What is a typical household?

RelievedSheff

RSTime said:

Apparently, "for a typical household - one that uses 12,000 kWh of gas a year, and 2,900 kWh of electricity a year - it means an annual bill will not rise above £2,500 from October.".

We live in a fairly modern 3 bedroom well-insulated house and only two of us. Our temperature is set to 18C in winter and our usage is 26,183 kWh for gas and 5877 kWh electricity thus our bills will be over £5k per year. Can someone tell me what a typical household is, I imagine if you have several children usage is likely to be quite high?

We live in a 3 year old 3 bed detached house just two of us and our annual use is 2400kWh of electric and 5000kWh of gas with the thermostat set to 20-21 degrees during the winter months when we are in and 16 degrees when we are out.

Your use seems really high!!

Jami74

3 bedroom terrace house with storage heaters and no gas, EPC D - 2 adults and 2 teens
Year ending March 2022: 7,700kWh

I've never had gas but seems that a kWh of gas is not equal to a kWh of electric.

maisie_cat

3 bed (2 are loft rooms) 1900s stone cottage with 2 foot walls, 3400 kWh electric, no gas so showers are electric. We heat with wood and consume 10500 kWh of wood pellets for the HW and radiators plus whatever we use in the wood burner, but that's free.

Qyburn

Deleted_User said:

Qyburn said:

I must say that even for the already published caps, both the one in place at the moment and the one originally proposed for October, it's not that easy to actually drill down and find unit rates.  And even when you do they're still "typical" because the actual capped rates differ between areas.

It's easy - well not exactly easy, but directly possible - you need to stop looking at press releases and headlines for numbers if you wish to be that exact.

I guess we'll have to disagree on what's easy.  Neither Ofgem web page ""Default tariff cap level: 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2022" nor any of the documents linked from there give unit prices, only typical annual bills.  Admittedly in the spreadsheet you could reverse engineer their total bills for Nil kWh and 3100kWh.

As far as I can see unit prices are only stated in their "Check if the energy price cap affects you" page, and even there they are "Average unit price unit rates".

wild666

I'm more bothered with overall usage than costs in my case I use 1500 kWh of electric and 1200 of gas but I will be lowering this as I intend to go out more.

[Deleted User]

Qyburn said:

Deleted_User said:

Qyburn said:

I must say that even for the already published caps, both the one in place at the moment and the one originally proposed for October, it's not that easy to actually drill down and find unit rates.  And even when you do they're still "typical" because the actual capped rates differ between areas.

It's easy - well not exactly easy, but directly possible - you need to stop looking at press releases and headlines for numbers if you wish to be that exact.

I guess we'll have to disagree on what's easy.  Neither Ofgem web page ""Default tariff cap level: 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2022" nor any of the documents linked from there give unit prices, only typical annual bills.  Admittedly in the spreadsheet you could reverse engineer their total bills for Nil kWh and 3100kWh.

As far as I can see unit prices are only stated in their "Check if the energy price cap affects you" page, and even there they are "Average unit price unit rates".

Because that's how the cap works.  Everything else is either inferred or calculated.  What you appear to be complaining about is that if you drill down they make you do one subtraction and then one division.  That's not beyond the wit of man.

The closest you could get to the numbers you want would be if they published calculated effective unit price in each box on the tariff cap level announcement - but that's still five pages of unit prices and standing charges - and wouldn't work for any multi-rate tariff.

theoretica

I find the graphs in this paper interesting for the distribution of energy use:

 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1018725/efus-Household-Energy-Consumption-Affordability.pdf

RSTime

Thanks to everyone for their response. Am concerned that we have such a high energy usage (12,000 kWh of gas a year, and 2,900 kWh of electricity a year).

Our gas usage is the main concern as there are only two of us. We have a 1990 Ideal boiler (assume a condensing boiler will not save us that much). Our only other gas appliance is a hob. We set our thermostat at 18C and only on during the day and we are careful with usage. We have temperature regulators on our radiators and turn off the radiators in rooms that we do not use. We do not have cavity wall insulation, how much of a difference will that make? Am not sure what else would account for such a high usage, I will see if our neighbours are willing to share their usage.

I can account for our electricity usage as we have an electric oven, Mac Pro Server (~200W), 
1.98kW, uninteruptable power supply (rated at 1.98 KW) and two laptops that are plugged in all the time. The UPS can go and will be reviewing the server.

Thanks again for all the responses...

QrizB

RSTime said:

Thanks to everyone for their response. Am concerned that we have such a high energy usage (12,000 kWh of gas a year, and 2,900 kWh of electricity a year).

In your first post you said:

our usage is 26,183 kWh for gas and 5877 kWh electricity

... so I think you've mis-typed somewhere?

Our gas usage is the main concern as there are only two of us. We have a 1990 Ideal boiler (assume a condensing boiler will not save us that much).

A replacement boiler could save you 25% on your gas consumption; other MSErs have reported that size of savings when replacing boilers of that vintage. That's potentially 6500kWh/yr, £6-700-worth of gas for each of this winter and next.

HeckingtonChris

RSTime said:

Apparently, "for a typical household - one that uses 12,000 kWh of gas a year, and 2,900 kWh of electricity a year - it means an annual bill will not rise above £2,500 from October.".

We live in a fairly modern 3 bedroom well-insulated house and only two of us. Our temperature is set to 18C in winter and our usage is 26,183 kWh for gas and 5877 kWh electricity thus our bills will be over £5k per year. Can someone tell me what a typical household is, I imagine if you have several children usage is likely to be quite high?

If it's any consolation, I'm in the same ball park as yourself.  Gas = 21,600kWh & electricity = 7,400kWh.  We use gas for heating & hot water & electricity for the remainder.  Like you we have our thermostat set to 18C and by my reckoning our bills will be a shade under £5k which whilst wince inducing is a lot better than the anticipated £7.4k without the Governments intervention.  As it is an old 150+ years old detached 3 bedroom house with solid brick walls and we have draughts as old houses need to have I completely understand why my gas is high.  What I can't get my head around is the quantity of electricity I'm burning through compared to the national average and from a lot of the comments on this forum contributors here too.  Are the contributors here particularly frugal with their electricity use, or are they the vocal minority?