your various suggestions.

We've been taking electricity readings several times per day for the

last few days, and there doesn't seem to be any one domestic appliance

that is using more juice than it should. It seems that the major usage

comes from the water heater, and also the central heating. Although

this is an oil burner, it's electrically powered and seems to just

about double our electricity consumption when it's on. In other words,

reducing the amount of time the heating is on will not only save us

money on fuel bills but also on electricity.

We have a guy coming round tomorrow morning to look at the chimney and

hopefully get it fit for purpose. This will allow us to use the heating

sparingly and use a fire the rest of the time. He's also a heating

engineer so will get him to look at the heating and hot water and see

what he thinks as well.

As a matter of interest, out of about seven businesses I phoned dealing

with fireplaces and heating, he was the only one who was able to come

in less than two weeks. Some even said they were taking on no new

customers. I guess it's a good trade to be in during the winter....

Rob

[zeb]

Be interesting to hear what he says Rob. Also ask if it's possible to fit a woodburner into the fireplace as they are usually much more efficient than open fires.

Good luck.

[Rob G]

The man came around this morning to have a look and give us some

advice. (He was, of course, late. As far as we can tell, this seems to

be the norm in France. Typically expect people to arrive between 15 and

30 minutes after the agreed time.)

He reckons the reason we're having problems with the fireplace is down

to insufficient ventilation in the kitchen. There is one vent that

allows fresh in from outside, but he thinks this may not be enough to

allow air to be drawn up into the cooker hood when the fire is burning.

He said that this being the case, what you actually get is the opposite

effect - i.e. you get smoke drawn back down through the cooker hood

into the kitchen. So we may need to get another vent put into the

kitchen. Before we go to the trouble of doing this, we're going to try

leaving the kitchen window slightly ajar when the fire is on, so that

we can test his theory. If that doesn't solve it, then we're back to

square one!

As for the central heating, he reckoned that the boiler might just need

a good service and clean, which would cost around 90 euros. It's also

possible that replacing it with a newer one might lead to much greater

efficiency - a service would be able to reveal how (in)efficient it

actually is. He said that he doesn't think changing to mains gas rather

than fuel would save any money, because the cost of gas is more than

fuel per kilowatt hour. I don't know if this is true. All I can say is

that we have been staggered by the relative cost of our fuel heating as

compared to the very cheap and highly effective gas central heating we

had in the UK. I can only assume that the French must be used to paying

far more for their heating than the British, whatever type of fuel is

used.

Rob

[Teamedup]

We have gas from the GDF and our bills are a lot lower than anyone we know with oil or gaz heating. We have our Saunier Duval boiler serviced every year and it seems very efficient. It costs us a lot lot less to use just our gas central heating than it did to use our wood burning cassette, which was our soul source of heating for 15 years...... there again wood is expensive where I live.

[Owens88]

I estimate that January (a very, very, cold January) has cost about  450 euros for a 90sq metre apartment occupied by a family of 4 people. Lots of windows, half of the space with shallow roof directly over (i.e. little insulation). That sum includes all water heating, oven cooking, TV, lighting and kitchen goods, washing machine and tumble dryer etc as well as the CH.

Can anybody comment as to whether that seems reasonable ?

[Blanche Neige]

(He was, of course, late. As far as we can tell, this seems to be the norm in France. Typically expect people to arrive between 15 and 30 minutes after the agreed time.)

[:)] in our experience the only time they arrive early is when you are trying to have a lie in, then they have been known to arrive at 7.45 a.m. or they arrive early when  you are still eating breakfast or lunch.

 

 

[Owens88]

[quote user="Blanche Neige"]

(He was, of course, late. As far as we can tell, this seems to be the norm in France. Typically expect people to arrive between 15 and 30 minutes after the agreed time.)

[:)] in our experience the only time they arrive early is when you are trying to have a lie in, then they have been known to arrive at 7.45 a.m. or they arrive early when  you are still eating breakfast or lunch.

[/quote]

That means that either a) they work lunch breaks (lol) or b) you have longer lunch breaks than the French (admiration !!)

 

 

[Loopy Lou]

Console yourself with the thought that we will all be in the same boat soon with huge energy bills.  The UK news this morning was full of the price hikes we are now going to get from British Gas (25%), Scottish Power (15%) and Powergen (can't remember %) to mention just three of the suppliers, despite their recently announced mega profits.

Ho hum.