Energy costs for the average household have more than doubled over the past six years. On top of that British Gas have just reported a 7% rise in gas consumption due to the cold winter.

With this and further increases in gas and electricity prices in prospect, it is more important than ever to understand how much gas and electricity you are using and how much it is costing.

But, how do you know if you are using more gas and electricity than other similar homes? How do you know if you are paying more than you should?



A new, free website – Energy Average www.energyaverage.co.uk – helps you keep track of your gas and electricity usage and cost, showing you an instant comparison with similar homes in your area.

Once you have created an account and entered some basic information about your household, you simply enter a few details from your gas and electricity bills as you receive them. Energy Average will keep track of your monthly energy usage and cost.

With the click of a button it will also present a graph showing how your energy usage and bills compare with similar households nationally and in your local area.

The website has been developed by Ascend Online Media Ltd. David Melvin, Ascend’s Managing Director, explains the inspiration behind Energy Average.

“Living in a home with two teenagers constantly on their laptops,as well as watching TV and charging mobile phones or other gadgets, I was curious to know how our energy bills compared with other homes.

“But when I looked around I could find very little information. Industry regulator Ofgem produces figures for average annual household fuel consumption, that are used by energy suppliers and switching sites. But these were last reviewed in 2003. Just think how much more you have in the way of electronic goods and gadgets in your home since then. The official Ofgem average figures also don’t take the type of heating or household sizes into account.

“So we set about designing EnergyAverage.co.uk to enable householders to compare like-with-like, letting them see if their energy usage and their bills are higher, or lower, than the average nationally and in their area.”

Energy Average works by using aggregated data compiled from information entered by other site users to calculate national and local averages for similar households. The gas and electricity bill data for new users is then compared with these averages.

Because users are constantly entering new data, the averages are always being updated, meaning that the information is always current. That means the figures reflect weather conditions, such as the particularly cold winter we have just experienced.

Tags: Ascend Online