Electricity consumption sanity check

daveyjp

Electric shower?  Half an hour use is 4-5kw consumed.

wrf12345

OP needs to take daily readings and buy a power meter (plugs into a socket and the appliance plugs into that). Work through all the appliances to see what is eating away at the electric.

I was down to under 1.5kw a day but it has been up to 2kw with the fridge and freezer working away in the heat (both on their lowest settings). I am working towards not having a fridge running but difficult, can't stop using the fridge as I buy large quantities of frozen fish and chicken at discount on a discount from supermarkets so that would backfire.

Health benefits from taking cold showers (I am 65 BTW), large electric savings. Health benefits to switching to starting the day with raw salad (salad, veg, fruit), large electric savings (and cheaper food if you shop around). Disconnecting TV from hi-fi system and using in-built audio also saved electricity (hearing has adjusted to lower quality sound, just use the hi-fi for music). Let frozen food thaw out for 30 minutes before cooking, saves a third of the time and electric (I use electric grill in conventional oven). I have a little electric element that goes in the cup so no wasted heated water for coffee.

But get that power meter, see where the electric is going.

wrf12345

If you must use an electric shower, wet hair and shampoo beforehand, then have a quick blast of shower water to wet the body, turn shower off, soap up and then do a second blast of the shower, should need no more than a couple of minutes in total - half an hour is wanton abuse of the planet!

theoretica

It does seem high, including when you are away.  Worth checking on what all those fridges and freezers are actually using.  And of course that they are working as intended - do they need defrosting?  Are their seals good?

MWT

For a 3 bed bungalow with that amount of fridge/freezers etc. nothing there look particularly out of line.

The gas CH use is hard to get down in bungalows where the heat loss tends to be much higher than in a house. Do check the loft insulation though.

victor2

If the fridge/freezers are quite old, they could be accounting for a lot of electricity usage. We had an old American (not just American style, actually American!) Fridge/freezer from the late 1990's which finally died and was replaced last year. In round numbers, it was using 3 kWh per day, the new American style one is about 1. If they're frost-free, they usually have a heating element inside them. Our old one used to come on once every 24 hours for 20 minutes and the heater was about 800W. Don't know how the new one does it, but I'm sure it's much more efficient.

As already suggested OP, get a mains socket monitor and see what individual appliances are using over at least a 24 hour period.

Alnat1

I bought the recommended Tapo a couple of months ago and left it on a few devices for 48 hours each.

I had already decided that the wine cooler (came with the house, moved here 3 years ago) was not needed and turned it off, took out some shelves, extra kitchen storage.

14 year old American FF (overflow in garage) was using over it's quoted annual kWh, almost 900kWh/yr. We have now replaced it with new upright FF that's using less than 200kWh/yr.

We also have a small chest freezer in the garage using around 200kWh/yr and I'm actively using up the contents with the aim of switching it off.

I came to the conclusion that we really store food/drink too long and it's costing us a lot of money. Items that might have been a bargain when we bought them are sitting there for months, all at our expense. 

Unless you often often decide to throw sudden large parties at a moments notice or the nearest supermarket is 50 miles away, you really don't need such a large stock of food/drink in the house. Let the shops pay to store stuff until you need it.

vic_sf49

I've got solar panels, so I won't bother comparing or commenting on the electric usage, but the gas is rather high.

Same era 3 bed bungalow here, and my gas is between 11500 - 13000 / yr (gas ch, hob, and shower/water heated on demand by combi boiler).

Just one occupant here, but adjusting my figures upwards slightly for more hot water use, is still a looooong way off 27k.

And I'm not stingy on the heating either; 18-21 degrees all day (until 9pm), depending on my activity levels. 

(Edited to add, sorry, I thought you were after comments on your gas too, but I got my posts mixed up.)

keithgawler

OP here - thanks all for the great input - keep 'em coming. Agree I need to dig into the electricity by monitoring. Certainly one garage fridge needs to go. American FF was new 6 years ago when we had the kitchen refitted so all appliances are relatively new too. Have been thinking for a while about replacing 15+ year old gas boiler to gain some efficiency savings - I think I might do this.

SAC2334

wrf12345 said:

If you must use an electric shower, wet hair and shampoo beforehand, then have a quick blast of shower water to wet the body, turn shower off, soap up and then do a second blast of the shower, should need no more than a couple of minutes in total - half an hour is wanton abuse of the planet!

Thats how I ve been doing it.

.Quick blast of less than 45 secs and similar to rinse off.  thats my fastest so far . Switching the shower on and off quickly stops the longer warm up process of the shower. No one needs to take a cold shower unless they are ex public school  from Gordonstoun who made this mandatory 

 Saves on water too . I have the usage down to 1.5 minutes  although that is genorous as my last showerhead use  with a stopwatch was 38 secs 

I don t know why most others don t do this as an electric shower used the most electricity at over 8kw s to 12 kw