High electricity usage - could there be a mistake?

dunstonh

Other appliances are normal, except have two fridge freezers (1x American style double door, and a  normal fridge-freezer. 

Old and budget American !!!!!! can use a lot of electricity.   

We use the tumble dryer and electric oven almost daily. 

Tumble is often the biggest user followed by the Oven (in respect of devices).  No mention of a dishwasher.  This is often in the top 3 if you use normal washing modes (i.e. not eco).   Eco extends to time the dishwasher runs but uses far less energy.

Electric showers (not power showers with a pump but the ones that heat water).
Immersion heater on constantly (beware of children playing with switches who may have turned it on)
Halogon spot lights rather than LED spotlights
strip lights not converted to LED
Incandescent lightbulbs not yet changed to LED
Gaming PCs/Playstations
TVs left in standby with connectivity options enabled
Sky boxes (including mini boxes) - switching to sky stream a good option to reduce your energy use as the stream boxes use virtually nothing when off.  Unlike Sky Q.

We don't have a smart metre, but one of those old analogue ones. 

It would be worth upgrading to a smart reader so you can use the IHD to work out your idle use. (i.e. with nothing turned on specifically but left as if no-one was at home).   Then you can see if turning things off standby makes a difference or what devices cause it to jump up.

Does anyone else use this much?  Might there be a fault with the metre?

I use much more.  About 14k-17k kWh per year.    However, comparisons like this are not going to help you as you need to look at what devices are causing you problems.

FIREDreamer

markin said:

27kwh a day on elec is extreme if you have Gas heating, If that BG estimate is actually correct.

 Is the Shower Electric?
Both work from home?
Get a plug in monitor and test the Big fridge / how old is it?
Tank immersion heat lest on by accident?
water pump in a cellar?

We use about 7,500 kwh a year which is quite high.

When we are watching television of an evening with the kids using two PS5 consoles, my octopus mini tells me we are using over 1Kwh, background use overnight is 250Wh.

The OPs usage does seem very high for electricity, gas is probably about right and only slightly more than us.

Spoonie_Turtle

We use 10,000kWh/yr but we don't have gas, so that includes our heating and hot water, electric shower, fridge and freezers are the heavy base load (plus our heat pump seems to be a vampire model - a real gripe of mine).

We did get it down to under 9,500kWh but now a family member does a lot more cooking for themselves, using a lot more electricity.

Alnat1

Definitely worth getting a device to measure how much some of your appliances are using. Tapo P110 is the one most often recommended here, around £15. After you've checked all you can it doubles up as a smart plug and timer, great for the Christmas lights or turning on a lamp when you're way from home.

I discovered after 48 hours of monitoring that our 14 year old American FF was likely going to use 900kWh of electricity a year, the product details said something like 345kWh. At that time with high energy prices, getting a new appliance was going to save us over £200 a year and soon pay for itself. The old FF was gone within a week.

As mentioned above, make sure all lighting is LED. We've seen quite a few people on these forums who have a dozen 50w halogen spots in the kitchen that are often on for several hours a day. 5 hours of lighting, easy to happen over winter and you're adding 3kWh a day to your bill. LEDs at 5w each will soon pay for themselves.

x_raphael_xx

I use aprox 450kWh a month. I recently did a switch search which told me my usage was 331% higher on average than my neighbours (I have lots of exotics needing UV lights & heaters etc on constantly).
So comparatively yours seems high for your usage.

jimjames

How does this compare to your usage last year? Were you paying out enough to cover a £4500 bill?

Bigphil1474

OP, I live in a 3 bed mid terrace, have a fridge freezer and a chest freezer, gas heating, electric oven (x2) etc. Similar ish set up but no tumble dryer. We use 2,800 kWh a year of electric. Our fridge freezer is a standard one though, and the chest freezer is in the pantry which is unheated. Yours does sound high nevertheless.

As others have said, just need to be methodical and see what is being used, and do some actual readings if you haven't. From what I can remember, those American style FF can use 3x as much as a normal fridge freezer, but i don't think that  would account for the huge usage alone. Maybe combined with the tumble dryer, but doesn't sound right to me.

Enigma80

kWhHi all, thanks for the feedback.  It's usually around this much.  It's been high for years now, and I recall the first time it went up and complaining about it to BG.  I had numerous calls where they got me to do a walkaround the house going through each light fitting and appliance to let them know what was plugged.  Each time they said they didn't find anything that was out of the ordinary and suggested that it might be the dryer and oven which I've always thought myself.  Light bulbs are all LED and have been for at least a year or so.

Electric usage June to December:
2020: 4290 kWh
2021: 4982 kWh
2022: 4674 kWh

I'll check out those Tapo monitors.

Yes, my wife and I have both been working at home since Covid.  On a quick check I noticed the electric metre running slightly slower when I turned off the socket that the TV media stuff is plugged into, Virgin box, AV receiver, PS4, DVD player and TV.  Laptop chargers are plugged into this too.  Basically have two wall sockets with a couple of Belkin power surge sockets.

The metre:

Gerry1

If you were sending that reading, what would it be?

Enigma80

Gerry1 said:

If you were sending that reading, what would it be?

17945

I send readings monthly.