Working out annual electricity usage

reck_uk

I’ve been looking to see how our electricity usage is compared to the average.

A bit of background information

We live in a 3-bed semi-detached house. There are four of us, two adults, two children. There is no gas supply to the house so we are 100% electricity.

We are on a Economy 7 tariff with heating supplied mostly from storage heaters and a couple of panel heaters that are on for a short period of time each day during the winter months.

Looking at this site….

https://www.ukpower.co.uk/home_energy/average-household-gas-and-electricity-usage

….and using the Electricity Profile Class 2 table which is for Economy 7 it says medium usage is 4,200 kWH and high is 7,100 kWH

I have a meter reading from 01/04/21 and compared it to one I took today to get a years worth of usage and I get the following figures.

Night: 9674

Day: 3606

Total: 13280

Am I reading this right, is our usage almost double (13280) what the high figure is on the ukpower.co.uk website is?

Rodders53

Dunno the exact reason why ---  I suspect E7 homes are more commonly 1/2 bed and flats that 3 bed houses and distort the figures to be lower?

But add the typical Gas kWh to the typical Elec class 1  to get a total kWh energy use ...
Low user = 8,000 + 1,800 (9,800)
Medium = 12,000 + 2,900 (14, 900)

Suspect then you'll be closer to the total energy you might expect to consume ??

Gerry1

Very few people heat houses with E7, they're usually one or two bedroom flats.  Houses usually have gas, LPG, oil or solid fuel.

Your kWh figure is slightly below the average Gas + Electricity total kWh use (14,900kWh).

Robin9

How do you get to double ? 13280 is not double 4200+7100 (11300) 

A little over average but not much

Mstty

Looks about right with multiple storage heaters recharging overnight.

If you have your usage for summer months you will undoubtedly see the overnight usage drop drastically and then ramp up in the winter months.

maxmycardagain

Gerry1 said:

Very few people heat houses with E7, they're usually one or two bedroom flats.  Houses usually have gas, LPG, oil or solid fuel.

Your kWh figure is slightly below the average Gas + Electricity total kWh use (14,900kWh).

If theres no mains gas in the street/village your stuck with 100% electric only......................usually night storage heaters

maxmycardagain

Heres a tip...

ensure you NSH's only charge up on the cheap rate....

especially if you have an old style mechanical timer for the 2 circuits

Ultrasonic

Robin9 said:

How do you get to double ? 13280 is not double 4200+7100 (11300) 

A little over average but not much

I believe the two figures you summed there were each totals for day and night rate, just for supposed 'medium' and 'high' usage.

@reck_uk on the face of it your energy use doesn't seem unreasonable, but however it may compare to others in similar circumstances I'm going to guess you'd still like to try to find ways to reduce use and bills so I'd just focus on that aspect if I were you.

maisie_cat

Gerry1 said:

Very few people heat houses with E7, they're usually one or two bedroom flats.  Houses usually have gas, LPG, oil or solid fuel.

Your kWh figure is slightly below the average Gas + Electricity total kWh use (14,900kWh).

Our house had E7 storage heaters until last year although we didn't use them, for areas without mains gas they were probably a good option 30 years ago

k_man

Robin9 said:

How do you get to double ? 13280 is not double 4200+7100 (11300) 

A little over average but not much

The comparison was between 7100 (the figure for high usage) and 13280.
Which also inst double but close ish.

4200 was for medium usage.
I don't think you meant to add them together!

QrizB

reck_uk said:

I have a meter reading from 01/04/21 and compared it to one I took today to get a years worth of usage and I get the following figures.

Night: 9674

Day: 3606

Total: 13280

Am I reading this right, is our usage almost double (13280) what the high figure is on the ukpower.co.uk website is?

Yes, that's about right. A relatively modern 3-bed semi will need 10-12000 kWh/yr for heat, plus you'll want 2500-3500 kWh/yr for all the other electrical appliances.

When Mrs QrizB and I had E7 in a smallish 70s 3-bed semi (just us at first, then +1 child) we were using 9-10000 kWh/yr. We moved to a larger one with GCH before child 2 came along!