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Understanding Your Electricity bill
To help you to under stand your electricity bill we have put together a simple guide. An example of your electricity bill can be seen below.
Your electricity bill is made of certain parts
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The name of your current supplier on the top and their contact details
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Your unique account number with them. Note this may be a different number for electricity and electricity accounts if you have both fuels with the same supplier.
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The break down of your bill, this is made up of:
- Either estimated or actual electricity meter readings. It is important to keep your meter readings regularly up to date to avoid being under billed or over billed for your electricity supply.
- Your electricity meter should be read on a regular basis, however this does not always happen. Our tip is to take a gas meter reading ever 3 months and tell your supplier by either calling them or by giving the meter readings through an online managed account.
- The amount you have to pay is based on the difference between your current and previous electricity meter readings multiplied by the unit rate you have to pay. The unit rate is normally shown excluding VAT.
- An example is if your current electricity meter reading is 8761 and the previous meter reading was 8425, the difference is 3825 kWh (kilo watt hours or units) of electricity used. Multiply this by your electricity unit rate and that is how much you will have to pay for your electricity usage for the period of the electricity bill.
- If there is a standing charge for your gas bill this will be shown on the electricity bill as a separate charge. Some electricity suppliers have a standing charge and some electricity suppliers do not. If they do not the unit rate you pay will be a little more than if you have one but the only way to check if it is financially better off for you to have on is by using our energy price comparison service.
- VAT is added to the electricity bill at the current rate of 5% for domestic customers.
- The final part of your electricity bill shows the amount you have to pay.
One key number on your bill is the mpan or m number. This number is required if you want to switch electricity suppliers in the future as it is the number the new electricity supplier will need to supply you with electricity.
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