Units of Electricity, 5 per day

llh189

I have been tracking my electricity over the past few months by doing online meter readings.

I had a tumble dryer that is now broken, I was using 3 times a week, it was a washer / dryer to actually took an age to dry anything. The dryer stopped working but the washer is fine!

Since using it I have only dropped one unit of electricity a day, my average consumption in 5 units a day!

My question is, is this good, could I reduce further?

2 bed house unoccupied all day during the week, have a lodger Mon to Fri, stays in his room mostly, no TV in there, he uses mostly his laptop. Downstairs lights are not used, all three rooms have lamps with energy saving bulbs they are on timers which I adjust depending on time of the year.

TV's off at plugs, no dishwasher, Sky box on, router on, fridge freezer on, washing machine 2/3 times a week.

What is your average usage?

how have you cut back further?

Thanks

victor2

Our average consumption over the last year has been 11kWh per day. That's in a 4BR house with 3 adults, gas CH & DHW, but electric shower.
Monitor my usage carefully and have observed that electricity usage varies only slightly over the year. Yes, lights are on more in the winter, but they're all low energy bulbs. Biggest user is the fridge/freezer, and there's not much we can do about that, apart from buy a more efficient one I suppose, but we like the one we have.

So, 5 kWh per day doesn't sound bad to me.
If you really want to see what uses electricity on an individual basis, you could consider getting a monitor something like this. Not recommending that specific one in particular, but it gives you an idea. They are good for items running off a standard 13 amp plug, but no use for bigger items such as cookers and showers.

llh189

Thanks Victor, the hot water is heated by gas, as is the shower.

My lodger, does use the cooker every night to cook his ready meals, grrrrr but can hardly ask him to microwave them as he practically lives in room and is a quiet as a dormouse.

notbritishgas

I would say 5 units a day, 35 per week is very good, last week I used 53kwh.
As to the tumble drier, used 3 times a week a very rough estimate of power would be 2kwh per day, 6 per week, and that is near enough your 1 kwh per day reduction.

yangptangkipperbang

Do you realise that the less electricity you use the more it costs you per unit ???
If you are on a dual rate tariff you may end up paying the high rate for all of your electricity - what a bizarre way to get people to use less energy ?

victor2

yangptangkipperbang wrote: »

Do you realise that the less electricity you use the more it costs you per unit ???
If you are on a dual rate tariff you may end up paying the high rate for all of your electricity - what a bizarre way to get people to use less energy ?

But if you're on a tariff with a standing charge and single rate, then the unit cost is the same regardless of how much or how little you use.
Dual rate tariffs are just a different way of imposing a fixed charge for having the service in place and gas or electricity available "on tap" as it were.

yangptangkipperbang

victor2 wrote: »

But if you're on a tariff with a standing charge and single rate, then the unit cost is the same regardless of how much or how little you use.
Dual rate tariffs are just a different way of imposing a fixed charge for having the service in place and gas or electricity available "on tap" as it were.

No. If you have a standing charge the effect is the same.
The less units you use just means that the standing charge is spread over fewer units, therefore the overall cost per unit rises.

The TRUE cost per unit over a period is your total bill divided by the number of units.
If your standing charge is 50p per day and your electricity costs 12p per unit and you use one unit of electricity in a year, your cost per unit is £182.62. If you use 5000 units in a year your cost per unit is 15.65p.

As I said, it is a bizarre way to price electricity - and gas ! Mind you EVERYTHING about energy prices is bizarre.

arcon5

yangptangkipperbang wrote: »

No. If you have a standing charge the effect is the same.
The less units you use just means that the standing charge is spread over fewer units, therefore the overall cost per unit rises.

The TRUE cost per unit over a period is your total bill divided by the number of units.
If your standing charge is 50p per day and your electricity costs 12p per unit and you use one unit of electricity in a year, your cost per unit is £182.62 £182.62 per year. If you use 5000 units in a year your cost per unit is 15.65p = £782.50/year.

As I said, it is a bizarre way to price electricity - and gas ! Mind you EVERYTHING about energy prices is bizarre.

Who cares? The end bill would still be lower!!

zagfles

yangptangkipperbang wrote: »

No. If you have a standing charge the effect is the same.
The less units you use just means that the standing charge is spread over fewer units, therefore the overall cost per unit rises.

The TRUE cost per unit over a period is your total bill divided by the number of units.
If your standing charge is 50p per day and your electricity costs 12p per unit and you use one unit of electricity in a year, your cost per unit is £182.62. If you use 5000 units in a year your cost per unit is 15.65p.

As I said, it is a bizarre way to price electricity - and gas ! Mind you EVERYTHING about energy prices is bizarre.

It's not bizarre at all. There are two basic costs to supplying electricty (or gas/water etc), the cost of the energy itself, and fixed costs such as the infrastructure and its maintenance (cables, substations, pylons) plus stuff like meter readings, billing etc. The fixed costs don't vary with usage, so that's why in the past all bills had a standing charge to pay the fixed costs as well as a unit cost.

Then some marketing genius came up with the idea of hiding the standing charge in dual rate tariffs. Have a higher rate for the first so many units, where the difference between the high and low rates multiplied by the number of high rate units is equal to the standing charge!

Exactly the same as having a standing charge provided that customers used the full amount of high rate units. So they always set the number of high rate units at a level which virtually everyone will exceed, eg under 3 a day.

Ich_2

I was at a property yesterday that was using in the vicinity of 30 units per hour! Though most of it was via an illegal connection to a cannabis farm!

macman

You are already using less than half the national average. 1850kWh pa is very low.