Best ways of cutting energy usage?? Last year 63,000 Kwh Gas and 9,300 electric

Jonesy_40

Evan3020 said:

There is 25 kwh of electricity being used every day, check everything that is plugged in room by room and keep checking your meters several times a day.

Is 25kwh really high? I don't have anything in the house that should be using too much. Could a chest freezer use a lot?

Evan3020

You are using 3 times the normal amount of electricity and 5 times normal gas usage although you have a large old house which will account for some of that through inefficiency.

k_man

Mstty said:

Sounds like an immersion is being left on one or more hot water cylinders unless you run a business from home with a lot of desktop machines with monitors etc?

The advice.given so far is good. Start by turning everything off and see if you are still burning lots of gas and electricity.

An immersion heater left on all the time, could use 1 or 2 kWh per day, but not 25kWh!

Computers using this would require 10 - 20 on 24/7.
Or a few crypto miners....

@Jonesy_40 how well insulated is/are your hot water tanks.

For some context, your electric is 3x the average, and gas is 5-6x, albeit your home is larger, an older than most. But if you do have loft insulation and double glazing then something is missing.

Was the Aga gas or electric?

Alnat1

Can I ask what you use 40 litres of hot water for in the kitchen each day?

Coffeekup

Jonesy_40 said:,

Boilers were installed in 2018, both Vaillant Eco Tec 838, I don't know how efficient they are. Water heat set to 50 at the moment.

Why do you have two boilers? Especially as you say you only heat 2-3 rooms. Do you have mammoth sized radiators?

The gas aga would have eaten up lots of gas, a quick Google looks like they can use anything from 400-550 kwh's a week (depending on size and how many oven's), but that's gone now so I'm guessing your usage would have dropped now and will be reduced over the next 6 months (till January) too.

Another quick Google says the boilers you have burn 38kwh of gas an hour, a comparison with mine which uses 24kwh an hour, so that's 14 units more an hour over mine. In other words it guzzles gas and you have two of them.
Also why are you heating water with electricity in a tank and you have a combi boiler which provides your hot water for you? Appears a waste of electricity.

Other possible factors why you use so many kWh's, on both gas and electric...
* Having the boilers on a timer and heating the house when you're not in.
* Heating the house for 2-4 hours in the morning before you get up only to be out of bed and have left the house 30 minutes later.
* Heating is on while everyone is in bed.
* Heating is on the I'll an hour after you go bed (turn it off an hour before you go)
* Heating the house on mild day's, or days where there is a slight chill in the air. (Wear jumper's, or dress like Hugh Hefner)
* In accurate meter reading's - Year on year. 
* Hot tubs, American fridge freezers, high end PC's, a number of TV decoder boxes (i.e. sky), high end hi-fi equipment, 

Do you have a accurate meter reading/s from Jan 21 to July 21? (Not an estimate) and do you have an accurate reading/s from Jan 22- July 22? (So we know you usage is accurate and it's not estimated).

Again you aga is gone... So without knowing too much about them and how yours was used I'm guessing you'll have saved 10,000-20,000  units of gas there alone per year.

Mstty

k_man said:

Mstty said:

Sounds like an immersion is being left on one or more hot water cylinders unless you run a business from home with a lot of desktop machines with monitors etc?

The advice.given so far is good. Start by turning everything off and see if you are still burning lots of gas and electricity.

An immersion heater left on all the time, could use 1 or 2 kWh per day, but not 25kWh!

Computers using this would require 10 - 20 on 24/7.
Or a few crypto miners....

@Jonesy_40 how well insulated is/are your hot water tanks.

For some context, your electric is 3x the average, and gas is 5-6x, albeit your home is larger, an older than most. But if you do have loft insulation and double glazing then something is missing.

Was the Aga gas or electric?

You have to start somewhere if you don't know that 25 kWh is a lot of juice a day. 

The OP already said they had one or two hot water tanks so I was really just trying to start somewhere with where to look and make sure things were turned off and still see if energy is being used somewhere.

