Why high electricty usage

StarTrekkie007

Krakkkers said:

Keep checking your daily consumption on the meter, its unlikely that the fridge is to blame but not impossible but there would be a lot of heat coming from the motor/pump if that were the case.
Did you find a hot water tank/immersion?
Are there other people in the house?

Did not find hot water tank.
No other people in the house apart from myself

Krakkkers

So check meter every few hours.
Can you go around the house and list exactly what is plugged in?

Scot_39

StarTrekkie007 said:

StarTrekkie007 said:

All heating is gas so it would not effect my electrity readings
My electricy usage last month was 232 kwh and this month was 457 kwh

Note: My highest electrity usage last year was in December which was 279 kwh

I went to both B&Q and SrewFix stores to purchase an energy monitor but both didn't have it in stock. Therefore ordered off Amazon and it should arrive sometime today. 
In the mean time whilst waiting for the energy monitor to arrive did some tests. Keeping everything the same, I then lowered the refrigerator temperature down from 2.9 to 2.4 

Now my average daily usethis last month was about 14.7 kwh but by just lowering the refrigerator temperature in the     next day average was down to 9 and the next day was 6 
So thinking issue most likely refrigerator trying to get to desired temperature and struggling to achieve for some reason.

Any domestic fridge running through 5.7kWh to 8.7kWh daily - is a massive problem.

My small fridge freezer only draws a fraction of that daily - it often pulls less than 100W when active - and near zero when not. 

I know freezer auto defrost loops getting stuck can lead to larger than normal consumption.

At c33p aver EPG electricity price - that if the true source - is costing c£2 per day - oever £700 a year.

I'd by buying a new fridge / fride / freezer at that sort of cost.

Hopefully your monitoring kit will help identify.

StarTrekkie007

My freezer should only use 307 Kwh/annum

Been testing with energy monitor 

at decreased setting it used 0.705 Kw in 1 day which would be 257.3 per year (lower than annual estimate)

set it back to original setting  for 1 hour and it used 0.048 Kw which would be 420.48 Kw per year (higher than estimate)

so just slight adjustment to freezer caused noticable difference in energy.

I think it is time to buy a new fridge-freezer

Krakkkers

Don't use 1 hour to calculate a years use. Its a warm day as well so will be working harder today.

Gerry1

Your usage figures sre suspect because you're quoting power (kW) instead of energy (kWh).

theoretica

Also don't use the first hour after you change temperature on the fridge as it will be working harder to cool down (or less hard letting it warm up).  You want to know what it does over a longer period when just maintaining temperature.

Alnat1

Freezers are best tested over a week to allow for average use and the weekly shop of less cold food going in.

StarTrekkie007

Been continuing to investigate energy usage. Don't think the refrigerator is the cause since it doesn't give numbers for rise in energy. However, I did use dishwasher yesterday and daily meter reading rose by 2 Kwh.  So this is concerning and I will investigate further.

Gerry1

StarTrekkie007 said:

I did use dishwasher yesterday and daily meter reading rose by 2 Kwh.  So this is concerning and I will investigate further.

Does the meter on the wall have a decimal point?  If it shows only integers then your usage could have been just a whisker above 1kWh.

For example, if the 'real' start reading was 30000.99 and the end reading was 30002.01 the display will have changed from 30000 to 30002 but your actual usage will have been only 1.02kWh.

In any case, 2kWh may be slightly on the high side but it's certainly not a crazy figure.

Presumably other items will have had standby use included in that 2kWh figure?

The Dishwasher Is Innocent !