Not Such Bright Sparks

(Sorry to break the flow of posts about computers and stuff, you know, but this was always coming…)

Remember last week, when I was having financial difficulties because everyone was trying to steal money from me, except they weren’t really and everything was basically fine? It was described here if you need to refresh your memory. Well, the mortgage offer came through, so Sarah and I are buying a house. I also got the wages that work had mistakenly not paid me, which should see me through to the end of the month. Everything’s looking rosy. Oh yes, except for the energy bill.

Good evening children, welcome to maths class. This is the lesson you have been waiting for.

The energy bill I was originally sent to cover the last two weeks of my tenancy before I moved house was for over £1500. The energy company have since claimed that that was an estimated bill because they hadn’t received my final meter readings.

They have sent me a revised bill for £236, now supposedly based on accurate final readings.

That’s £236 consumed over 14 days.

£236 consumed by an empty house over 14 days.

Now, that works out at £16.86 per day. The quoted price for electricity, per kilowatt-hour, on this company’s website is 21.55p at peak times and 17.35p at other times. I don’t know for sure, but let’s assume that peak time is only 8 hours of the day – this company are such greedy bastards it’s probably peak time twentyfour-seven, but let’s be generous.

So a weighted average gives us 18.75p per kilowatt-hour of electricity.

The period of the bill is 14 days, or 336 hours.

Therefore the power consumed by my old empty house, in watts, is P = (236 * 1000) / (0.1875 x 336)

So P = 3746W

Now, let’s be honest: I know I left the fridge plugged in.

I didn’t leave an industrial freezer unit plugged in. Just the fridge.

I didn’t leave fucking CERN plugged in.

Just. The. Fridge.

As far as I can see from estimates online, a reasonably modern refrigerator uses around 70W on average, which means that my stupid energy company are billing me for the use of FIFTY THREE AND A HALF FRIDGES. And what use is half a fridge? Idiots.

I hope they record my phone call tomorrow for training purposes. They’re going to need more staff.