Trying to fathom out our electric usage - help required please

wittynamegoeshere

Everyone here is just guessing really, the only answer is to monitor the daily total using your smart meter display and do some experiments.

You need to delve into the menus - they all differ but on ours I can display the current usage in kW or pence, or the daily, weekly or monthly totals.  There's no need for a spreadsheet, it should be logging it for you already, you just need to press the right buttons to display it.

eastcorkram

Just checked our readings for electricity. One year ago, minus a week, to today, we've used 2286 units. Three bed semi, two people, but both work full time .

[Deleted User]

Hi,

that's just over 6 units a day, not bad for 'Three bed semi, two people, but both work full time'.

sam1974_2

Shedman said:

Condenser tumble dryers are usually more energy hungry than vented as you are converting warm air to water rather than just doing away with the warm air.  Even a newish B rated one like our Beko can use over 3kw over a cycle especially if its very damp towels (hence we always give towels a second spin which helps).  

Something I use to monitor usage, particularly of the greenhouse heater but also other appliances if I want to check their consumption, is a TP-Link Kasa HS110 smart plug as that has energy monitoring (not the HS100 by the way as that doesnt).  Can pick them up for about £20. Also useful as you can remotely switch the greenhouse heater on or off using the app (or Alexa) or set a schedule up (or even in my case using a wi-fi thermometer linked to control the smart plug so that the heater in greenhouse is switched on if temp drops below  3° and off when it gets to 5° just to keep frost off...still used £40 of electric last winter though )

Oh I’ve definitely got that wrong then re condenser dryer then. I thought they were better! What do you think about the heat pump dryers? I’ve been looking at them but very mixed review, as seen people saying they take a long time to dry.

thanks for the suggestion, will take a look. Might be handy for some bits but sadly heaters and white goods are hard wired into fused Spurs, although I might be able to convince hubby to wire to a plug to test each thing maybe. 

sam1974_2

wittynamegoeshere said:

Everyone here is just guessing really, the only answer is to monitor the daily total using your smart meter display and do some experiments.

You need to delve into the menus - they all differ but on ours I can display the current usage in kW or pence, or the daily, weekly or monthly totals.  There's no need for a spreadsheet, it should be logging it for you already, you just need to press the right buttons to display it.

Yes, it does display current usage, then what you’ve used so far today, then totals for each previous day, week, month. 

The spreadsheet was before I had a smart meter.

matelodave

Try reading the meter before you go to bed and then again in the morning when you get up and before you turn anything on - that will give you your baseload when hopefully most stuff is turned off, unplugged and not in use.

We can get ours down to around 160watt/hr = approx 4kwh a day, but that's when we go away on holiday and even turn the fridge off. 

Our usually daily consumprtion is around 8-12kwh depending on whether we are using the dishwasher, washing machine or tumble dryer but as we are all electric (heating and hot water) our daily consumption when it's everso cold can get up to 60kwh/day. Our annual consumption is around 7500kwh.

As said above if you've got a smart meter then it should be logging your hourly, daily, weekly and monthly consumption (even our four year old SMETS1 which hasn't been sending info back since we left SSE in 2017 still logs the info and I can still read the data using the IHD)

[Deleted User]

sam1974_2 said:

Shedman said:

Condenser tumble dryers are usually more energy hungry than vented as you are converting warm air to water rather than just doing away with the warm air.  Even a newish B rated one like our Beko can use over 3kw over a cycle especially if its very damp towels (hence we always give towels a second spin which helps).  

Something I use to monitor usage, particularly of the greenhouse heater but also other appliances if I want to check their consumption, is a TP-Link Kasa HS110 smart plug as that has energy monitoring (not the HS100 by the way as that doesnt).  Can pick them up for about £20. Also useful as you can remotely switch the greenhouse heater on or off using the app (or Alexa) or set a schedule up (or even in my case using a wi-fi thermometer linked to control the smart plug so that the heater in greenhouse is switched on if temp drops below  3° and off when it gets to 5° just to keep frost off...still used £40 of electric last winter though )

Oh I’ve definitely got that wrong then re condenser dryer then. I thought they were better! What do you think about the heat pump dryers? I’ve been looking at them but very mixed review, as seen people saying they take a long time to dry.

thanks for the suggestion, will take a look. Might be handy for some bits but sadly heaters and white goods are hard wired into fused Spurs, although I might be able to convince hubby to wire to a plug to test each thing maybe. 

