“Baseline” electricity usage

Yellow_mango

We recently went on holiday, and so I had an opportunity to see what our baseline or background usage was whilst we were away.

It was pretty steady at around 8kwh, or £1.25 a day.

We didn’t make a particular effort to turn anything off standby etc, but that still seems a lot to me. I have requested an IHD from my supplier (Shell) so I can try and pin down specific appliance usage, but until that arrives, I was just wondering what is “normal” for background electric usage?

We have a large American fridge freezer which I suspect may be a culprit. Some consoles and TVs on standby. Nothing else unusual I can think of.

The_Fat_Controller

Small Bosch fridge/freezer, set at 6 /-18 C

SKY box in ECO mode, set to record about 1.5 hours a day.

Power to boiler, it has run once in a month to protect the pump from seizing.

Electricity usage for 30 days was 49 kWh

[Deleted User]

Look online for the manual for your fridge, it will show the power used.

Make a full list of all electrical items and whether you leave then plugged in. You should take a meter reading, unplug every thing for an hour (the fridge/freezer will be okay if not opened) and take another reading. It should be the same. Now just plug the fridge back in and in an hour check again.

Nick_C

The_Fat_Controller wrote: »

Small Bosch fridge/freezer, set at 6 /-18 C

SKY box in ECO mode, set to record about 1.5 hours a day.

Power to boiler, it has run once in a month to protect the pump from seizing.

Electricity usage for 30 days was 49 kWh

Your fridge is too warm!

Talldave

Your figures show that your home is averaging 333W when you're not living in it. I would say that's high. Out of interest, what's the figure for a week you're living there?

At night our house sits at around 77-100 level, and with a dishwasher cycle, the average overnight is around 160W. Almost 30W of that is broadband/wifi network.

Check the manufacturer's figures for the fridge freezer - they'll probably be better than you'll ever achieve, but if it's a few years old it could be a large contribution to your problem.

The IHD will help you see what's happening.

Edit: for general interest, just went to grab a coffee and peered at energy monitor. Little one is watching (large-ish) TV, laptop PSU is on and whole house consumption is 203W.

Yellow_mango

Your figures show that your home is averaging 333W when you're not living in it. I would say that's high. Out of interest, what's the figure for a week you're living there?

I’ve just checked, and total usage for June was 426kwh, so average around 14-15kwh per day. That was a little lower than May, possibly because I was trying to use the dryer less.

I accept that we are generally high users. We do use a dryer, and a washing machine and a dishwasher, and have an electric shower. But obviously none of those were used whilst we were away, and I’m surprised given that, that more than half our usage is actually “background”. I’ll have to do some investigating!

Heating and water is gas. Gas usage was zero whilst we were away.

Yellow_mango

I’ve looked up the fridge. It’s around 2 years old, A+ rated. Apparently uses 419kwh pa. So that shouldn’t be a major culprit.

matelodave

When we go away I turn everything off except the Freezer (tall upright A+), the SKY box, the broadband stuff (route and optical terminal unit) and couple of power line adapters, a couple of clocks, two surveillance cameras and an energy monitor. I forgot, 3 dect phones/answering machine

Which leaves us at just under 3kwh a day. Everything else is turned off at the wall or unplugged (including the fridge, microwave, cooker, washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, heating system, TV etc and all computers, printers etc).

If I turn off the fridge, freezer, unplug the laptop and phone charger I can get it down to 90watts. The laptop takes around 25watts, the phone charger 5watts, the cooker on standby is 4 watts. The freezer takes around 110watts when it's running and I guess the fridge does the same.

So if my base load is around 90watts (2.1kwh/day) and we use 3kwh/day when we are away I guess the freezer is averaging about 900wh/day (328kwh a year) and probably the same again for the fridge (a tall A+ unit)

The_Fat_Controller

Nick_C wrote: »

Your fridge is too warm!

I am 6000 miles away for a while and the only contents are 3 bottles of soft drinks !

Just realised I got it wrong, fridge is at 8 C

coffeehound

Yellow_mango wrote: »

I’ve looked up the fridge. It’s around 2 years old, A+ rated. Apparently uses 419kwh pa. So that shouldn’t be a major culprit.

It's worth having a careful look at the seal on the freezer door as even a small leak will make it work harder. This can sometimes reveal itself by a trail of ice marking the spot.

Robin9

Yellow_mango wrote: »

........................

We have a large American fridge freezer which I suspect may be a culprit. ......................

Look no farther - problem solved.