Typical household electricity baseload

larkim

See my later post - it was certainly reading 0.027kW, but I've re-seated the clamp and now I'm getting more sensible readings (including day time readings). For example, the kettle was causing the meter to read an increase of about 0.9kW yesterday, today it is more sensibly reading an increase of about 3kW.

Interested that you can get as low as 50w; do you think you are super-frugal?

Matt

KevinG

larkim wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

Seems the ballpark (depending on the tariff the individual is on) is "do you use 2/3 of your electricity at night", which on the basis of 208kWh per year seems highly unlikely!!

Having never had an E7 setup I hadn't appreciated how expensive getting it wrong could be!!

Matt

It's nothing like 2/3 - more like 1/3.

KevinG

The_Green_Hornet wrote: »

All very interesting advice but without anyone knowing my actual energy consumption or electricity tariff not very useful I'm afraid and way off the mark.

Hint: My winter overnight electricity usage is considerably lower than the spring/summer/autumn.

Apologies for my hasty comment then - you may well be in a similar boat to me - I use E7 electricity to heat water in the summer (which it still is as far as I am concerned because I haven't needed to put the heating on yet!) and gas in the winter. (I am not on mains gas but use LPG which is more expensive per kWh than off-peak electricity but cheaper than peak rate.)

zeupater

larkim wrote: »

See my later post - it was certainly reading 0.027kW, but I've re-seated the clamp and now I'm getting more sensible readings (including day time readings). For example, the kettle was causing the meter to read an increase of about 0.9kW yesterday, today it is more sensibly reading an increase of about 3kW.

Interested that you can get as low as 50w; do you think you are super-frugal?

Matt

Hi

I seem to remember the OWL giving some strange readings when the clamp sensor was resting on the henley block so I moved it .... anyway, good to hear that you're sorted now.

Regarding super frugal .... :cool: ..... probably a little, but I suppose it's really a case that we're just a few years further down the road than many/most which has resulted in a reduction in electricity consumption of well over 50% (before pv) and gas by over 75% over the last ten years or so ..... the intent is to keep improving on that too .....

The real difference is just being energy aware when using electrical goods and just as importantly when selecting/purchasing new/replacement items .... yes, we've done the normal thing and turned down the thermostat on the central heating, however, we normally get a considerable proportion of our heatload from solar gain, then there's the log burner and massive levels of insulation when compared to most, so the heating usually isn't needed until early December ... to give an idea, the log burner has only been used in the afternoon for three days so far this season, that was earlier this week (M/T/W) and only in the afternoon/evening at that ... 18C at the moment, not cold but not hot either, just further down the road with many playing catch-up quite quickly.

HTH
Z

reeac

The best way to check the base load of the house is to go away for a few days or ideally 8 days so that you can get the consumption for a full seven days with noone at home. That's assuming that your smart meter stores such a value - if not then just read the normal meter before and after. In our case it comes out to be about 2.8 kWh per day which must be a fridge/freezer, cordless phone chargers, alarm clock, an outside PIR light and some neon lights on power sockets - mostly the fridge/freezer I suspect.

larkim

Just to check I'm doing this "right", here's a photo on flickr of the meter cupboard. I've clamped the detector onto the grey cables which appear to be after both the meter and the main switch, hopefully on the live side (but I don't believe that matters anyway, live current = neutral current?).

http://flic.kr/p/aEP5og

As you can see, the brown live cable is quite closely packed with the blue neutral so there was no hope of getting the clamp properly into there.

It does seem to be giving valid readings, but just wanted to check!

Matt

Yut_Man

Larkin the fit looks okay. I have it very similar.

zeupater

larkim wrote: »

Just to check I'm doing this "right", here's a photo on flickr of the meter cupboard. I've clamped the detector onto the grey cables which appear to be after both the meter and the main switch, hopefully on the live side (but I don't believe that matters anyway, live current = neutral current?).

http://flic.kr/p/aEP5og

As you can see, the brown live cable is quite closely packed with the blue neutral so there was no hope of getting the clamp properly into there.

It does seem to be giving valid readings, but just wanted to check!

Matt

Hi

With pv generating that would be a position where a net-reading would be measured .... when not generating it will be consumption ...

HTH
Z

larkim

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

With pv generating that would be a position where a net-reading would be measured .... when not generating it will be consumption ...

HTH
Z

Yes, I appreciate that - when (touch wood) the installation finally happens I'll be trying to make sure that the installers leave a single cable available for me to clip another Owl onto so that I can have a readily accessible Owl reading for generation.

I presume that at the point at which I have PV its impossibly anywhere in the house to get a total consumption reading then, as the two sources net each other down? Or is it possible still to read the gross consumption by clipping on somewhere else?

Matt

wuthton

larkim wrote: »

Yes, I appreciate that - when (touch wood) the installation finally happens I'll be trying to make sure that the installers leave a single cable available for me to clip another Owl onto so that I can have a readily accessible Owl reading for generation.

I presume that at the point at which I have PV its impossibly anywhere in the house to get a total consumption reading then, as the two sources net each other down? Or is it possible still to read the gross consumption by clipping on somewhere else?

Matt

I believe you can only get the net figure from the owl connected to your meter but if you are having a second owl on your pv it is easy to work out the your consumption from the difference between the readings.