If heat pumps are inefficient then we are all doomed as this is the Government’s preferred way to heat our homes in the future. We have a Samsung Heat Pump that happily dries the clothes with a power factor of 500 Watts. Yes, the initial cycle time might be 3.05 hours but more often than not the tumble dryer is happily playing it’s end of cycle tune in less than 2 hours. To a degree, drying times depend on the speed of your washing machine spin cycle. 

sam1974_2

matelodave said:

Try reading the meter before you go to bed and then again in the morning when you get up and before you turn anything on - that will give you your baseload when hopefully most stuff is turned off, unplugged and not in use.

We can get ours down to around 160watt/hr = approx 4kwh a day, but that's when we go away on holiday and even turn the fridge off. 

Our usually daily consumprtion is around 8-12kwh depending on whether we are using the dishwasher, washing machine or tumble dryer but as we are all electric (heating and hot water) our daily consumption when it's everso cold can get up to 60kwh/day. Our annual consumption is around 7500kwh.

As said above if you've got a smart meter then it should be logging your hourly, daily, weekly and monthly consumption (even our four year old SMETS1 which hasn't been sending info back since we left SSE in 2017 still logs the info and I can still read the data using the IHD)

166 watts this morning when I woke up 👍🏼 Similar usage then as me and although our heating is gas, we are low gas users compared to average. 

[Deleted User] said:

sam1974_2 said:

Shedman said:

Condenser tumble dryers are usually more energy hungry than vented as you are converting warm air to water rather than just doing away with the warm air.  Even a newish B rated one like our Beko can use over 3kw over a cycle especially if its very damp towels (hence we always give towels a second spin which helps).  

Something I use to monitor usage, particularly of the greenhouse heater but also other appliances if I want to check their consumption, is a TP-Link Kasa HS110 smart plug as that has energy monitoring (not the HS100 by the way as that doesnt).  Can pick them up for about £20. Also useful as you can remotely switch the greenhouse heater on or off using the app (or Alexa) or set a schedule up (or even in my case using a wi-fi thermometer linked to control the smart plug so that the heater in greenhouse is switched on if temp drops below  3° and off when it gets to 5° just to keep frost off...still used £40 of electric last winter though )

Oh I’ve definitely got that wrong then re condenser dryer then. I thought they were better! What do you think about the heat pump dryers? I’ve been looking at them but very mixed review, as seen people saying they take a long time to dry.

thanks for the suggestion, will take a look. Might be handy for some bits but sadly heaters and white goods are hard wired into fused Spurs, although I might be able to convince hubby to wire to a plug to test each thing maybe. 

If heat pumps are inefficient then we are all doomed as this is the Government’s preferred way to heat our homes in the future. We have a Samsung Heat Pump that happily dries the clothes with a power factor of 500 Watts. Yes, the initial cycle time might be 3.05 hours but more often than not the tumble dryer is happily playing it’s end of cycle tune in less than 2 hours. To a degree, drying times depend on the speed of your washing machine spin cycle. 

That’s interesting to know that the time does change as 3 hours wouldn’t be do-able for one load! 

I caught the tale end of an interview on sky news last night, not sure if you saw it, but basically saying heat pump technology needed to drastically improve before the 2025 deadline. 

Bexie1989

On heat pump dryers - I have one and I LOVE it. The timer says 3+ hours depending on the cycle, but it's got sensors in so it stops automatically when things are dry - usually waaaaaay before the end of the timer! It dries a full load in around an hour and according to my meter, only used about 8p of electric for that cycle (when it cost 14.5p a unit... our tariff ran out the other day and we haven't used it on the expensive day rate, as we got economy 7 so we can run it for cheap at night). That seems pretty economical to me - especially as if we try hanging washing on airers (in a flat, no garden or balcony) it can be there for THREE DAYS and still be damp! I'll take 8-10p per drying cycle over that any day! (Plus the reduction in humidity and damp/mould problems we had when we dried everything on airers!)

It's a Beko DTLP71151W_WH Heat Pump Tumble Dryer. (I just found the order email to find the exact model lol). It's also nice because it's quite compact (I needed a small one as I have it on top of my kitchen counter) but still has a 7kg drum and like I said, dries stuff quickly and cheaply.

glennevis

sam1974_2 said:

thanks for the suggestion, will take a look. Might be handy for some bits but sadly heaters and white goods are hard wired into fused Spurs, although I might be able to convince hubby to wire to a plug to test each thing maybe. 

To find out how much power (wattage) a heater is using there is no need to get your hubby to alter the wiring. Watch your IHD in instantaneous power consumption mode as you switch a heater off then on. The difference in Watts displayed is due to the heater. Same applies for any other fixed power device.

As advised earlier, if you want to know how much power a washer or dryer for example consumes over a cycle then a TP-Link HS110 smart plug with power monitor would answer that question. Other smart plugs are available but some have very poor build quality.