HELP - where am I "leaking" electricity?

theoretica

How long ago did you monitor the fridge freezer energy use?  Recently enough that it won't have gone up as the thing iced up, or the door seal failed or anything?  And over a long enough time to capture any automatic defrost cycles?

Grumpy_chap

Deleted_User said:

Put the £200-£300 per year into upgrading door and window locks, powering indoor/outdoor lights and even CCTV which are all more effective.

I guess it is off-topic, but the discussion around security is an interesting one.
I do have an alarm and cycling lights and blinds.
I don't have CCTV, yet all the other houses in the block do.
I often think the biggest security feature I have is an old car compared to a neighbour with two late model Mercs.
Then again, the only house to be burgled was one neighbour with an equally old car as me.  

I guess, really, all the security features are a deterrent to the casual thief.
The thief with intent will go ahead regardless - with my neighbour, the thief actually smashed a window to gain entry and there's not a lot you can do against that type of determination

merchcon55

I’m unsure if the above is directed to me (OP) or others who have mentioned fridges. If me, I ran a test from Friday afternoon to Monday afternoon (3 days). I had done another test about 1 year ago where the energy used was about 20% less than this test.

davemorton

That much for an alarm    I have one, and since buying the house, have never set it.  I am not even sure if it would work, but I am definitely going to be putting the fuse from it in the morning! 

JohnPo

Going back to the question posed by the OP, the answer is 'we all guessing somewhat'.  If you have a smart meter with an In Home Display (IHD), then my recommendation to the OP is to do some detective work, by switching stuff off and then looking at the usage to work out what is drawing the load.

Without a smart meter and IHD, then it is more difficult, there are posts elsewhere on this board about energy monitoring with smart plugs / other devices which I suggest the OP looks at.

Sorry if not that helpful!

FreeBear

merchcon55 said:

Doing a quick google search I came across the following:

Current consumption

Panel 110 mA (normal) 190 mA (alarm)
LCD keypad 40 mA (normal) 50 mA (alarm)
On normal (standby), it all adds up to 150mA (110+40), which at 240V is 36Watts.

At what voltage were these figures you found quoted at ?

For LCD keypad operating at 5-12V, 40mA is quite reasonable. At 240Vac. I would consider it to be excessive. Care to post some links to the hardware in question ?

sienew

[Deleted User] said:

70% of people ignore a house alarm anyway so unlikely to be reported. 

By 70% I presume you mean 100%?

*unless it's their own house and they are home

jimjames

pcgtron said:

1.8 kwh per day for 1 of my fridge freezers. We have 2 of them! Eeek

Same here. Trying to decide if a new American style FF would be worthwhile to replace them both, likely to be under 3.6kWh per day for that.

pcgtron

jimjames said:

pcgtron said:

1.8 kwh per day for 1 of my fridge freezers. We have 2 of them! Eeek

Same here. Trying to decide if a new American style FF would be worthwhile to replace them both, likely to be under 3.6kWh per day for that.

Unfortunately, we have one that is built into the cupboards and another one in the garage so we can't replace both with one. Talked about turning the one in the garage off for 6 months this year 

Raxiel

If no one is opening the doors to let warm air in, the fridge freezers should be using less than usual.

My guess would be the Alarm and boiler controls, it does seem a lot though.

We were away for 7 nights at the end of August. Everything was physically powered off except the FF, Alarm, Washing Machine and Drier.

We used 5kWh over that period. Around 750-800Wh a day.

Washing machine and drier are both specified as using less than 1w in soft-off standby. (Edit, just checked and it's 0.1W for the drier and 0.12W for the washing machine)

We didn't set the alarm as we had relatives visiting twice a day to feed the cat. (They came during the day and had no need for lights etc.)

Before I left, when the compressor on the FF wasn't running the IHD reported a total house draw of 6W, which accounts for about 1kWh of the 5.

The rest I assume was the FF, a big 70cm Bosch, 9 years old and A++ rated under the old system. No auto defrost, and manually defrosted during the last heatwave.

It's surprising how much small things add up though. Previous years we'd have left the heating powered in 'holiday mode', router on, sky box on, front and rear security lights on PIR with 4 hours on low every evening, oven and microwave on standby. According to the Octopus app, we were averaging 1.9kWh a day during our 2021 holiday.