Domestic Electricity Use 8000-10,000kWh pa

xeny

MaxBob said:

Other naughty energy guzzlers I found were electric underfloor heating (inherited from the previous owner) and a broken hot water immersion heater.

What was the issue with the immersion heater? That's one of the few areas I think I've still got scope for driving down consumption.

k_man

MoreApples said:

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.

Does knowing what other users use really help though?
If you could save energy (and money) then why not do so.

If you find your usage is typical, you may just think that's okay then, and take no action.

And it may turn out that typical users are all very wasteful, that doesn't mean we all should be.

MoreApples

Does knowing what other users use really help though?
If you could save energy (and money) then why not do so.

If you find your usage is typical, you may just think that's okay then, and take no action.

And it may turn out that typical users are all very wasteful, that doesn't mean we all should be.

Yes, knowing would help. From the information I read online, we use double what a household of our size should use. If this is the case, it would suggest there is something badly wrong, such as a fault or unidentified item consuming power.

If our usage is in keeping with other equivalent households (all a bit apples vs pears but yardsticks are possible, I believe), then pursuing a fault is less imperative because it's less likely to be an issue.

In general I find many people are surprised at our usage. When I spoke to a company last week about solar, they could not put our usage into their algorithm for calculations because it was outwith their set parameters. Then every so often I find folks who feel it matches them or is less than the use. It's hard to get the lie of the land. The range of responses to this thread also demonstrates that.

It's not going to deter my efforts to reduce our use, regardless. I need to get the bills down for fuel. It won't take much for that to be the biggest monthly outlay.

matelodave

Trying to compare what other people use is really diverting your attention from understanding what you use and when you use it.

Knowing what I use compared with what you or any other person uses isn't going to help you track down your consumption although it gives you a steer as you already know that you are using a lot more than most people, so you need to find out why

Likewise, a 5 bedroom house with two people in it could well use half the amount of energy of a three bedroom one with five adults. The size of a house has little bearing on the electricity consumption unless you are using leccy to heat it, but the number of people in it might depending on who, what or when its being used.

If I use gas heated hot water to shower and you use leccy, then how can you compare. The same if I have one shower a week for two minutes and you have one every day and spend 20 minutes in it, there's no comparison. Same if I have a bath every day and you have a short shower.

My oven fridge, cooker, washing machine etc may be more or less efficient and I may use them more or less often or more or less efficiently. If I dont bake cakes or use the oven much, how does that help you if you have a roast three times a week or bake a few pies and cakes over the weekend.

Non of that helps you find out where and when you are using all your energy. Most people think they use less than they do( I only have a short shower, the oven is only on for a few minutes etc). You can't know unless you measure it, record it and then change summat to see what happens

keep a spreadsheet or even a note book to see what you use and when - look for period of high consumption.

The nightime background test is good to show what it being leached away overnight when most stuff is off and then taking reading several times a day for a week or two and fixed times noting what's been used will give you more info that a fictitious average consumption produced by a power company or the Scottish Government or anyone else.

Even the info given by the worthies on this forum don't have any consistency, because we are all different, have different equipment and different priorities.

MoreApples

matelodave said:

Trying to compare what other people use is really diverting your attention from understanding what you use and when you use it.

Hopefully it's not diverting because I'm checking what items are using how much and where we can make savings. The two investigations can run in parallel. If we are using double what's normal though, that is really going to be trimming around the edges of a different problem to overall slightly higher use of items here and there.

I suspect the figures online of ~4300kWh pa are not reflective of my house or my geography and a bit of a red herring. It has certainly prompted me to look at our use and that has been helpful to enable changes to be made.

MaxBob

xeny said:

MaxBob said:

Other naughty energy guzzlers I found were electric underfloor heating (inherited from the previous owner) and a broken hot water immersion heater.

What was the issue with the immersion heater? That's one of the few areas I think I've still got scope for driving down consumption.

Prior to having any way to monitor my energy, when i had just moved into my current home, I was getting a feel for the house and when i got my first electric bill I nearly passed out... it was over £450 (the irony is not lost on me now) .  Anyway, after weeks of checking all over the house, my plumber was in doing a job and noticed that my tank was too hot to touch.  He removed the immersion from the tank and a wire had shorted out and was permanently on full blast.  Prior to purchase I had a full buildings and electrical test done which was fine...

If I was to get a new house, I would definitely include a visual check of inside the sockets of the big electric users in the house.  I also discovered a fused wire in the spur feeding that heater - whilst the immersion needed a professional, a novice can spot melted arcing wires in a socket (with the power turned off etc).

MaxBob

k_man said:

Does knowing what other users use really help though?
If you could save energy (and money) then why not do so.

If you find your usage is typical, you may just think that's okay then, and take no action.

And it may turn out that typical users are all very wasteful, that doesn't mean we all should be.

Its very difficult to compare.  Environment, household usage patterns and the building itself are a few of many variables which make comparison possible.  It is one of the reasons why i like the EPC rating.  It gives both a current rating and a potential rating for your home - its not perfect, but it is about your home.  If you aim for the potential rating and reach it, you have done well.

MoreApples

The EPC is helpful. Thanks to the recent insulation we've gone from band E to band C and are now just 5 points off our potential score of 74.

I'd still like there to be better figures in the public domain for types of households, houses, location etc. I'm sure some kind of system with data entered on this and appliances used could give some kind of more accurate estimate of expected usage. I think the figures I found online led me down two routes simultaneously: checking if there was something major wrong and trying to reduce our know use. It might be the former was a blind alley but it did not prevent the latter.

doodling

Hi,

You are in the unusual position of having gas heating but where most of the hot water (i.e. the showers) you use is heated electrically.

That isn't a case normally considered when people talk about "typical" consumptions because heating water with electricity when you have gas available is not something someone would choose to do due to the cost.

Measure how much energy a shower uses - take a meter reading immediately before and after having a shower - and tell us the difference between the two.

I suspect that oif you take that figure, then multiply it by 4 (people) and then by 365 (days a year - adjust for holidays as appropriate) and then subtract it from your annual consumption then the result will mich more closely match what you have read as being typical.

MoreApples

I'll try and get a shower measurement at a time when other things aren't running as well and we're not all in and rush to get out to school and work. At this stage I probably need to multiply it by 2 but that will change as the kids move from preferring baths to showers. The shower running from the boiler has been quite alien to me - I can't work out if that is a quirk of my life or an England/Scotland thing where fewer areas up here had mains gas as I was growing up.

I'd love to redo the bathrooms but that's not top priority for limited funds just now, unfortunately.

Overnight use the last 2 nights is 2kWh.

Fridge freezer is not excelling itself, currently averaging 1.92kWh in 24hr.