Immersion heater running costs?

[Joe]

Five bob a unit! Now I know why don't look at my bills too closely.

- Joe

[Mark Hennessy]

Happily, on average, it won't be costing anything like that if you leave it on continuously. It will only turn on to replace the heat that you use, or has been lost via the insulation.

Regarding unit cost, I've just looked at mine, and it's 16.2p and 13.2p plus VAT at 5%. This is just a standard tariff from the supplier the previous owners were using; I've made no effort to switch to minimise as yet. So, it sounds like you might need a different supplier! I'm with npower, for what that's worth.

All the best,

Mark

[Colourstar]

Regarding unit cost, I've just looked at mine, and it's 16.2p and 13.2p plus VAT at 5%.

Strewth! That's a heck of a lot cheaper than mine. I've never swapped suppliers before, so maybe it's time to shop around. Thanks for the tip-off Mark.

Steve

[Mark Hennessy]

Might be worth a look at this: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utiliti...lectricity

[Colourstar]

Thanks for the link Mark. One difficulty in comparing prices is that the comparison websites are naturally all based on your existing energy usage and mine is about to change fairly radically.

Deploying the immersion heater it's difficult to predict what the yearly electricity KwH consumption will rise to. Conversely up until a few months ago I did have an old gas CH system here prior to the Rayburn so my gas consumption will be much lower now that the cooker is the only gas appliance.

Having said all that N-power do see to be considerably cheaper than EON, so it may be worth going over to them anyway and seeing how things pan out over the ensuing months. The Rayburn alone is costing around £50 in smokeless fuel every 3 weeks so any improvement on that has to be a good thing!!

Steve

[WRCC]

I'm in much the same position as the OP; I heat the water from the oil fired heating system in winter and then go over to an immersion heater in summer. The heater is on a segmented timer, each segment setting it on for 12 minutes. With thermostat set at just below 60C, I use 4 segments ON (48mins) and think I have a pretty generous quantity of hot water for the one of me. For sure, the insulation on the tank is ultra important in keeping the costs down.