Average usage and E7 question

Debhartin

Hi
I wonder if someone can help me.

Our electricity bill is exceedingly high.  We live in a 3bed house and the electricity company said the average should be about 4300kwh a year and we are averaging 15000kwh.

We don't have a boiler (warm air heating) and our water comes from the cold tank in the loft to a cylinder heater in the airing cupboard.

The electricity company are adamant that the heating of the water is the problem but I can't see a reduction in electricity consumption when i turn it off?  We seem to be averaging 0.6kwh an hour with nothing on (apart from plugs etc).

When I flick the switch on the fuse box that says (boiler and plugs (we have no boiler that I know of!) the consumption goes down.  However when i manually turn the plugs off it doesn't seem to correlate.

A few years ago Scottish Power messed up our meter and took it off Economy 7 but the consumption doesn't appear to be significantly higher overnight?  When it comes to reading our meters theres always an issue as the main electricity people think it should still be 2 meters?

Sorry a long winded question but could our cylinder have a timer in built that I can't see where the plug is??

I have an electrician coming out this week hopefully but wondered if anyone had any thoughts?

Thank you so much.

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Average annual gas consumption is 12,000kWh, average annual electricity consumption is 2,900kWh, total 14,900kWh.

If you have an average house with average people but no gas or oil then your total consumption is very close to average !  It just happens to be all electricity.

Presumably your warm air system uses daytime electricity which makes Economy 7 uneconomic?

QrizB

You've posted in the "LPG, Heating Oil, Solid & Other Fuels" section so you won't get very many replies; you'd be better off asking in the main "Energy" forum.

However ... 15000kWh per year is not that unusual for a three-bed house. The benchmark of 4300kWh/yr is for a typical one- or two-bed flat, since those are the most common all-electric properties. If you were on mains gas the "typical" would be 2900kWh/.yr of electricity plus 12000kWh/yr of gas, a total of 14900kWh/yr - pretty much the same as you are using now.

Have you tried taking daily meter readings, at roughly the same time every day? Or morning-and-evening readings? What do you find?

Do you still have E7, or are you single-rate? It sounds like the latter, and that's almost the most expensive way to heat a home (only little camping bottles of gas are more expensive), see https://nottenergy.com/resources/energy-cost-comparison/ for details.

I once had a house with warm air heating and it used a big central storage heater. Do you have this or do you have something else?

Debhartin

Ah thanks both that is really helpful.  I hadn't thought about the joint amount together, and didn't realise I'd posted in the wrong group!

The warm air heating yes has a big unit in the loft but we barely use it (warm house!)

Yes I've been taking meter readings regularly and when I turn off the fuse box isolating the 'plugs/boiler' then the consumption goes down.  It's not the water heater though as that is on a different circuit?  I'm at a loss lol!  It's just annoying me now.

Thank you for your help.
Debbie

MSE_ForumTeam5

We've moved this thread to the main Energy board

QrizB

Debhartin said:

Yes I've been taking meter readings regularly and when I turn off the fuse box isolating the 'plugs/boiler' then the consumption goes down.  It's not the water heater though as that is on a different circuit?  I'm at a loss lol!  It's just annoying me now.

Somewhere there will be a supply to your water heater (which is probably an electric immersion heater in your hot water tank, but could be more complicated). In fact if your house used to be E7 there could be two heater elements, one on the E7 supply and one to a switch on the "always on" circuits; this lets you heat a whole tank overnight ion E7 but also lets you top up during the day if you run out.

Does your tank look something like this? Those two holes on the right-hand side of the photo are where the two immersion heaters would be. Conventionally, the lower one would be connected to the E7 supply and the upper one would be manually switchable: