Electric ONLY energy usage...

rendeverance

Hi all,

I am new to the forums. I have searched the forums and indeed many pages on google looking to get an idea of how I am doing energy wise and if people think I can do anything to improve it further.

There are many discussions on peoples electricity use but as most or many people have gas its not really comparable to those of us that don't have gas.

What I want to know is:
A) How many people / how big is your house?
What is your average daily KWh usage?

I myself live in a 2 bedroom flat near Glasgow. It has storage heaters which get use occasionally about 3 months of the year. I live alone at the moment and achieve an average of 7KWh a day. - about 6 or 7 during summer - 2-3 per day more (economy seven night units) if I use the storage heating.

It used to be using 10 per day but have insulated and replaced the roof and loft space, changed all the incandescent lighting to cfl and led, and cut down usage of the powerhouse desktop dramatically by buying a little HP microserver for 24/7 server operation and also modified it for HTPC duties (which idles at 50W, uses about 60W movie playing and never reaches 70W). I also use the laptop most of the time and the desktop gets switched on maybe only 8-12 hours a month now.

With 7 KWh a day I get charged about £25 a month before the recent increace at end of august and now £30 per month. This is with Scottish power but I cant seem to change suppliers anyway due to the type of meter I have (3 rate).

Thanks, I look forward to your figures / opinions / suggestions :-)

rogerblack

One person in a fairly small, uninsulated house, an average of 5kWh/day.
Mainly as my heating is largely an electric blanket.

tim9966

1 person. Looking at my energy monitor I've used 175 units in the past 30 days which works out at 5.8 a day on average. Haven't used any heating since March, apart from the immerson to heat the water.

Today I've only used 1.85 units but haven't turned on my immerson heater, or the oven today as I got a take away tonight.

chris1973

2-3 per day more (economy seven night units) if I use the storage heating.

How do you manage to only limit your storage heaters to consume just a total of 2 - 3 units of extra Electricity per day?. At nighttime E7 rates of approx 5p - 8p per unit, you are saying that you can heat your storage heaters, (and property) for around 10p - 16p per day?

One single 3.4KW storage heater will consume 1 unit of Electricity in the first 15 minutes that its switched on. 2 - 3 units will effectively represent less than 1 hours use of this size of heater, and 1 hour is barely long enough to warm the bricks, let alone store enough heat to give out to warm the room for the 18 hours between 'charges'.

A 3.4 KW heater, as it suggests, will consume 3.4KWH or 3.4 Units of electricity for every hour that its actively consuming electricity in order to produce heat for storage. In a 7 hour E7 period this one example has the potential to consume 7 hours x 3.4KW/H = 23.8 units of Electricity per 3.4KW Storage heater.

Of course a storage heater will not consume power continuously for all 7 hours, as the thermostat will switch it on/off once the bricks have reached the desired 'input' temperature. However from my own experience, my own 3.4KW living room heater set at '9' on the input control will consume 18 - 19 units during a single overnight E7 'charge' and thats just one heater in one room.

Even a small bedroom / bathroom sized 1.7kw storage heater will consume 1.7 units per hour during its heating cycle.

So i'm a little confused how as to how you are managing to run storage heaters, for around 2 units per day extra on top of your 'summer' usage

tim9966

I did find my energy monitor doesn't record figures from the night storage heaters as I think they are wired onto a different circuit.

chris1973

I did find my energy monitor doesn't record figures from the night storage heaters as I think they are wired onto a different circuit.

Most installations use a 2 or 3 tier meter which has a seperate 2nd dedicated consumer unit to feed storage heating. This 2nd consumer unit / DB is fed from a 2nd meter tail from the electricity meter which only goes 'live' during the timed E7 period. Unless an energy monitor was 'clamped' around this 2nd tail, it wouldn't monitor the consumption of the storage heaters.

One sure way of monitoring all of the household use, including E7, would be to clamp the meter sensor onto the main tail which runs from the service fuse to the input side of the actual meter, this way all of the current for the entire household, will be monitored including E7.

Although the OP doesn't mention whether or not he is getting his daily readings from an energy meter or from the actual meter. Either way 2 or 3 units additional consumption per night with a couple of storage heaters running during the colder months certainly doesn't sound normal. Or maybe i'm doing something wrong, as when it gets cold, my storage heater consumption has the potential to easily consume upto 50 units during a typical E7 period, and thats being careful in a 1 bedroom property. 50 units equals around £2.50 on my E7 off-peak tariff

I'd be interested to read whether other storage heater users fall in their consumption!.

Richie-from-the-Boro

I arrived as a single man in early '82 when BetaMax was the new technology and Bucks Fizz and Cool and the Gang were in the Top20, I lived in an expensive hotel for 12 weeks and decided on the spur of the moment to take any soddin~thing with a roof on it. Bloke I knew in the rugby club ran a housing association and beer having the leverage it does I secured a very smart one bed flat with two sets of central heating (1) ceiling heat and (2) brand new night store E7 storage.

I rented, then went shared ownership, then bought the thing.

The E7 was excellent for my needs but relatively more expensive than the then [ and now ] gas systems, but like many here there was no gas on the site. Because I was away each month for days / sometimes more than a week and the xmas break of 9 days was coming up I decided to :

- change the 3+ / 2+ and 1+ kWh .. for .. 3+ / 3+ and 1.4 kWh .. so increase by plus 1 kWh
- pulled each heater off the wall and double insulated [ asbestos in those days ] both the front and the previously uninsulated rear
- I insulated the metal flap [ damper ] with that wrap around exhaust tape from Halfords

I took readings and settings before and after and saved about 10% plus [ when I was home ] for a spend of about £8 and saved about 20% plus when I was away.

The fact of the matter is all storage systems work on ~U~ factors, that is the amount of heat transferred to and stored in the walls / bricks / fabric of the dwelling. The constant complaint is the amount of warmth not required in the middle of the night or when no one is home is wasted, and subsequently no longer available when I needed it.

I saw that problem as a genie in a bottle I couldn't keep corked, lagging / insulating per the above meant that I lost ambient in the night [ and when I was away ] when I didn't need it and a much bigger store of energy available to me when I was home and I did need it.

NOTE : During the experiment I blew [ melted ] the £27 ' chip shop ' internal [ to the heater on the wall ] solder fuse twice, I bought a bigger one from Maplins and everything was fine from there on in. Nowt blew up, the wiring didn't melt, there was no catastrophic other unforeseen issue - it just worked ok.

- - just a true story about ' thinking outside the box ', but it worked for me -