Erratic electricity usage.

Blakea7

I am concerned about erratic energy consumption.  To give some background we have a 3.5kw PV solar system and we live in a 4 bed house but its just the two of us.  We recently had a new smart electricity meter fitted (Jun 22 but its not currently commissioned correctly so still waiting on the engineer returning to complete the installation) as we are thinking about buying an EV car / battery and we needed to establish just how much of our solar energy we are failing to capture.  In the process of establishing if this is right for us we have interrogated our electricity bills more closely and it has become evident that over the past 2 years our monthly bills are not only significantly higher than UK average (online says about 8kwh per day or 240kwh per month while we are using between 25 and 50kwh per day some months) but the monthly average varies significantly and we are not sure why, for example a 30 day period between May and Jun of this year we used 957kwhs while a 30 day period between Apr and May we used only 111kwh.  We have been giving meter readings so these are not estimates.  I notice from a previous forum  thread that someone had a faulty meter and this accounted for a usage twice the real value (we have had a similar experience with our gas meter in a previous home).  I am concerned that my meter was either faulty or was in some way ‘incorporating’ my energy generation from my solar into my usage, as I cant understand why when we generate on average more than 3000kwh per year that we still have such high grid energy consumption. I have been on touch with both the solar company who are yet to reply to me, and the energy provider who say that we have no recourse as the meter has now been replaced but I wanted to ask :
1. Do I have any grounds for appeal if I think my energy use has been miscalculated or are the energy company correct that there is nothing I can do as the meter has been removed.
2.Is there an independent agency that I can ask to check my solar installation if the company who installed it will not come and check it (they have moved into the commercial market and no longer doing residential installation) .

clearly going forward we are planning to keep a much closer eye on our energy usage but any other hints tips info as to why our usage is so erratic would be much appreciated.

Evan3020

Do you have Fish tanks, pool, hot tub or any other high energy device?
You don't mention gas?

Evan3020

Are these actual readings or estimates?

pochase

Welcome to the forum.

Do I understand correct that the meter you believe might have been faulty has been disposed of already in June?

Without the meter you have no possibility to prove that the meter was faulty, normally the supplier would get the meter tested, but if it is gone they cannot test if there was a problem.

SAC2334

Blakea7 said:

I am concerned about erratic energy consumption.  To give some background we have a 3.5kw PV solar system and we live in a 4 bed house but its just the two of us.  We recently had a new smart electricity meter fitted (Jun 22 but its not currently commissioned correctly so still waiting on the engineer returning to complete the installation) as we are thinking about buying an EV car / battery and we needed to establish just how much of our solar energy we are failing to capture.  In the process of establishing if this is right for us we have interrogated our electricity bills more closely and it has become evident that over the past 2 years our monthly bills are not only significantly higher than UK average (online says about 8kwh per day or 240kwh per month while we are using between 25 and 50kwh per day some months) but the monthly average varies significantly and we are not sure why, for example a 30 day period between May and Jun of this year we used 957kwhs while a 30 day period between Apr and May we used only 111kwh.  We have been giving meter readings so these are not estimates.  I notice from a previous forum  thread that someone had a faulty meter and this accounted for a usage twice the real value (we have had a similar experience with our gas meter in a previous home).  I am concerned that my meter was either faulty or was in some way ‘incorporating’ my energy generation from my solar into my usage, as I cant understand why when we generate on average more than 3000kwh per year that we still have such high grid energy consumption. I have been on touch with both the solar company who are yet to reply to me, and the energy provider who say that we have no recourse as the meter has now been replaced but I wanted to ask :
1. Do I have any grounds for appeal if I think my energy use has been miscalculated or are the energy company correct that there is nothing I can do as the meter has been removed.
2.Is there an independent agency that I can ask to check my solar installation if the company who installed it will not come and check it (they have moved into the commercial market and no longer doing residential installation) .

clearly going forward we are planning to keep a much closer eye on our energy usage but any other hints tips info as to why our usage is so erratic would be much appreciated.

I used to read meters for 20 years and all the old Sangamo Weston meters used to go backwards when they had solar panels fitted .
These are the old reliable analogue meters
. 
Fitters of solar panels are supposed to inform occupier and suppliers so they can fit a digital meter which would not reverse but many never bothered .
If the meter was a Sangamo Weston you do not have to test it as they all did this with solar panels . These are the ones with a horizontal rotating barrel 

Some people were never aware of this happening but many were , and still are as theres hundreds of thousands of these analogue meters still around .

This could be the cause of your increased usage because on a nice sunny day when you were all out and usage was low the meter was busy running backwards , sometimes at a good speed on really sunny days 

pochase

Why would the usage increase if the meter runs backwards? It should decrease if my meter read at the end of the month is lower than it should be.

Evan3020

I think he means it would increase a lot more if it was not for the generation and the high usage is the norm.

pochase

Sorry, that does not make sense, the OP is saying there was a very low usage in April to May (111KWh) but a usage more than 8 times from May to June when we had much more sun.

Evan3020

They have not said yet what they are using, maybe they have a hot tub or air conditioning.

Alnat1

More info is needed from the OP about usage and the appliances they have before we can help.

Mstty

Big energy eaters

Ponds and filters

Big American fridge freezers or ols.frodges and freezers

Immersion left on

Desktop gaming machines and their monitor(s)
Electric showers

Normal load of a house could be 6-8kWh we sit in that bracket during summer months that includes a fridge freezer built in, outside freezer, washing machine load 5/6 times a week, dishwasher on 6 times a week and Tumbledryer on 5 times a week. Cooking mainly air fryer, microwave and induction hob in summer. The usual router, nest WiFi system, couple of echos on playing radio all day and TV use at night. Two laptops, docking stations and screens going during the day.

Monthly average 210 kWh in summer.

We use the Tapo P110 energy monitor for appliances with a 3 pin plug to see what things really cost

Time to work out what your appliances cost you sitting there before thinking it's a faulty meter.