Too much electricity usage.

stevebrookman

Good morning all,
we have had a high electricity bill for many years, the last years consumption was 5948KW whereas the average for a large house is 4900KW. Our house is not that big-3 bedrooms, gas heating and cooking, energy saving bulbs etc. We are careful with usage, not leaving lights on etc. We are at a loss as to how we are using so much electricity.


Any ideas on how to solve this would be more than welcome.


Regards


Steve

JJ_Egan

Meter reading for one week and find where you are using electric .Immersion Tumble-dryer etc .

Consumerist

Is the consumption figure based on your own readings or your suppliers estimates?

What type of meter(s) do you have - standard credit or economy 7, etc?

stevebrookman

Thanks for the replies,
The meter is a standard meter, the energy consumption is an actual figure given by the provider. Our bill s have been really high for a few years-our electricity cost for the last year was £809.
We occasionally use a tumble drier, but do not have an immersion heater or any form of electric heating.


Our energy consumption for the last year was 5948 KW.


Thanks


Steve

stator

Check if your energy company will send you a free energy monitor. Then you can experiment turning things on and off and see how it affects your usage

matelodave

Try reading the meter yourself for a couple of weeks (ideally daily) so you can get a feel of when you are using it and what are the main culprits. If you don't measure it then you can't control it.

Turn stuff off at the wall when it's not in use especially playstations and video recorders. Computer can use a fair amount as well. Even our electric recliners consume about 25w each when plugged in, so they get turned off overnight.

Anything with a heater in it will use power when it's in use so try using the washing machine, dryer and dishwasher when they are full rather than half loads.

Halogen downlighters can use a lot, our kitchen was using 500w until we changed them to LEDs which now only consume 40 watts for the same amount of light, saving 5.5p for every hour that they are on.

Some libraries will lend you an energy monitor for a couple of weeks for free and they are useful to check what's still turned on when it shouldn't be.


I've got an EnergyHive which allows me to monitor my consumption (even when I'm away from home) and I reckon it's saved it's cost in the first year. Look here http://www.energyhive.com/dashboard/dave . We are all electric (heating as well) but I know when stuff is using power and when it shouldn't be.

Consumerist

To start the ball rolling, I would suggest that you take your own readings daily for a week or two to see how your short-term consumption stacks up against your annual usage.

Since you don't use electrical heating, your winter consumption should be only a little higher than during the summer (i.e. extra lighting hours) so the short-term daily average should be reasonably consistent with the daily average taken over a full year.

sheffield_lad

Your usage works out just over 16 units per day, this is not massively high depending on the size of your family. My general felling is a couple 8-10upd, and a family 14-16upd.

Of course usage is only acceptable if you feel it is, as others have suggested find out where the extra is going.

Tumble dryer is a good shout also do you have an electric shower? If the answer is yes then this will be the biggest user of electric in the whole house. An average shower is 8kw so that's 8 units for ever hour its used.

AndyPK

with that sort of usage it would be worth buying an energy monitor off ebay and finding out whats going on !

Pincher

You are paying ~£100 a year on standing charge.
Personally, I prefer to use more electricity to get value for money for the SC.


I am paying 10.327p+VAT per kWh, though.
I wouldn't think like this if I was paying 15p.


For 4,700kWh, I paid about £500+£120 SC last year.


So what if I could reduce it to £300 + SC. I would prefer to spend £200 extra and have the convenience.


If you want ideas, check out your freezer, leaking seals are bad news.


As Cardew pointed out, new tumble dryers have heat recovery, which saves a lot of energy, but we are talking about paying hundreds more to save about £50 a year, but then you can use it a lot more without feeling guilty.

Robwiz

Daily meter reading is a good idea and having a realtime monitor with a clamp round your incoming live is very useful (we have a Wattson device which logs usage on a website).

If your habit is to leave TVs, satellite boxes, stereos, game consoles and microwaves on standby it will add up. I discovered that our microwave uses 40 W when plugged in, just to power a green LED clock – that's 350 units per year on its own.

Washing machine, dishwasher, tumble drier, hair driers and kettles are the heavy consumers. Boil only enough water for the number of cups/mugs you are brewing – it takes a lot of energy to boil water.

It's worth having a purge day unplugging everything you're not using and turning lights off when not needed, to see how much you can reduce your usage.