Elec use has suddenly shot up, help!

I know it's extra expenditure but we have just received our Owl Electrisave wireless energy monitor this morning and it's a revelation! £35 delivered from John Lewis and I reckon this gadget will save us loads more than £35 in the first year alone! Very easy to see just what is using the leccy by simply switching things off at the mains and observing how the energy use is affected. It's shown us that cooking our Sunday chicken costs approx 90p in our Electric oven - ridiculous! Probably cheaper to buy one that's already cooked (especially if you do your shopping late and can pick on up cheap . £1.20 in Asda last night, fully cooked, only 30p more than the cost of cooking one! :eek: ). I highly recommend this unit, although please be warned - my wife and me are already obssessed with it!

Hi mikereauk, as the readings are correct it would seem you have some item running that you are not aware of, immersion heater is the obvious culprit

Try switching everything off, including fridge / freezers and check your meter has stopped. That will eliminate the defective switch if you have one

Is there anything on timers? Has the timing gone wobbly?

I'm sorry to ask this, but are you definitely absolutely sure that you're nor comparing a quarterly number of units with a monthly number? Because I mean, 300 to 800 is huge, and you'd expect to use less in Spring than in Winter.

If your units are KwH then you're saying you used to use 100 a month, or about 3 a day. That's a tiny tiny number, I mean we (2-bed flat, electric only) are fairly but not obsessively careful with the electricity, but we use on average just under 15 a day in Summer, and just over 20 a day in Winter.

1carminestocky wrote: »

:eek: I'm working on 12p/kw to take into account the 2 tier pricing. The oven would appear to be using an average of 3KW/hour and our 'normal' chicken takes approx 2hr 20mins to cook.

I would be surprised if your oven is actually using 3kWh. Our electric oven is rated at 2.5kW for the main oven and 1.87kW for the top oven. Even if yours is rated at 3kW, due to the thermostatic control, it would not be on continuous for 2 hr 20 mins.

Your calculations appear to be incorrect as even if it was on continuously for 2 hr 20 min at 3kW, which is very unlikely, that would work out at 75p. Why try to include the two tier pricing in your calculations? as you have to pay extra for the first so many units of your electricity if you are on a no standing charge tariff.

Are we using chickens which are too large, you thik?

I don't know because you didn't answer the question about the size of this bird.

Typical cooking instructions,

Roast in the centre of a pre-heated oven, gas mark 5, 375°F (190°C), for 20 minutes per lb (450 g) plus 10-20 minutes extra – this will be 1 hour and 50 minutes to 2 hours for a 5 lb (2.25 kg) bird.

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