Inexplicable spike in electricity use at 4am?!?

S_AND_I

Hello brainy people,
Can anyone work this out: I have just started monitoring my electricity usage via an EoN monitor. Having downloaded a week's worth of data it shows a spike at 4am (or sometimes in the 2am slot - the bars are every two hours) every day. The spike is around 5-7kwh, whereas every other period through the day is between 0.5-1. I am certainly not switching anything on at that wee hour, nor can I think of anything that is kicking in auto (combi-boiler gas heating that is not even on). Can anyone come up with any suggestions on what this might be:

My theories:
Dodgy monitor though brand new
Something is malfunctioning at 24 hr intervals: is this even possible? How might I find it?

If this is correct it's about 50p a day and you don't need to be a maths genius to work out that that would be a fair whack.

DVardysShadow

Aliens trickle charging their flying saucer for the journey back home. They don't like what they see.

Otherwise you are left with pulling fuses on half your consumer unit one night and half the next and narrowing down the circuit. This could also reveal a faulty monitor. Remember not to cut off your fridge or freezer.

moonrakerz

All of these "monitors" supplied by the energy supply companies are notoriously inaccurate. They cause more problems than they are worth because of their inaccuracy and also people not knowing how to interpret the readings from them.

I find it hard to believe that something is switching on in the middle of the night using 5-7kWh and you don't know what it is !

The ONLY accurate way to read your electricity consumption is by your meter - does this reflect the high overnight useage ?

S_AND_I

I like the daily visits from aliens theory.
Would it be enough to isolate some likely candidates (e.g. oven, washing machine etc) by unplugging them rather than pulling the fuse on a whole consumer unit?
Moonrakerz, I'm aware the monitors have limitations but a spike every 24 hours is quite a consistent error. I'm going to try and plot the readings from the meter - it's just the spike (if there) is at quite an inconvenient time!
Cheers

DVardysShadow

S_AND_I wrote: »

I like the daily visits from aliens theory.
Would it be enough to isolate some likely candidates (e.g. oven, washing machine etc) by unplugging them rather than pulling the fuse on a whole consumer unit?
Moonrakerz, I'm aware the monitors have limitations but a spike every 24 hours is quite a consistent error. I'm going to try and plot the readings from the meter - it's just the spike (if there) is at quite an inconvenient time!
Cheers

The reason I suggest the consumer unit is because it is easier to catch everything, rather than racking your brains to be sure.

But before you do anything, do the null test. Disable the transmitter part overnight and see what happens.

geordie_joe

S_AND_I wrote: »

Would it be enough to isolate some likely candidates (e.g. oven, washing machine etc) by unplugging them rather than pulling the fuse on a whole consumer unit?

If I were you I would unplug (before you go to bed) everything that you can, leaving only the things that must be on, fridge, freezer etc.

If the spike disappears then plug them back in one every night until you spot the culprit.

If it doesn't disappear then you are stuck with being up at 2 am and 4 am turning the rest off one at a time to spot when the spike disappears.

You don't have a freeview box that wakes up during the night to download software updates, do you?

Or anti-virus software on your computer that is set to wake it up during the night and do a full virus scan?

DVardysShadow

geordie_joe wrote: »

...

You don't have a freeview box that wakes up during the night to download software updates, do you?

Or anti-virus software on your computer that is set to wake it up during the night and do a full virus scan?

5 to 7kWh for these? No way.

Poosmate

This is intruiging and a little bit scary - I hope you get to the bottom of it and let us all know.

I'm thinking, what if it's something really spooky like the fridge comes on and the freezer and the sky box and the pc scan and maybe mobile phones start to recharge ALL AT THE SAME TIME!! What would be the watts... er I mean ... odds on that happening? lol

Otherwise, has someone got the key's to your house and they are secretly coming in at night to recharge all their rechargeables using your leccy? Maybe sitting having a coffee and watching your telly (with the volume on low of course) whilst they wait. Or maybe these strange people live in the walls so don't need a key!

Maybe I need to stop drinking so much coffee hey?

Please let us know if you find out?

Poo

bloss0m

Many pvrs power up in the night to check for updates but that will only be a very small amount of power I suspect the meter you have isnt accurate

Swipe

how long does the spike last for?

Andy_WSM

Has it occurred to you that you might not be monitoring YOUR consumption? Your meter could be picking up one of the neighbours who also has an eon energy monitor? There was another thread about it somewhere. Maybe they have some electric heating / hot water coming on at that time of day?

If you were really using 5-7Kw/h more in the night you'd know it - something would be getting VERY hot - that energy has to "go" somewhere and it won't be used silently or undetectably!