How much electric does your house use when you are away?

MWT

The impact of working from home, and the nature of how that work is performed should not be under-estimated either.

I would estimate our daily work related electricity use at around 3kWh on its own (between 2 of us) so we are never going to be hitting the numbers that some are achieving.

ariarnia

MWT said:

The impact of working from home, and the nature of how that work is performed should not be under-estimated either.

I would estimate our daily work related electricity use at around 3kWh on its own (between 2 of us) so we are never going to be hitting the numbers that some are achieving.

you could look at (for example) the cost of working on a laptop vs working on a desktop or laptop and screen(s). remembering the health and safety aspect of working on a laptop all the time. and if you have a desktop printer or if you really need one for work or whatever. and if you can claim back any expenses that you're to claiming and if that offsets the cost.  

ive said a few times i don't think it's all that helpful to look at energy by itself. our energy costs are low but we spend more on activities and hobbies because we're out of the house so much. we're still fairly frugal (i think) but our lifestyle choices are different from some other people. not better or worse. 

km1500

my usage when ***away*** from the house is zero. my smart meter reads exactly 0.


i don't have a fridge freezer and I turn off everything as I leave.

obviously this might change on cold winter days if i have to put CH on for background heat to protect pipes etc. also in winter i will have to switch boiler power on for frost protection

dunstonh

Analyst1234 said:

Our phantom load (lowest hour of the day/night with least usage) is 1.32kWh/hr at 4am in the morning. Am I being thick but compared to SuzeQstan saying the they are down to 40w/hr. Are we really 33 times more power hungry when as sleep and all switched off? 

Yes you are.

Our background use is 84Wh.  To go below that, I would need to turn off things I do not want to turn off.  We wake up in the morning at around 2kW used so far in the day (about 7.5 hours)

If you are drawing 1.32kWh background, then something is eating energy big time.

ariarnia

km1500 said:

my usage when ***away*** from the house is zero. my smart meter reads exactly 0.


i don't have a fridge freezer and I turn off everything as I leave.

obviously this might change on cold winter days if i have to put CH on for background heat to protect pipes etc. also in winter i will have to switch boiler power on for frost protection

wow. i cna't even imagine living without a freezer. i chuck everything in there (even probably stuff that shouldn't be frozen). i'm guessing you can shop daily? i'd love to do that and maybe if we were more organised. i can't go into a shop without spending £20

MWT

ariarnia said:

MWT said:

The impact of working from home, and the nature of how that work is performed should not be under-estimated either.

I would estimate our daily work related electricity use at around 3kWh on its own (between 2 of us) so we are never going to be hitting the numbers that some are achieving.

you could look at (for example) the cost of working on a laptop vs working on a desktop or laptop and screen(s). remembering the health and safety aspect of working on a laptop all the time. and if you have a desktop printer or if you really need one for work or whatever. and if you can claim back any expenses that you're to claiming and if that offsets the cost. 

Fortunately we don't need to reduce our consumption level, as it isn't possible to do what we need to do using less powerful equipment, and we produce a modest 3000kWh a year from solar anyway.

... but similar to the point you make, it is more the lifestyle choices and work commitments we each have that determine our levels of consumption rather than the arbitrary pursuit of a particular number of kWh as an 'ideal'...

QrizB

MWT said:

Analyst1234 said:

Our phantom load (lowest hour of the day/night with least usage) is 1.32kWh/hr at 4am in the morning. Am I being thick but compared to SuzeQstan saying the they are down to 40w/hr. Are we really 33 times more power hungry when as sleep and all switched off? 

If your consumption in your lowest hour is 1.32kWh (note: not kWh/h) then you must have a huge daily total.

How much do you actually use a day, and are you using night storage heaters, or some other form of electric heating?

