Could my fridge be mullering my electricity consumption?

hannahh_3

Just wondering if anyone could shed any light on our stupidly high meter readings?

Our electricity use just seems to be getting higher and higher, even though we are hardly ever in the house, turn absolutely everything off wherever possible, and do everything we can to use less energy. Our most recent bill (based on actual readings) showed we'd used more than twice as much electricity during May to August this year, compared to last year. This seems even more ridiculous when you consider that during May to August last year I worked from home, meaning I had computers, lamps, appliances etc running all day. Nowadays, hubby and I are both out of the house all day long, and everything gets turned off while we're out! So I would have expected to use a lot less over the same period this year!

We've had the meter checked, but even when we go away for the weekend (turning everything off), we'll get home to find we've used 30 units or so, even though we've not been in the house to use anything!

I'm starting to suspect that the culprit can only be our fridge freezer - it's reasonably new, has a good energy rating but it's literally the only thing that's left on all the time. Does anyone know if a fridge can really have this kind of effect to the point of doubling our consumption over a three-month period?!

Any help or advice much appreciated!

Rollinghome

You might find this useful Hannah: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html. As you can see, a modern fridge-freezer should cost around 50p a week to run. It could cost a lot more if there was fault such as the door not sealing properly but couldn't account for your total consumption doubling. Perhaps they've accidentally wired all the street lights through your meter.

You might find it worthwhile buying an energy monitor to see where it's all going.

macman

Do you have an immersion heater? If so check that the 'stat is not faulty or the timeswitch failed so that it is on all the time.
Immersions are out of sight, so tend to get forgotten about. Failing that, yes, get an energy meter and then switch off items/circuits in turn to trace the source of the load.

Cardew

hannahh wrote: »

I'm starting to suspect that the culprit can only be our fridge freezer - it's reasonably new, has a good energy rating but it's literally the only thing that's left on all the time. Does anyone know if a fridge can really have this kind of effect to the point of doubling our consumption over a three-month period?!

Any help or advice much appreciated!

It is highly unlikely that a fridge freezer could cause anything like that consumption.

A modern fridge freezer should use approx 1 unit(kWH) a day. If it had a fault and, say the compressor was running all the time, the fridge would freeze up.

A compressor might be around 200 watts so even in the highly unlikely event of it running constantly it would only use 5 kWh a day.