Domestic Electricity Use 8000-10,000kWh pa

michaels

PS5 is 200w

Can you take a reading before and after the showers (hopefully have all 3 close together in time but need to make sure they are 'normal' not impacted by doing the test) to see how much that takes?  As mentioned above, check usage overnight or better if you are away for a few days to see what the background usage is.

However we have a 5 bed semi with no electric water or space heating and manage to use about 8-10 mwh per year so you are a lot more efficient than us.

Sea_Shell

I've just looked at our IHD and for the 6 hours since midnight, our background usage was 0.61kwhs.    So for a whole 24hours "the house" is using approx 2.5kwhs per day.   (we were running a 35w fan all night too).   

For the month to date, we have used a total of 45kwhs, so an average of 3.75kwhs per day (12)

This includes, on average per week, 4 washing loads (no TD), usual hoovering, some oven cooking (not much admittedly), but crucially no electric showers.

Sea_Shell

It sounds like your main barrier to converting your electric showers to ones run off the combi boiler is the lack of a hot water feed to them?

If the only pipes going to the showers are cold...then it'll be a big job to re-route hot water to them.


Does the spa bath leak from the waste?   If not, then is it watertight enough to use as a shower tray, in effect?

Beaker99

We recently did a sweep of the house and found old fridge / freezers  made the biggest difference. You could see the step change in the daily usage when replaced. On a similar vane, although a bit of an indulgence for some, we just replaced our 15yr old air conditioners* with new and have seen consumption drop about 13kwh per day.. this does also show that older cooling appliances are far less efficient than new. 

*of course, time will tell if the new air conditioners are as tough as the old ones, lasting as long or the overall cost of ownership may be affected.

MoreApples

Beaker99 said:

We recently did a sweep of the house and found old fridge / freezers  made the biggest difference. You could see the step change in the daily usage when replaced. On a similar vane, although a bit of an indulgence for some, we just replaced our 15yr old air conditioners* with new and have seen consumption drop about 13kwh per day.. this does also show that older cooling appliances are far less efficient than new. 

*of course, time will tell if the new air conditioners are as tough as the old ones, lasting as long or the overall cost of ownership may be affected.

Yes, prompted by another post, I'm rechecking the fridge freezer's consumption. It's at least 11 years old. 

Air conditioning is free in Scotland - it's called opening the windows and doors! It's never consistently hot enough here to need it.

MoreApples

My thanks to everyone who had contributed. It has been interesting and helpful to garner opinion.

My thought now are:
1. There is a lack of accurate data on how much electricity a household uses in different circumstances and the figures I've found online may be unhelpful.
2. We use more than some but less than others. Whether this is too much it is hard to know.
3. It is possible there is something hidden using electricity but not a certainty.
4. It's possible our use is just our everyday lifestyle with the suplementary electrical heaters.
5. We chip away at reducing use here and there, continue to track it and monitor night use.

Mstty

Point 1)yes you can't compare apples with pears and unless you live on an estate where all the houses are the same you won't have a benchmark.

However do google beyond average consumption.

Point 2) If it is right you use 8-10,000kwh elec and 20,000kwh of gas saying use more than some is probably an underestimate. Probably top 20% IMO and an estimated £9500 a year from October and taking into account the 3 monthly rises.

Point 3) could be

Point 4) yes ditch them if you can

Point 5) sounds good

However if you can afford it don't go too mad just cut down to what feels comfortable.

We got down to 4kwh a day but realised 7kwh as an average was comfortable both in lifestyle and cost. However the exercise was good to know how low we can go in the summer months.

MaxBob

Hi,  I have a family of four in a detached house in NW England.  Our daily average is similar to yours.  Our totals will be higher as we have electric cars.

I have found that my biggest tools to detect high electricity uses have been an electric smart meter and a smart plug (Tapo 110).

Your biggest heat gains will be insulation and draught proofing.  Every autumn we put up our big curtain over the front door :-).

My experience of tracking down energy guzzlers is that there are 2 types - low power use on for long periods e.g. fridges, and high power short periods e.g. electric ovens.  Put the smart plug on your suspects for a week and see what they use.  Other naughty energy guzzlers I found were electric underfloor heating (inherited from the previous owner) and a broken hot water immersion heater.

I pushed down on our usage, but at a certain point it becomes oppressive, and you get cold.  You have to hit a balance which doesn't make you feel like the energy gestapo, and you are comfortable.

At a certain point you will need to invest to reduce energy expenditure.  I started with looking up my EPC online, and then following the link to the steps you can take to improve it.  For me that was loft insulation, followed by solar panels, followed several years later by battery storage (which can also be set up to be used when there is a power cut - something to think about in rural Scotland).  Battery storage combined with off peak tariffs save LOTS.

Whilst they are a SIGNIFICANT outlay (and i am in a privileged position to be able to afford it) they have reduced my monthly energy bill from £200 to less than £50 pcm for electric last month (gas £34) (including car charging).  With current energy prices the payback periods have significantly reduced.

I wish you well on your energy efficiency quest!

MoreApples

That is a helpful comparison, MaxBob.

The fridge freezer is getting a week's check now with the plug-in meter and might find its "coat is on a shoogly peg". A newer one would seem likely to use half the electricity which is 365kWh pa, so equivalent to a summer month's electricity. The frugal side of me likes to make do and mend and not be renewing items excessively but the figures might be more in favour of replacing it.

I can't check the oven easily - it's wired in as far as I know. It's a Rangemaster (put in by the previous owners) but I only use the normal fan oven day-to-day. The second oven is on once or twice a year. Oven dinners are ~4/week plus some baking at weekends sometimes. It's all 15-20 minute quick stuff, though.

Once we get the smart meter I'll have more of an idea. I've not really worked out what Tapo 110 does.

I get what you mean about hitting a balance. We're are trying to strike the balance between saving and miserable discomfort. Hopefully the insulation will be our friend here. Monitoring temperatures in rooms with the GCH on last winter we struggled to get above 18ºC unless we really cranked things up or used additional heaters. Even then, we probably poured heat out of the house.

I'm investigating solar PVs with a battery which seems sensible. The first quote is £13,000 but I'm due another. We can obtain a Home Energy Scotland loan with some grant for this which would make it worth considering and reduce the payback time. The loans are interest free. 

Frustrated at being able to source good figures for typical electricity use for different houses and households, I emailed the Scottish Minister for Energy yesterday to highlight this. Whether it will lead to anything, I'm less sure, but I feel I've done something about that.

xeny

Tapo 110 plugs in between an appliance and a normal wall socket and measuers/logs power consumption (as well as letting you remotely turn it off and on)