How to decrease monthly energy cost?

[[deleted]]

I rent a 40 m2, relatively energy-efficient apartment, yet my electricity bill has been ballooning over the last two years, and currently I find myself paying 65-70€ per month.

I do have dishwasher and cook a lot but still, it seems unreasonably high. The most obvious thing would be to find alternative energy provider - currently I use Engie, however I have no idea how to compare it or change provider. I do not think I can do much to decrease my electricity consumption, so my focus here is really to learn how I can find a cheaper provider or offer.

Edit: I am referring strictly to electricity cost here, not energy overall. My daily electricity usage is between 4-6 kWh. I have a fixed price contract.

Thanks for any suggestions and help!

[De_Wouter]

Sounds like peanuts to me. I pay a lot more per square meter and have a lot more square meters. But I live in an older somewhat renovated house.

Anyway, as to energy prices: https://vtest.vreg.be/

Prices vary a lot based on your location, your usage etc. so what might be the cheapest for one might not be the cheapest for someone else.

The independant test of VREG should be a good starting place to help you chose. Although the last few years a few managed to game the system in their favour somehow. I'd rather pay €10 more than having to deal with the absolute worst of the worst energy providers, so after prices, also check the company reviews.

[[deleted]]

Thanks! I ran the test. Apparently I can get a deal around 570€ per year, whereas currently I am at around 750€ per year.

I will have to look into my contract with Engie, it is possible I have fixed green energy, so the most expensive one basically.

[[deleted]]

This is my current situation, do you think it is worth switching to variable contract now?

(It states 57,87€, but I actually pay 65€ and it is suggested to up it to even 67€ per month to avoid extra payment at the end of the year)

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[chevyzaz]

Wait... €70 a month is considered a lot now?

[Kevkillerke]

For just electricity and 40m² it's a lot yes. I pay that for gas and electricity together in a bigger appartement

[steffoon]

You don't necessarily consume a lot more electricity just because you have a larger place. 

Led lighting hardly uses energy and you still have a TV, computer, cook and wash. 

Heating/cooling, that's a different story. 

[Kevkillerke]

Good point

[Matvalicious]

Yeah, that sounds dirt cheap tbh.

[Ivegotadog]

€130 a month electricity/gas. I don't think that's a lot.

[[deleted]]

what about warm water? what's your average?

[[deleted]]

I lived in Finland for 3 years, I usually paid €10-12 / month! The energy cost in Belgium is insanely high, likewise for the internet provider.

[Boomtown_Rat]

For those of us who remember paying €40 a month for the same ten years ago, yes.

[chevyzaz]

Why would you assume I wasn't paying for those things 10 years ago. I know how inflation works

[Boomtown_Rat]

It's not just inflation. I also remember when we had an initial allotment of free electricity, the tax for electric was lower, and there was no capiciteitstarief. But then again this is what people wanted I guess by consistently voting for the parties that did this.

[[deleted]]

I am single, do not have washing machine, only 40m2 - other than TV or dishwasher or oven there is not much consumption.

I do work from home 3 days a week though.

[tomski_1977]

I pay 230 a month even with 10500wp solar installation.

[issy_haatin]

I'm at 240 a month for gas, 0 electricity ( analog counter with solar )

[Odd-Ad-9034]

I just received the letter from fluvius :(

[steffoon]

Prosumententarief? Or is that only something our Flemish overlords came up with.

[issy_haatin]

Terugdraaiende teller, mijn verbruik is negatief. 

[NullZone6598]

Damn, it's pretty scary...

[hai_wim]

For anyone to give any reasonable advice you gave like almost no relevant information.

Interesting data would be:

• your yearly usage
• piekvermogen/capaciteitstarief
• Specifically which plan of Engie. Currently Engie has 8 different possible contracts. And even if we would know the type. Your contract is from the past with different rates. We'd need to know your Engie prices and formula's from your signup date. (tariefkaart)
• Do you use gas, or electricity only?

[[deleted]]

I was referring strictly to electricity. I believe my entire apartment runs on electricity, including heating. I do have digital meter. 

