Electricity usage while away

pmets

What should we expect our appliances on standby, and an a+ rated american fridge freezer to use while we are away on holiday? I was quite surprised to come back from holiday, and find that we had still used about 9kw of electric each day

Evan3020

We're you still heating water on a timer?
Large FF could use 3 kwh a day.

onomatopoeia99

I use 10kWh / day when away, but 6kWh of that is for my server which runs 24/7.  Most people wouldn't have an old rackmount server pulled from a datacenter so maybe 4kWh / day for normal people.

MWT

Doesn't take water heating to be in the mix to get to that level, it is only 375W continuous and it isn't hard to reach that if you have a bunch of other devices around like games consoles, TVs. satellite/cable boxes, Echo/smart speakers, wifi routers, wifi extenders, burglar alarm, mains powered smoke alarms etc.

None use much individually but they do add up.

Shouldn't be hard to cut that down a bit and I'd start by checking the actual power consumption on the fridge/freezer, easy to do that with a simple energy monitor plug from Amazon.

We have a lot of tech around the house and we run at around 200-300W base load, the 300W peaks tend to be when the fridge/freezers are running at roughly 90 min intervals.

BROKEN

Your Server plus your A+ American Style Fridge Freezer, Any Extensions with multiple plugs inserted into them, Boiler, Clock on Cooker, Electric Shower ? (left on) There's your 10KWs there buddy

pmets

Amazing how it all adds up! Actually we forgot to turn our water off, but it only comes on for half an hour a day now. We have the clocks on the microwave and cooker on constantly, but I thought the power they used was negligible, other than that the usual router, tv, sky box and Alexa was left plugged in

Evan3020

Out of the ones you just listed only water heating would be any significant amount.
You need to look elsewhere, that energy is going somewhere and not the thing you listed except water.

pmets

pmets said:

Amazing how it all adds up! Actually we forgot to turn our water off, but it only comes on for half an hour a day now. We have the clocks on the microwave and cooker on constantly, but I thought the power they used was negligible, other than that the usual router, tv, sky box and Alexa was left plugged in

Oh and our ff uses 1 kw per day, apparently, just checked the data sheet

jrawle

My electricity usage averaged over the whole year is not even 4 kWh per day! The mind boggles at how much people are wasting if this is the usage when they are away.

If you are going away in the summer, you can switch everything off except the fridge. Switch all the other circuits off at the consumer unit. The only exception is if you have any alarms or security lights. The internet router only needs to be on if it's needed to communicate with a smart alarm.

MWT

jrawle said:

My electricity usage averaged over the whole year is not even 4 kWh per day! The mind boggles at how much people are wasting if this is the usage when they are away.

Your use is under half that of a typical household in the UK, when others are using more it doesn't automatically mean it is being wasted...

I am sure we are all looking at reducing actual waste though, but it isn't going to be possible/practical for everyone to hit your very low level.

Over the course of a year, we produce more than twice what you use just from solar PV, so I have no concerns about our baseload for example.

For the OP though, just turning off that water heating would be a good start

pmets

jrawle said:

My electricity usage averaged over the whole year is not even 4 kWh per day! The mind boggles at how much people are wasting if this is the usage when they are away.

If you are going away in the summer, you can switch everything off except the fridge. Switch all the other circuits off at the consumer unit. The only exception is if you have any alarms or security lights. The internet router only needs to be on if it's needed to communicate with a smart alarm.

Our usage is about 16kw per day with just two of us. We have no gas, so electric cooker, but central heating is oil fired. I think we really need to see what is using all this power