OMG am I lighting up a town?

Robin9

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth wrote: »

It’s your mums 1kw electric bar heater in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. 10 hours a day is 33,000kwH a year?

Knit your mum a cardie for winter and a ... for summer!

1 x 10 x 365 = 3650kwH

Andy_WSM

easygoing wrote: »

They say we are using 33,068.09 kWh. In 2016 it was 10,863.56 kWh

You're really not using 33,068kWh per year. If you were that works out at 3.75kWh every hour of every day. Something would be VERY hot and you'd know about it!

Even taking the figure of 10,863kWh that's a constant 1.24kWh 24/7/365. Whilst this is more possible it's still unlikely and suggests a high heat load somewhere.

Anything that heats uses a lot of electricity, so look for heat and you'll likely find the culprit.

WobblyDog

With electricity bills that large, the first thing I would do is go and buy a whole-house energy monitor, to gather hard numbers and sanity-check the meter readings. As your electrical installation sounds slightly complicated, you might want to see if there are multiple places you can temporarily install the sensor clamp, just in case the power is somehow being syphoned off downstream of the meter.


As an example:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/OWL-micro-Wireless-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B007W0SQ3Y/

Cardew

Andy_WSM wrote: »

You're really not using 33,068kWh per year.

Agreed.

There seems little point in all the suggestions for energy saving when, as stated in the opening post, SSE have accepted there is an issue and are investigating.

Robin9

easygoing wrote: »

They say we are using 33,068.09 kWh. .

Is this per year osince you moved in or what? Is this what SSE have actually told you following the check meter installation.?

easygoing

We moved in 10 years ago.. this is per year and only for the last two years. Its slowly been going up!
We have everything off now in our part of the house and are all living in mums bit, which is 8 meters by 4 meters.
We have in here, a tv. An electric cooker and a space saver heater. The water heater is on timed for economy 7 at night. We do have spot lights, but they are all LED.
SSE have now said, the check meter is reading the same as the other meter. They are going to pass us on to another department.
Trouble is, is 33,000 KWh per year realistic or would that be impossible to use in a 3 bed detached?
To me, it seems our electricity is going elsewhere, but we are on our own here, with just a small holding without house, but barns next door. Our electricity is overhead and we have the transformer at the edge of our land, where the neighbours had their supply taken from.
Our electricity travels from the same transformer into our bungalow.

Robin9

A thought - where are your meters ? In the bungalow or in a box at the foot of the transformer ? If the latter there will be a private cable going to your bungalow - is it possible that your neighbours supply is connected to this ?

ProDave

You really NEED to do some self tests.

Turn EVERYTHING off. Take a meter reading. Wait an hour, take another meter reading. if it has clocked up at all in that hour, your electricity is going elsewhere.

Then turn on a known load. Say a 2KW heater. Just that. Nothing else on but that one heater. Take a reading, leave it an hour and take another reading. Has it clocked up the expected 2KWh or not?

Have you done a daily reading yet? We need that so see how much you are using and see if it is realistic or not.

Also clarify WHERE you meter is, in the bungalow or somewhere else? post a picture of the distribution setup.

easygoing

The meter is in the bungalow. the transformer is about 400 ft from the meter. So I suppose that cancels that out.
when SSE sent their engineer, they did exactly that.. turned everything off, used a calibrated heater and tested it for times. Twice is came back the correct reading and twice is came back as in incorrect reading.
Andy_WSM, I find your comments hopeful as if I was honest, I'm a bit green on what KWH is average in a home. Even if I have a huge home with 10 bedrooms, it doesn't sound like I would be using that much.
the water heater has been turned right down, so it only is on using E7, we have no heating at the moment due to the boiler break down, so we are only using the wall heater and the oven, along with a few lights... lets hope, I managed to save something. So far I owe the electricity board £3700 for 6 months.. I refuse to pay the £622 they want per month and have continued to pay the £209 per month for the time being.
Will keep reading the meter and test meter and feed back to you all..

lstar337

easygoing wrote: »

The meter is in the bungalow. the transformer is about 400 ft from the meter. So I suppose that cancels that out.
when SSE sent their engineer, they did exactly that.. turned everything off, used a calibrated heater and tested it for times. Twice is came back the correct reading and twice is came back as in incorrect reading.
Andy_WSM, I find your comments hopeful as if I was honest, I'm a bit green on what KWH is average in a home. Even if I have a huge home with 10 bedrooms, it doesn't sound like I would be using that much.
the water heater has been turned right down, so it only is on using E7, we have no heating at the moment due to the boiler break down, so we are only using the wall heater and the oven, along with a few lights... lets hope, I managed to save something. So far I owe the electricity board £3700 for 6 months.. I refuse to pay the £622 they want per month and have continued to pay the £209 per month for the time being.
Will keep reading the meter and test meter and feed back to you all..

You can rest easy that what you are being charged for is far from average. To put it in perspective, I pay less than £300 a year for my usage in a 3 bed house. Although I am not really average either, you can see the huge gap between us.

There is something wrong going on here, I don't think anybody doubts that! It's just a case of finding what it is.

The good thing is that if the issue isn't with you, you could be looking at a tidy some of money paid back to you.;)