Domestic Electricity Use 8000-10,000kWh pa

comeandgo

Do you have an electric immersion heater at all?  For the first time in 16 years we have had to use ours and it eats between 8 and 10 units a day..

TheGardener

As others have said - I don't think your usage is particularly high for a large house. If you want it to be reduced then after all the usual big hits like turning down the temp of the hot water and the radiator flow temperatures  - and if your loft insulation is good then it's about deciding what stays switched off. 
I have lived in Northern Scotland and know the weather is very different to even northern England but I've never needed a heated blanket - maybe try a higher tog quilt and a blanket?

MoreApples

xeny said:

MoreApples said:

MWT said:

MoreApples said:

I'll check what the showers are. They don't feel super powerful.

The issue with the showers isn't the 'power' it is the use of electricity to instantly heat the water, that is what makes them so horribly expensive to run.

Given what you've described, I'm not actually finding your use particularly surprising...

If you are using electric showers several times a day, using electric heating on top of gas heating daily during the winter and electric blankets for 9 months of the year then your use feels perfectly believable...

Showers are 1-3 in total per day not per person.

It might be the additional heating, though we try to minimise it. Not sure if the electric blanket use will change much - without it there are two of us who wake up cold.

This is part of the dilemma - what is normal use? Figures are very hard to find.

Epically high tog down duvets may be worth considering. Essentially anything that generates heat is an energy hog, and if electric blankets are on for 3/4 of the year for most of the night that will add up. Is it worth considering extra loft insulation above those rooms, or if they are large enough retrofit internal insulation to those room's exterior walls? Prices are high enough that even a significant amount of capital expenditure could have a pretty quick payback period.

We've got high tog duvets and loft insulation. That's been there for the last 10 years. The insulation installed in May was internal insulation of external walls with 18 walls in the house done. We did everything that could be insulated wall-wise pretty much. The exception was one west wall in the kitchen that could not be done unless the kitchen units were removed and refitted. It cost £19,000 and is mostly done with a HES loan and grant. This winter will be the test of that work.

MoreApples

comeandgo said:

Do you have an electric immersion heater at all?  For the first time in 16 years we have had to use ours and it eats between 8 and 10 units a day..

No. The hot water if from a combo boiler. We have looked for an old hidden one in the 2 lofts and there is nothing we can find. 

matelodave

MoreApples said:

MWT said:

MoreApples said:

I'll check what the showers are. They don't feel super powerful.

The issue with the showers isn't the 'power' it is the use of electricity to instantly heat the water, that is what makes them so horribly expensive to run.

Given what you've described, I'm not actually finding your use particularly surprising...

If you are using electric showers several times a day, using electric heating on top of gas heating daily during the winter and electric blankets for 9 months of the year then your use feels perfectly believable...

Showers are 1-3 in total per day not per person.

It might be the additional heating, though we try to minimise it. Not sure if the electric blanket use will change much - without it there are two of us who wake up cold.

This is part of the dilemma - what is normal use? Figures are very hard to find.

There really isn't a "normal" consumption. The accepted average is around 3000kwh a year for leccy and 12,000kwh for gas and those are the figures the cap is based on. However we are all different, have different lifestyles and varying numbers of people and appliances in our houses so it's really difficult, if not impossible to compare your consumption with someone else's.

Although taht said, yours does appear to be abnormally high and more than ours bearing in mind we are all electric.

We are at home all day for most of the time, use leccy for all our heating, hot water, cooking etc and our average over 12 years is around 7500kwh a year, but last year it was just over 8500 and the year before around 6500 so not only does it depend on you, it also depends on the weather. (we do have a heatpump because we'd be using around twice that or more if we didn't)

All you can do is monitor what you use and when you use it so you can see what is going on and take steps to correct any abnormalities. Setting up a spreadsheet and keeping it updated regularly will show your usage patterns and highlight anything unusual.

I know people are wary of smart meters, but they can be really useful if the IHD is in a prominent place so you can see what's in use and to ensure that stuff is turned off when it's not required. They also have the benefit that they allow you to retrieve historical data in 30 minute intervals going back a year or more

On another thread, we managed to identify that someone had a timed immersion heater on using 3kwh a day which he couldn't easily find without looking back over a few days of data and seeing a peak of 3kwh everyday at around 10-11am

MoreApples

The figures I've looked at are for 5-bed/detached houses which is the closest match. Or doubling a 3-bed house, although we don't have double the white goods or appliances. I suspect these figures may have a southern skew to them and central Scotland is quite different to SE England - the latter's October can be like our summer. Googling has given me figures from Ovoenergy and Usave (sorry too new to post be allowed to post links). They suggest between 4000-5000kWh pa for a detached/5-bed house.

I agree average is not helpful and I find the predicted rises quoted as cost figures in the media rather than percentages frustrating.

We are due a smart meter with the fixed rate deal I arranged at the end of July but I'm not sure when that will materialise. It will be interesting as a source of data.

matelodave

MoreApples said:

comeandgo said:

Do you have an electric immersion heater at all?  For the first time in 16 years we have had to use ours and it eats between 8 and 10 units a day..

No. The hot water if from a combo boiler. We have looked for an old hidden one in the 2 lofts and there is nothing we can find. 

Use a shower thats fed from the boiler for a few days rather than the leccy one and see how that affects your consumption and bear in mind that gas is much cheaper than leccy.

MoreApples

matelodave said:

MoreApples said:

Use a shower thats fed from the boiler for a few days rather than the leccy one and see how that affects your consumption and bear in mind that gas is much cheaper than leccy.

Would that be possible to set up easily? I am no plumber. 

Also the water pressure from the boiler is not brilliant. It takes a while to fill the bath (~15 minutes).

Sea_Shell

Do you use hairdryers, straighteners a lot?  Or do a lot of ironing?


Think heat.    More heat, more kWhs.


All I can think of is to keep a diary of all what you do and for how long, and compare it to the days use, and report back.

On days (24 hrs) where we've not done "chores" or used the oven, we have daily usage of between 3-4 kWhs at the moment.

Do you know what you've used these past couple of days?

jimjames

Turning everything you can find off stopped the meter - so that would suggest there isn't anything unknown sucking electricity and it's the combination of items you know about. Can you try turning things on in sequence to see what jumps up? Our use has fallen quite dramatically this year and after lots of looking the only thing I can think is that my son isn't using the gym equipment in shed which was heated over the winter by a 1.5kW heater so sometimes there is an item that can cause it