270 units of electricity in 2 days?!

rlc22

Hi,

My parents have just moved into a new house and apparently they've used 8000 units of electricity in the last quarter!

They checked the meter on Sunday and then again today and they've used just over 270 units in the last 2 days. Is this even possible?! It's just the 2 of them living there and while they have the usual computers/washing machine/kettle etc and it's a large house, the electricity consumption sounds more like that of a nightclub or something!

My mum is worried about speaking to the electric provider, but I really don't see how it's possible they've consumed so much.

What should I advise her?

Thanks,
R

Tupperware_Queen

don't want to panic you, but get the supplier out to check the meter and supply.....something similar happened to my sister, the flat next door were piggybacking their leccy onto hers!!! (which is a criminal offence btw)

mlp

That's 135 kW hours in a day.

That's just under 6kW per hour. That's like running two 3kW electric heaters permanently - over active immersion heater?

rlc22

Tupperware_Queen wrote: »

don't want to panic you, but get the supplier out to check the meter and supply.....something similar happened to my sister, the flat next door were piggybacking their leccy onto hers!!! (which is a criminal offence btw)

Thanks - I think that contacting the supplier would be a good idea

mlp wrote: »

That's 135 kW hours in a day.

That's just under 6kW per hour. That's like running two 3kW electric heaters permanently - over active immersion heater?

They have an immersion heater, but they typically turn it off. It was on for about 4 hours yesterday morning to make sure there was enough hot water as I stayed over on Sunday night (I manage to not use much electricity in my own house, so I don't think that I contributed much to the total )

Are problems with over active immersion heaters common?

ETA: Thanks for your response too - I'll definitely get them to look into the immersion

mlp

Unlikely to be immersion heater if they are controlling it by switching on/off manually.

It was just an example - the consumption is like running two electric fires permanently.... or boiling 2 kettles permanently....

rlc22

mlp wrote: »

Unlikely to be immersion heater if they are controlling it by switching on/off manually.

It was just an example - the consumption is like running two electric fires permanently.... or boiling 2 kettles permanently....

Thanks for the context. It's really hard to picture exactly what would cause the amount to go racking up like that and I'm sure that it's not correct based on what they have in the house.

I'm going to suggest that she calls EDF to get them to check it out.

macman

How is the property heated? That and DHW are the main users of power, so if they have have some other form of heating it would seem impossible to be running up that kind of consumption.

rlc22

macman wrote: »

How is the property heated? That and DHW are the main users of power, so if they have have some other form of heating it would seem impossible to be running up that kind of consumption.

They have an air source heat pump and underfloor heating so I don't believe that should be responsible as I had the impression that the air source heat pump was a very efficient way of heating!

molerat

Are you sure they are not reading the number after the decimal point, those figures seem about 10x what should be expected.

ra200

Check my post over in the lpg & heating section of this forum and see how much electric my ashp is using.

rlc22 wrote: »

They have an air source heat pump and underfloor heating so I don't believe that should be responsible as I had the impression that the air source heat pump was a very efficient way of heating!

rlc22

molerat wrote: »

Are you sure they are not reading the number after the decimal point, those figures seem about 10x what should be expected.

Yep - sadly they're reading it correctly!

ra200 wrote: »

Check my post over in the lpg & heating section of this forum and see how much electric my ashp is using.

Thanks, I've just had a quick read of you post and I'm going to send it to my dad to do the same as I don't know much (well, anything!) about it, but it should be helpful for him