High Electricity Bill

[AGal88]

A friend of mine has just taken on an industrial unit (old barn conversion) and has been hit with high electricity bills, about £600 a month! He is only in the unit about 6 hours a day and only runs the lighting. The lighting is 3x Sodium-Vapor lamps which came with the unit and 6x 58W florescence tubes on the racking which I installed. I don't have a lot of experience with gas discharge lamps, but I do know one of them is cycling and I suspect the bulb is aged. I doubt that would be the cause however. ***edit: he also has 2x 24v shutters which are connected via 13amp plugs to the ring.

I'm going down at the weekend to chase the wiring from meter as I suspect someone else may be drawing from his circuit, but I wanted to post if see if anyone has experience something similar?

 

[ekmdgrf]

I've had a similar experience. When I lived at home, my mother was constantly complaining about the size of the electricity bill.

It's hard to say anything without seeing the figures. The first question is how much is he paying per unit? I assume commercial electricity costs a crap load? Let's take a arbitrary figure of 10p per KWH. The florescent lights are approx 360W. No idea about the Na lights. Lets assume another 360W, giving 720W. So, about 1KW. There are 720 hours in a 30 day week. £600 at 10p per KWH is 6000KWH. So, during occupany of 6 hours * 20 working days == 120 hours. That's 50KW an hour or assuming something is running 24x7, that's 6000 / 720 or 8KW. If the Soduim lamps are eating it all, I make that approx 208A. I hope he used some thick cable

By comparison, our industrial unit is 600 square meters, and pays £600 a month for electricity. Most of that is on the tens of florescent tubes that run mostly 24x7.

Disclaimer: These sums were done very, very quickly and are based on a lot of assumptions but I think we have safely say something is going astray somewhere.

Do you notice a funny smell in the industrial unit and do you see regular deliveries of large quantities of Ammonium Nitrate?

 

[AGal88]

thanks for the reply, my line of thinking exactly. The wiring is somewhat new, my guess '09/10 and I've not noticed any smells or buildups. However there does exist a lot of redundant ancient cabling which is dead that I am going to need to chase up on to be sure. I have not seen the CU or meter myself yet, but have been told they have the CU for the adjacent unit in their unit and theirs is in an off-room along with all the meters for all the units.

This is going to be messy me thinks.

 

[ekmdgrf]

Check the meter. At 8KW, it should be spinning like a 115mm angle grinder! Pop the breakers one by one and watch what happens.

 

[AGal88]

That's the plan, hopefully will just find one labelled "Hidden Pot farm" and can call it a day

 

[Lectrician]

Commercial lecky is around 18p per unit I guess, with 5% vat on top. Standing charge around £15 per month.

Perhaps there is outstanding charges being collected on they from previous occupier?

If its only lights in use, turn them off. What's the score the?

No heating, hot water etc? No portable oil heaters etc?

 

[ekmdgrf]

Maybe the previous owner left a Large Hadron Collider in the basement? They can be quite tricky to find as they are often quite deep down.

 

[AGal88]

Perhaps there is outstanding charges being collected on they from previous occupier?

If its only lights in use, turn them off. What's the score the?

No heating, hot water etc? No portable oil heaters etc?

I'll have them check it out with everything off. No nothing apparently just the lights, its essentially a storage unit I believe

 

[EFLImpudence]

30 day weeks could explain it.

 

[winston1]

Commercial lecky is around 18p per unit I guess, with 5% vat on top. Standing charge around £15 per month.

Perhaps there is outstanding charges being collected on they from previous occupier?

If its only lights in use, turn them off. What's the score the?

No heating, hot water etc? No portable oil heaters etc?

VAT is 20% on commercial electricity.

 

[Aragorn84]

Are there multiple units which could perhaps be fed off the same meter?

Many years ago i used a small industrial unit rented by some friends which was in a block of 3. After some time we noticed we'd never had an electricity bill, and upon investigation, we realised there was only one meter, which was being billed to the blacksmith in the end unit, and the other two units were using his supply.

His demand was far higher than the other two units which were little more than lights only, and as such he'd simply never noticed.

 

[JohnD]

It's no use starting a discussion about the bill or monthly payments. These can include estimates, misreadings, past under- or over-payments. You have got to look at the actual usage.

Looking at actual meter-readings (not estimates) how many kWh have been used between what two dates?