Analyst1234 also posted here:

Analyst1234 said:

I had a smart meter installed 14 June 22, and I have just done some analysis on my very high power consumption below. My baseload is 45p/hour and my total consumption is 71p/hour.  45p is all the the things on at night when you have gone to bed 26p an hour for doing things. How do I get the baseload down? I did an exercise last night of turning everything off including standalone freezer but just leaving 2x fridge freezers on and the consumption was still 24p per hour. Are 2x fridge freezers  really churning through 0.7kWh every hour? We turned off underfloor heating, wifi, wifi extenders, outdoor freezer, unplugged 2 TVs, unplugged all computers, 2x immersion heaters, set top boxes etc etc.  Anyone any other ideas for stopping power hogs. 

If that chart is accurate, 45p/hr at 34p/kWh is indeed 1320 watts of background load.

dunstonh said:

If you are drawing 1.32kWh background, then something is eating energy big time.

Agreed. @Analyst1234 there is something very wrong with your household if you're burning through almost £20-worth of electricity every day, with more than half of that being "background load".

MuckChucker

We've not been away in so long it'd be hard to give an accurate picture, best I can do is show sleepy time stats. The attached is fairly standard night use for us. All that's on is, ff, net kit, couple of cams and alarm. I don't think that's too bad. Dishwasher may get a night run every 2-3 days which obviously bumps figures a smidge.

km1500

ariarnia said:

km1500 said:

my usage when ***away*** from the house is zero. my smart meter reads exactly 0.


i don't have a fridge freezer and I turn off everything as I leave.

obviously this might change on cold winter days if i have to put CH on for background heat to protect pipes etc. also in winter i will have to switch boiler power on for frost protection

wow. i cna't even imagine living without a freezer. i chuck everything in there (even probably stuff that shouldn't be frozen). i'm guessing you can shop daily? i'd love to do that and maybe if we were more organised. i can't go into a shop without spending £20

It is surprisingly easy to live without a freezer - humans have been doing it for a very long time! I find canned garden peas just as nice as frozen ones. Or mashed / baked potato nicer than frozen chips.

Fridge is more difficult but I have a cool north facing place in my house to put things. I use UHT skimmed milk (in the square tetrapaks) it lasts 5 days out of the fridge. I don't eat butter / marg. I suppose it depends on what you eat really - if you live on ready meals then you need a fridge. 

I shop twice a week at Sainsburys

EssexHebridean

I certainly don't "live on ready meals" but then I also have no wish to be tied to using UHT milk (tastes even filthier than the regular sort, IMO!) and things like cheeses (we usually have a good range of it!) and salad live a lot longer IN the fridge than out of it, similarly jarred items will often last a lot longer for being stored at fridge temperatures. (NO need to fridge butter other than in the very hottest of weather though - an insulated butter dish does the job nicely for 10 months of the year as a rule). Our relatively modern FF uses sufficiently little energy that I'm very happy to pay the cost of it for the trade offs of less food waste, nicer tasting food, and the ability to freeze leftovers. A freezer also means that I can batch cook so saving both cooking energy and fuel in going to the shops more frequently. In the interests of public health I'd suggest that a more accurate, and less disparaging way of looking at it might be "if you eat meat you need a fridge" (or to shop daily) - you don't declare yourself as a vegetarian but I'd imagine (hope) you are. 

Back to the original topic - I decided to keep a good close eye on our energy monitor last night to see what was going on. Full day use was under 5kWh - that was a fairly "basic" day although the hot water was on for 25 minutes or so in the morning so that will have used at least 1kWh of that. other than that, the WM ran overnight I think, the kettle was boiled a few times, and the TV & Sky box were on in the evening, plus a laptop running for several hours. MrEH worked from home so PC & monitor. The rest will have been routine things - lights, the pump for our water (the bathroom has a pumped supply to all bar the shower as we don't get enough pressure from the header tank), the extractor fans (kitchen & bathroom) plus of course F, and things like the shower, WM, DW and Oven which are essentially in "standby".

I'm not able to get an accurate picture from when we're not at home, but I did note that first thing this morning immediately before leaving home our background usage was ticking over at 0.1 which seemed reasonable enough.