HELP - where am I "leaking" electricity?

merchcon55

I trust the knowledgeable members on here can help me out. My wife and I went on a 4 day holiday to North Wales last week - very lucky with the weather - an incredibly beautiful part of the UK. 

Before leaving, I disconnected many electrical items. The only appliances I left on were our Fridge/Freezer and a smaller fridge we have. I know from past monitoring, between the 2, the usage is just under 1KWH per day, but let's say 1KWH per day. So that would account for 4KWH usage.

When we got back home, the actual usage was 9KWH. So I am trying to figure out where the other 5KWH were used.

Certain appliances were left plugged in (difficult to get to the outlets): Washer, Dryer, Dishwasher, Built in Double Oven, Extractor Fan, ignition for gas hobs. They are all under 10 years old, so I am reasonably sure that in OFF position (there is no standby) that they would consume virtually no electricity. The Double oven has a clock - but that's it.

I turned off the security lights - so these did not come on "by accident".

Two things I am wondering about:

House Alarm - this was of course left on for the 4 days we were away. 

We have an old boiler - the timer was turned off while we were away, but the display was lit up. I know there are electric components in the system - a pump for example.
I know this will be relatively old. Would a pump in let's call it a "rest position" possibly consume electricity? 

Also an immersion switch for a Hot Water tank (very rarely used) - so in the OFF position, where I assume no power being used.


Appreciate any input, as 1.25KWH per day = 456KWH per year. At 11p per KWH that's £50 - and while I hate to throw away money, I would not be too bothered.
At an anticipated cost of say 65p, that's close to £300, which I am not too happy about just "leaking away".

Many thanks

TheGardener

Xpelair/Vent Axia, Cordless landline phone, plug-in air freshener, clock on cooker, clock on microwave, radio/alarm clocks, internet router, TVdigibox, anything with a red glowing light like extension cables and cooker socket plugs...We are all so used to micro amounts of leccy on things we don't even think about it. 

Krakkkers

Its unlikely that a fridge freezer and another fridge are only using 1kwh per day total but 9 kwh over 4 days is pretty good going.
The other 5 kwh if that is what it is is only about 52w an hour, Sky box?, Wifi?

mmmmikey

My fridge and freezer use 1kWh per day between them but they are very recent purchases and were the most energy efficient options I could find to buy at the time. So it is possible that's all yours are using, but if not that could explain some of the shortfall. My BT broadband router uses (marginally!) more than my fridge at about 0.3kWh/day so that's something else to look at. Also, it surprising how much some things use - for example, my water softener, garage door opener and electric bed use about 60Wh/day each even on standby when away and these are the kind of things where the plug is hidden and/or you may forget to turn off. Just ideas of course - if you do find where the leak is please let us all know

merchcon55

Krakkkers said:

Its unlikely that a fridge freezer and another fridge are only using 1kwh per day total but 9 kwh over 4 days is pretty good going.
The other 5 kwh if that is what it is is only about 52w an hour, Sky box?, Wifi?

I have double checked the Fridge/Freezer - not one of those big American style ones, standard 60cm wide, but quite tall Bosch Fridge Freezer, purchased in 2017. Plugged it into a meter plug I have and did a 3 day test. Consumed 2.68 KWH = 0.86/kwh per day = 314 KWH/year. The instruction manual quoted 262 KWH/year. Given it is 5 years old, using 20% more energy than in the manual is probably about right (and the manual probably under rates the usage to start off with).

The smaller fridge (under the counter one, with no freezer), doing a 3 day test,  used 0.75KWH = 0.25/day = 91KWH/ year, which is pretty much what the manual says it should use.

So 0.86 + 0.25 = 1.11 KWH/day x 4 = 4.44 KWH. So half of the 9KWH used is accounted for.

merchcon55

mmmmikey said:

My fridge and freezer use 1kWh per day between them but they are very recent purchases and were the most energy efficient options I could find to buy at the time. So it is possible that's all yours are using, but if not that could explain some of the shortfall. My BT broadband router uses (marginally!) more than my fridge at about 0.3kWh/day so that's something else to look at. Also, it surprising how much some things use - for example, my water softener, garage door opener and electric bed use about 60Wh/day each even on standby when away and these are the kind of things where the plug is hidden and/or you may forget to turn off. Just ideas of course - if you do find where the leak is please let us all know

I had unplugged all things in the house (such as router and all multiplug extensions). Only the items listed in my original post remained plugged in. 

chris_n

House alarm and boiler are probably most of it. It is only 50W or so. The pump won't use anything when it isn't running but the electronics that control it will. Washer, dryer etc could use a couple of watts each if they are of an age where they don't have an actual switch and aren't new enough to be compliant with the low energy requirements. 

MWT

merchcon55 said:

So 0.86 + 0.25 = 1.11 KWH/day x 4 = 4.44 KWH. So half of the 9KWH used is accounted for.

If we accept that as accurate and you were away for 4 day (96 hours) you are looking for a combination of things amounting to a continuous load of less than 50W...

... you really don't need very much more than your alarm, heating controls, the time displays you mentioned and perhaps mains powers smoke alarms or similar?

dunstonh

I have double checked the Fridge/Freezer - not one of those big American style ones, standard 60cm wide, but quite tall Bosch Fridge Freezer, purchased in 2017. Plugged it into a meter plug I have and did a 3 day test. Consumed 2.68 KWH = 0.86/kwh per day = 314 KWH/year. The instruction manual quoted 262 KWH/year. Given it is 5 years old, using 20% more energy than in the manual is probably about right (and the manual probably under rates the usage to start off with).

For context, we have an American FF and it uses between 0.68kWh and 0.74kWh a per day.   However, it is a new one that replaced another American FF that was using over 3kWh per day.  So, your figures for an older model are in the ballpark (2017 is not old in the scheme of things but is in terms of how the technology has improved).

For background use, prior to my adjustments to lower our use, I found the microwave was using 30w when not in use.  Sky miniboxes were heavy (cant recall the actual use).  Internet routers were around 6-16w.   TV was using 0.7w in standby.

Short of getting a TAPI 110 and checking the use of various items, you are not going to know.  Everything is guesswork.

merchcon55

Thanks for the replies above. It's all an education. Interesting to note that the alarm system and boiler electronics, plus other remaining plugged in appliances where access was difficult, could add up to 50 Watts x 24hrs = 1.2 KWH/ day.

All items like microwave, router, TV Boxes (got rid of sky boxes ages ago), were all unplugged.

macman

Our boiler pump switches on for a couple of seconds at midday in summer: it's a 'pump exercise' function on the programmer, designed to prevent the pump seizing up outside the heating season. 
But the consumption from that must be absolutely tiny.