Meter Reading

Reed_Richards

Wow, here am I making an assertion and waving my hands about and here is @matelodave with hard figures.  Impressive!

matelodave

Not really, but thaks for the compliment , the calculators are here, https://bloglocation.com/art/water-heating-calculator-for-time-energy-power

Just put in your own figures (use litres and Celcius). I estimated the incoming cold at 10C and the tank temp at 60C then "voila" out comes the result. The tank heat loss may be written on the side or can usually be determined from the manufacturer's spec's or approvals

ZacharyJohn

Thanks for the info on the immersion heaters, guys.

So I was surprised today that we didn't use any underfloor heating whatsoever, no washing machine or dishwasher, had one shower each (one in the morning, one in the evening) but had the top immersion heater on for around 12 hours, and we've used 14 kWh of electricity. That plus the fact that from 22.30 Friday to 11.00 Saturday morning we didn't even have the immersion heater on either and used up 7 kWh.

What's using up all this energy if we've quite literally got nothing on?

matelodave

What about the fridge, the freezer, cooker, TV, Syy box, Playstation, router, microwave, computer, printer,phone chargers etc. Did you turn on any lights (what sort have you got halogen or all LEd's) or cook a meal. leaving stuff on standby rather than switcing it off at the wall still uses a small amount of power, not a lot but a few watts here and there can add up over the day.

Our "everything off" when we go on holiday still leaves the freezer, Sky box, router a couple of cameras and the auto security lights on on and usess around 3.5kwh a day. Our ten 50watts kitchen downlighters used to chew through a kilowatt every two hours before we swapped them out for ten 5watt LED's.

The only way to check your "literally nothing on", is by reading the meter, then shutting off the power at the mains swirch for a couple of hours and then reading it again to check that it hasn't incremented by even a single digit. You can then turn on one circuit at a time to see which one starts to increment the meter and then find out what is connected to it, using leccy and how much. The fridge and freezer should be OK for several hours without power if you dont open the doorss.

It's a bit of a faff but you should be able to determine what's using it. Bear in mind just 100watts on continuously uses 2.4kwh a day 

An alternative, is to read the meter just as you go to bed and then again when you get up (but before turning ANYTHING on. Do it for several nights to establish your energy baseline (ie stuff that cooks away all the time)

Reed_Richards

Before I had any form of electrical heating I averaged my electricity consumption of a month (November) and it was 8.4 kWh per day.  I then replaced my freezer and paid a hefty premium for one with a particularly low power consumption and it went down to 6.4 kWh per day.  On the basis of these figures your 7 kW in 12.5 hours (including overnight) is a lot but not beyond the bounds of possibility.  I am quite power-conscious and had already made sure all my light bulbs were LEDs, getting rid of any of the power-hungry old-fashioned filament type bulbs and halogen down-lights.  

Gerry1

ZacharyJohn said:

from 22.30 Friday to 11.00 Saturday morning we didn't even have the immersion heater on either and used up 7 kWh.

What's using up all this energy if we've quite literally got nothing on?

That's an average of 560W which is on the high side but not ridiculously so.  The quickest way to work out what's happening is to switch off all the circuits at the consumer unit then switch them on in turn while looking at the 1000 Imp/kWh LED.  It's easy to calculate the instant consumption (1000 flashes equals 1kWh).  The fridge and freezer are likely to be the biggest culprits, but you can switch them off while you do your tests.

You may also be able to read the instant consumption from the LCD: it's hard to see much from the photos but there seems to be such a figure, it's the one where the units are shown as plain kW rather than kWh.

QrizB

ZacharyJohn, I know nothing about smart meters but do you have an in-home display that tells you your power consumption? If not, something like this is rather old-fashioned - no smartphone app or web portal, just a mono LCD display - but might help you track down those mysterious loads:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/293977486656 (if the auction is dead, it's an "energy monitor", currently £12.90 delivered).

I've got one* and I find it really useful, I try to check it before bed in case Mrs QrizB has left the electric heater on in her shed!

* - OK two**

** - Thinking about it, I might have a third one in a box somewhere.

ZacharyJohn

Thanks for the replies guys.

I think I will have to end up doing a test by switching the circuits off one-by-one and finding out exactly what is using up all this energy. When we're asleep there should literally only be the fridge/freezer on, the router and maybe a couple of phones charging at the mains.

@Gerry1I checked the 1,000 Imp/kWh LED this morning and it was literally flashing about once every 1/1.5 seconds. I'm not sure for how long this frequency continued but something must sneakily be rifling through electricity every now and again - I just gotta find out what.

@QrizB SSE do offer a free in-home display but at the moment my flat isn't green lit for installation yet (for some reason) but I'm told this is due to change imminently. I'm happy to read the meter for now, even if it is a bit of a trek from my desk!