Electricty used by gas heating

molerat

My monthly winter / summer difference is around 20 kWh so 4 kWh per day is way OTT.

MikePh

@bagand96

Good point. Yes I do have a tank which is heated by gas boiler. The immersion heater is NEVER switched on

MikePh

@molerat

Exactly         and that is what I am trying to figure out

Gerry1

Pump could be a prime suspect.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76497486/#Comment_76497486

northernsoul

I have recently been doing some electricity and gas consumption tests using the actual meter readings overnight.
i found , with only my fridge and freezer on i used 0.16kWh over 9 hours. When i had my boiler on all night (testing 24 hour gas consumption), over the same 9 hours i used 0.82kWh. It surprised me. An extra 0.66kWh 
Per hour the boiler used 0.073kWh or (on Octopus variable tarrif) £0.014. 
Therfore for a typical 10 hour heating on time £0.145 or  £4.52 a month.
I had been wondering why my average weekly electricity consumption of 20kWh had gone up recently, as i could not figure out what was using the extra electricity.

mysteryUser

My boiler is connected up to a relay which also has energy monitoring.

In November, I used an average of 433 watts per day.  That's almost 13kWh for the month, £2.52 on my tariff. 

Your usage appears to be quite significantly higher for some reason. 

Oneye12

And see my earlier post - it appears to be the heating pump.

I see no reason to double check energy usage to confirm what you have already figured;
it won’t diagnose the possible fault, and despite rented accommodation, if it burns out then it’s initially your problem with {at this time of year} lack of heating.

Petriix

jrawle said:

@MikePh it's probably best to wait for your smart meter installation, then you can see whether the usage really goes up when your heating is on. It would be good if you can report back as it would be good to know the outcome, or if you are still none the wiser, we can try to give further suggestions.

Sorry if it adds me to the list of clowns, but as a professional physicist, I realise lots of people are confused about units of electricity. I can see why, so I cast no aspersions.

Physicists actually use the joule (J) as the unit of energy, but this is a very small amount. You'll also see it on food packaging as an alternative to calories. In physics terminology, "power" is the rate at which energy is used. For this, we use the watt (W). One watt means you are using one joule of energy every second, in other words 1 W = 1 J/s. So an old 60W light bulb uses 60 joules of energy every second.

The confusion arises because the joule is such a small unit of energy, and a second a shorter time period than most people care about. That is why it is common to use the kilowatt-hour as a unit of energy. That is the amount of energy used if you run an appliance with a power of 1 kilowatt (1000W) for an hour. A kWh is therefore equal to 3.6 million joules.

Instead of  kilowatt-hours and watts, try thinking in joules and joules-per-second. Then it's easier to understand the difference. Then remember that a kilowatt-hour is 3,600,000 joules, and a watt is a J/s, and you'll see why they are that way around.

I hope that's useful for anyone who is confused, although maybe introducing yet more units will have caused more confusion.

I would personally advocate for a change to measuring energy in megajoules (MJ) rather than kWh.

1 megajoule is roughly the energy required to drive an EV 1 mile so the estimated range in miles would be roughly the battery capacity in MJ and efficiency would be in miles per MJ. Then we could measure power in MJ per hour and it would be just like miles and mph. Simple!

jrawle

Petriix said:

jrawle said:

@MikePh it's probably best to wait for your smart meter installation, then you can see whether the usage really goes up when your heating is on. It would be good if you can report back as it would be good to know the outcome, or if you are still none the wiser, we can try to give further suggestions.

Sorry if it adds me to the list of clowns, but as a professional physicist, I realise lots of people are confused about units of electricity. I can see why, so I cast no aspersions.

Physicists actually use the joule (J) as the unit of energy, but this is a very small amount. You'll also see it on food packaging as an alternative to calories. In physics terminology, "power" is the rate at which energy is used. For this, we use the watt (W). One watt means you are using one joule of energy every second, in other words 1 W = 1 J/s. So an old 60W light bulb uses 60 joules of energy every second.

The confusion arises because the joule is such a small unit of energy, and a second a shorter time period than most people care about. That is why it is common to use the kilowatt-hour as a unit of energy. That is the amount of energy used if you run an appliance with a power of 1 kilowatt (1000W) for an hour. A kWh is therefore equal to 3.6 million joules.

Instead of  kilowatt-hours and watts, try thinking in joules and joules-per-second. Then it's easier to understand the difference. Then remember that a kilowatt-hour is 3,600,000 joules, and a watt is a J/s, and you'll see why they are that way around.

I hope that's useful for anyone who is confused, although maybe introducing yet more units will have caused more confusion.

I would personally advocate for a change to measuring energy in megajoules (MJ) rather than kWh.

1 megajoule is roughly the energy required to drive an EV 1 mile so the estimated range in miles would be roughly the battery capacity in MJ and efficiency would be in miles per MJ. Then we could measure power in MJ per hour and it would be just like miles and mph. Simple!

I was thinking the same thing earlier. The energy suppliers might like it too as it could make the ever increasing prices seem cheaper (e.g. 10p/MJ), just like when petrol went from being sold by the gallon to litres!

markin

The oven for 1hr and washer could use 3 to 4 kW depending on settings in my mind, run a 1hr test  with everything off but the boiler.