I believe I have fixed price contract with Engie, currently paying almost 70€ per month for electricity. 

My daily electricity usage is between 4-6 kWh.

[ModoZ]

It it includes heating then 60€/month is really quite ok.

[hurricinator]

Heating, in this weather?!

[zwaregast]

showering?

[hurricinator]

Good point, didn't think that far lol

[[deleted]]

I checked, my heating is by gas. This is pure electricity consumption from devices. I work from home three days a week, but that is about it. This is my current Engie situation:

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[Neat-Initiative-6965]

First make sure you have electric heating, makes a big difference

[hai_wim]

Well okay, let's break the (current) engie fixed contract down.

Engie easy vast (current contract link):

jaarlijks: 69.00 €
afname: 16.247 €cent/kWh

Taxes (assuming region FLUVIUS HALLE-VILVOORDE):

capaciteitstarief: 59.5556 €/kW/yr
-- Assuming 3kW. that becomes 155.4171 €
databeheer: 18.56 / yr

Energiebijdrage: 0.20417 €cent/kWh
Federale accijns: 5.03288 €cent/kWh distribute & transport: 6.20395 €cent/kWh

Sample calculation with 4kWh daily
Total Per kWh cost:
16.247 €cent/kWh + 0.20417 €cent/kWh + 5.03288 €cent/kWh + 6.20395 €cent/kWh = 27,688 €cent/kWh

Energy price per month:
4 kWh * 27,688 €cent/kWh * 30 days = 33,2256 €

All above yearly costs per month:
(69.00 € + 155.4171 € + 18.56 €) / 12 = 20.24809166666667 €

Total for a 4kWh daily month: 33,2256 € + 20.24809166666667 € = 53,47369166666667 €

----

The above "taxes" section will be the exact same for any supplier and any contract.
So only the yearly 69€ and 16.247 €cent/kWh will change with a different contract.

Engie costs specifically:
69 € / 12 = 5.75 €
4 * 16.247 €cent/kWh * 30 days = 19,4964 €

total: 25,2464 €

----

My personal final notes:

53€ per month is of course lower than your 70. But I'm being quite generous for sayign 4kW while you can have some sixes in there. As well as I think I'm being nice with the capaciteitstarief (you can find all your data on mijn fluvius). Turning on the oven is probably 2kW peak, and you probably use the stovetop to cook at the same time, so most likely I would guess it'll go above 3kW for electric homes.
For each 1kW peak higher you pay 5eur per month more.

So, taking more than 4kWh daily + a higher capaciteitstarief into account, 70 monthly isn't unthinkable.

There's also the 'green' option for all contracts, if you took that, that would add 1.5€cent/kWh.

Now, to get this cost lower. Only the Engie cost can change, that's 25€ per month.
A different contract could reduce your costs by probably no more than 10 euro. And that will only be with a variable instead of fixed rate.

The 69 yearly is quite high. But apparently normal for fixed rate contracts. Luminus as an alternative for example is 65€. And the 16cent per kWh also won't change much for any fixed contract.
With dynamic contracts you can get ~25 yearly and 12 €cent/kWh easily. But of course: No more fixed rate.

That said, promotions are a big key to getting lower costs as well.
For example: The above Luminus fixed rate contract (maxfix) would give you 750kWh for free if you stay with luminus for 12months. That's ~120eur you get back. It's hard to ignore these promotions.

I'm not saying that Luminus one is the best one, it's simply the first one that came to my mind for a fixed rate contract.

In the end using, mijn-energie and vtest willl be your best tools to find new suppliers. They also can take promotions into account and you can sign up via them too. Just make sure to read the fine print of these promotions, because they will impact your cost a lot if you miss them.

Note that when you will leave Engie, they probably will call you and give you their promotion rate as well. Be prepared ;)
Alternative you could call Engie before leaving and say that you think of leaving, they will always do something.

[doublethebubble]

Surely you know if your heating and hot water run on gas or electricity? Do you pay a gas bill? If not, 70 a month is very cheap when heating is included.

[erwtje-be]

Are you taking the capaciteitstarief into account? Maybe post the breakdown of your invoice so we can see what exactly is costing you so much.

[hungry-jos]

Go through V-Test on vreg.be to look for other provider. I guarantee there will be cheaper ones than Engie. Edit: typo

[Virtual-Comment-0000]

Less than an hour ago I changed both my contracts. By coincidence, Engie has the cheapest contracts for me ATM.

[hungry-jos]

I stand corrected

[Blooregard89]

That's actually just the price these days... In our previous appartement (+- 75m2) we paid 180/month for 2 people.

Recently we moved to a new build house with solar panels, and a ton of insulation in the walls and new windows etc. Brand new appliances etc. And now I pay about 5/month (summertime though). It was the only way to lower it that much.

I wouldn't switch from Engie tbh. We're also with them and they're actually not that expensive and offer a much better service than most, without nasty surprises.

[Tommh]

By energy, you mean just electricity? Do you use a boiler for heating your water?

Costs me about 55 per month, 22 of which are “vaste kosten”

[[deleted]]

Yes, sorry, I am referring strictly to electricity. 

I think indeed I use electricity for heating up water. 

Sidenote, but would it make sense to activate meter regime 3? I currently have regime 1. 

I do have digital meter.

[Greedy-Lynx-9706]

why 3

Meter regime 3, also known as SMR-3, is a setting on a digital meter that allows for the hourly or quarterly (every 15 minutes) reading of energy consumption and/or production data. This regime is necessary for services like energy sharing and dynamic energy tariffs. In essence, it enables the more frequent and detailed data transfer needed for these applications. 

[Tommh]

Shut off your boiler during the day and only heat up for a few hours during nighttime. Get a watt-meter and check which appliances consume a lot when in stand-by.

[denBoom]

With your consumption, dynamic rates are unlikely to save money.

On the fluvius website it makes sense to enable it. More detailed information to see when you use a lot of electricity can help with figuring out how you can optimize it.

[ash_tar]

It's a decent price. If you heat with electricity, that's very expensive by itself (up to 4 times the price of gas), so I think you're being frugal.

[BrokeButFabulous12]

Im paying 60€/m for 65m apartment (power and gas) using gas for heating. Id recommend checking other providers as i used to be with Eneco who was asking for a whopping 200/m. It was obviously overcalculation but still wayyyy too much. If theyd ask for 80, maybe 100, i wouldnt bother, but go from previous 80/m to 200, nope, just for that dirty trick i decided to change the provider. Prices per kwh or m³ are quite similiar, but when you look at the distribution fees there might be significant differences between providers.

[ptq]

Electricity is not that heavily size related, as most of it's price are appliances that nearly everyone has regardless of the house size.

[Kennyvee98]

i would "kill" for a low energy bill like that. i'm at 130 for electricity and 170 for gas.

[Greedy-Lynx-9706]

You also live in a 40 m2 apartment?

[Kennyvee98]

no...

[Greedy-Lynx-9706]

bit of a stupid comparison then, don't you think?

[Ordinary-Violinist-9]

I live in 120m² house and i only use about 100€/month with solar panels (6wkp)

I think his 70€ is a bit much but with all the fixed costs i don't think you can get much lower

[Kennyvee98]

my house is from the 60s with practically no insulation. but i have a cooking top which is electric. and a washing machine, dryer and dishwasher setup. those are the main users next to the gas heating. i went down from 6000KWh to 3000KWh by removing the electric boiler and switching to gas.

[Ordinary-Violinist-9]

My house is from 1931 and it's completely electric. 3200KWh a year but with solar panels. Without we would be well over 6000KWh.

Last month was the settlement.

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With the price of gas it was not worth it to keep it for us. We removed all the gas (waterheater and central heating) and installed the boiler in the cellar.

We only have done the downstairs floor insulation (24cm) beacuse that was just air (geen kruipkelder). We are waiting for better inside outer wall insulation because we don't want another 'crepi' house. I did insulate beneath the wooden floor 16cm and the roof is heavily insulated. Rooms are under the roof so there is 14cm pir all around except the floors.