I don't think I said it's your hot water tank and some desktops using up 25 kWh🤣🤣 that's just silly but recently some gaming PCs coming up on this board have been using 2-5kwh a day.

We haven't got to the nitty gritty of does the OP and family prefer long showers or baths in the family and the potential that one of the hot water tanks is a 6kwh heating model.

Anyway you seem to know it all so please take over from here after dismissing my start to where some use of kWh may be.

Petriix

The simple answer to your question is to stop using so much heat; that's the only thing that ultimately uses the energy. That also means stopping using inefficient items which create heat as a byproduct to their primary purpose.

Heating bedrooms at night seems extremely wasteful to me. That's what duvets and blankets are for. Bedrooms only need heating for 20 minutes before you go to bed and 20 minutes before you get up.

To put your gas usage into context: you use 10 times what we do in our 3 bed mid terrace with 2 adults and 2 children. I suspect much of that was your Aga so you may have already made a good start. But think carefully about how much you heat the space.

The aim is to use the minimum possible amount of heat to make it bearable and that means wearing warm clothing - thick socks and a good jumper or hoodie etc. We've found 17 degrees is a good baseline during the day with an occasional boost when necessary. We camp out in the living room and light the wood burner on cold days. We set the thermostat to 13 degrees overnight but it's extremely rare that it comes on.

Your electricity usage must include a significant amount heating. Things like immersion heaters, fan heaters, electric radiators, electric fires, electric showers, ovens, grills, underfloor heating, towel rails, tropical fish tanks, hot tubs, even saunas and swimming pools are the sort of thing that can use that much energy. You're basically using over 1kW constantly on average which is extreme unless you have an EV or het pump. 

JohnPo

I agree with all the helpful suggestions above turning detective must be your plan.

If you moved into your property in 2020 hopefully there hopefully is an EPC which will give you floor area, light, heat and hot water costs (obviously costs based on when the EPC was done) but more useful is a space heating and water heating demand in Kilowatts.  This should give you a starting point to see what the issue is, before anyone tells me EPCs are useless, they are better than nothing!

For information my EPC done in 2020 shows a floor area of 290 sq metres, large 1980s house, 6 bedrooms, downstairs extension total heat demand according to the EPC 27,000 kilowatts and water 3,300., with modern 2018 boiler.

In reality our historic usage was Gas about 31,000 Kilowatts (Heat, Water, Cooker)  Electricity 9,000 Kilowatts (lights, washer, dryer, dishwasher, lights, TVs, computers etc) and we are all home all day.

Key initiatives undertaken to reduce costs, in last 24 months

1. Got a free a solar thermal hot water setup under the green homes grant - saves gas in summer but also a much bigger thermal store (hot water tank).

2. Got a smart meter with in home display - really helpful as shows household instantaneous electricity usage.

3. Threw away the mechanical central room thermostat that was installed and got an electronic programmable one - much better control and accuracy.

3. I was replacing this summer a number of old (well 25 years old softwood thin double glazed units) the difference in cost for standard double glazed units these days that have a u value of approx. 1.2 with triple glazing with a u value of 0.9 was surprising small, building regs. only say that the u value should be 1.6, the old ones besides the drafts were probably about u value 3.0

Hope that helps

theoretica

What do your two boilers each do?   How are they each controlled?

Do you have smart meters so you can see daily use and get immediate feedback on changes?  How even are your electric and gas use over the year?

What heats the water for showers/baths?

What temperature are the room thermostats set to?  Day and night?

What month did you turn your heating off for the summer?

How often do you use a tumble dryer? (5kwh a time)

When you look at your consumer unit/fuse box - what are the labels?  Any surprises, especially ones with large amp ratings?

Jonesy_40

Alnat1 said:

Can I ask what you use 40 litres of hot water for in the kitchen each day?

The previous owner put it in. We use the kitchen the same as anyone else would to be honest.