A woman claims she has saved almost £400 on her energy bill by turning off a common 'guzzling' household appliance. Harriet Morphy-Morris says she is now in credit with her energy supplier after turning off her immersion heater.
The Manchester Evening News reporter says she is a new renter and has desperately been searching for hacks to save money. She and her partner had even gone as far as turning appliances off at the wall when not in use, doing washing during off-peak hours and turning the thermostat down.
However, she insists it was all to no avail as her direct debit payments only continued to increase from her energy supplier. Harriet says that she is on a standard variable tariff with EDF and pays via direct debit.
Therefore, she expected fluctuating prices given the circumstances, but couldn't work out why her bill only kept rising. The journalist says it was only when the couple had to get a small leak repaired, they realised what the issue was.
She said: "We realised we had left our immersion heater on permanently. We had been throwing money away by using our immersion every day."
An immersion heater, which heats water using electricity, even if you have gas central heating, has been branded as 'insufficient' by experts at Which. This is due to the fact that it is using electricity all the time to heat water, which is a lot pricier than gas.
Harriet added: "We moved into our first house but in early summer last year our bill went up from £125 per month to £240, even though we knew a rise in price was coming given the price cap at the time, this was a lot more than expected.
"From here we did everything to get the bill down (during summer so our heating wasn't on) used gas appliances more efficiently and made sure we submitted readings before the price cap rose once again in October.
"When the October 2022 price cap came, at the same time as our EDF direct debit review (in this period customers are made aware of any credit on their account), we were defeated at the minimal credit amount on our account, less than £100, and continual £240 bill. It wasn't until we had work done on a small water leak we realised that we had been ridiculously overspending by using our immersion heater.
"And by turning it off in October we have now accumulated £372 in bill credit - which is not surprising now that we understand how immersion heaters work and how much they cost to run."
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