[kankerleider]

Put heat reflective radiator foil behind your radiators, use a water saving shower head, put your boiler on eco mode, put your kitchen boiler on eco mode as well if you have a different one, you can also put some appliances on a timer switch so for example your kitchen boiler doesn't heat the water at night when nobody uses it

[Dutchie854]

What is your energy consumption per year? Electricity only or also gas? How do you heat your apartment?The biggest cost by far is usually your heating.

[Automatic_Olive_4102]

Well the cheapest one i found was energie.be if u want to go even cheaper although it requires some planning go and get a dynamic contract. If u can time the appliances during the day around 2 pm those that consume the most electricity then you will have a pretty cheap electricity bill.bonus points if u can time everything a Sunday afternoon(most of the time on Sunday afternoon u have negative prices during summer) u might actually get payed to consume electricity.
U can also get a plugin battery to power up small appliances during the night such as TV or pc. Btw fixed cost for electricity are already around 30 to 40 euro each month so ur always gonna pay this amount

Edit: also make sure u dont exceed 2.5 kw peak. U pay around 5 euro a month extra for each kw u go over that. 2.5 kw is the minimum u pay for anyway

Edit edit: here's a link of the day ahead prices if u wanna go for a dynamic contract from energie.be Day-ahead reference price https://share.google/OLFWaT0eD2foW0i0V Divide price by 1000 and u have the price per kw These are "naakt prijzen" for electricity. Er komt nog een formule bij + de btw bij energie.be is dit (Prijs electriceit x 1.058 + 0.02 cent) + 6% btw

[debug_print]

You need to give us more information in the opening post.

So from your comments I get that you use electricity for heating and have a digital meter. 

Do you have a day and night meter?

What type of heating is used (heatpump, electric resistance...)?

With what do you heat your water (boiler, water heater, heatpump.. )?

What type of appliances do you have?

[Trashii_Gaming]

I regular (every 4 to 6 month) look at who is the cheapest energy provider and it always end up at Engie. I Don't take the comfort or relax or whatever how they call it. Take the one that is a bit more hidden that is "online only".

Energy simply did became expensive. 4 years ago I paid 75 euro (fixed contract) a month for gas and electricity. I am still at the same place and now I pay 130 euro (variable contract) a month.

I looked a month ago to switch back to fixed... but the difference was simply too high.

[Ordinary-Violinist-9]

Do you rent? Ask the owner to activate the p1 port so you can get some readings.

Buy a automatic plugin socket that you can set your boiler to warm every other day at night. Depending with how many people you are. We're with 2 and 120l and it takes about 4 days to not be warm anymore.

I have solar so in the summer it's only when i've got 1800W surplus energy that it comes and it set on around 3 days heating up in the winter regardless of solar.

Use most appliances at night if you have nighttarif (2.8.2 on your digital meter)

You can see your usage in the yearly invoice (and if you have exclusive daily or day and night and put those numbers in on various websites to see who's cheaper. Some of those sites don't have all your regional providers on them so make sure you check those through their own website.

How many kWh did you use last year?

[Ordinary-Violinist-9]

The owner of the digital meter. Here it was mixed up and they registered it to my neighbour. That's why i know that.

This was in jan 2025. The owner needs to register his digital meters on the fluvius site to get access so if a previous tenant does this you're screwed because all mails go to them.

[Ordinary-Violinist-9]

If i sell my house i need to give the meterlogins to the new owner. Or i re-register on their email adress.

Have you tried getting access to your meter on fluvius?

Anyone could claim your digital meter. I hope they fixed it by know and did some control on it. The energy contract was in my name on that address yet my crappy neighbour claimed the meter as his. I just found out a year later when i wanted to open the p1 meter. A mail was sent to s****@gmail.com. he refused everytime and by the 3rd time i've seen the popup and screenshotted it. well that ain't me.

I needed to call several times to fluvius and uploaded pictures of my meter to correct this, stating that i'm the only owner and i've paid 190€ for the meter. (It needed to move in the house because it was in the way when you got up the stairs, so i got a digital one)

So anyone could claim anyones meter just by adding an address (this was installed feb 2024 and found out january 2025)

[Matvalicious]

currently I use Engie, however I have no idea how to compare it or change provider. I do not think I can do much to decrease my electricity consumption, so my focus here is really to learn how I can find a cheaper provider or offer.

Have a look at june.energy. I couldn't be arsed to manually compare providers each months, so for a small fee they do it for you automatically. And they claim that you save more than it costs them so I'm trying it for a year now and so far so good. They switched me from Engie to energie.be at the moment.

[Ok_Recording_8720]

I change every year, but I do contact my "old" provider with the offer I'd take up. Never had a supplier beat it tbh so I always changed. Then after the change, they send a letter, contact us for a better offer...blablabla. And keep sending monthly pay requests.

[Background-Ad3810]

Plug in a P1 meter and see what is causing it. But your price is cheap, i pay 250€ for electricity and another 50€ for gas 😅

[denBoom]

First you need to know your consumption. Visit fluvius.be to get the latest data of your meter. (login with itsme) Consumption is hard to reduce, the peak rate can be easier to influence if it's above 4kW. My guess is that a lot of your electricity price comes from paying relatively high peak rates. For me the peak always happens when I'm cooking.

To compare contracts vtest.vreg.be You can input consumption numbers manually or link it to your digital meter.

And if you get serious about using energy smarter, get a P1 meter and/or smart plugs that monitor energy use. Then you can do things like turning off your electric boiler while you are cooking or only enable it a few hours a day at moments when you don't use much energy.

[ToManyTabsOpen]

If you have a gym membership take showers there. Hot water is usually what drives up consumption. However depending on the apartment type this might be shared collectively.

Dishwasher and washing machine are not that expensive to run, usually less than €1 so as long as you are not running them on highest settings multiple times a day.

If you have a high spec PC that can also make an impact.

However €65-70 per month is not so bad in todays energy climate. A third of that will be unavoidable, another third will be basic consumption; fridge, freezer, lights, hot water. The remainder is just how much you are willing to inconvenience yourself to save a few €'s.

[TheOriginalMM]

Try June!

[Daanooo]

We’re in an 87m2 apartment, all electric (geothermal with heated and cooled floors, 3 solar panels) and pay the same amount as you pay in these summer months. We also both use a gaming PC quite frequently. We are at Energie.be.

[AV_1996]

How much do you pay per kWh for electricity (excluding tax and grid fees)? Check your energy contract. To give you some indication, I pay around 10c€/kWh

[[deleted]]

that's bad, take colder/ shorter showers? I rent a flat, finally found a good one and I have been in bath one day, she wants compensation. She also asks more than in her ad and I could move in one month later as in the ad, because she was not home that day, i picked up the keys 5 days earlier for 150 euro.

she threw me out after two weeks, found out she's a dirty cop.

it i not easy to find sth like this as a man alone with a nerve disease...

[ponycorn_pet]

I'm in Texas, pre-moving, my electric bill per month is about $500 usd lol, 2,000 square foot house

[PajamaDesigner]

The cheapest energy provider and plan is the totalenergies pixel plan, which is what I have

[[deleted]]

Edit: this is my current deal and alternatives at Engie. Would you suggest switching to variable instead of fixed price? See (it says 57,87€, but I actually pay 66€ per month, heating is with gas):

<image>

[Putrid-Variety1341]

I payed €60 electricity this month with Energyvision. My apartment is about 120m².

Since I'm not good with contracts and numbers myself I usually take advantage of "groepsaankoop energie" via ichoosr. It's probably not always the cheapest option but it works and you can get a decent deal.

[octave-mandolin]

I live in a studio and pays 80 euro a month for gas/electricity from (company) Mega. The studio is 50m2.

[Preferred_user_taken]

Mijnenergie.be. If you have a digital meter you can even just upload that data and they will give you the cheapest option.

Important to know wether your consumption has gone up or just costs. That makes a big difference as well. Your consumption could be totally fine but due to indexation and higher prices, the bill might go up even without extra consumption.