My house uses 20kWh of electricity a day -- why so much?

Netexporter

Other than that, we just have the standard range of appliances.

American style fridge-freezer? They are mostly grossly inefficient.

pensionpawn

QrizB said:

Rodders53 said:

It all depends on how much hot water is used in the home.

Yes, but let's not mix up hot water use (which we all agree can take a lot of energy) and "leaving the immersion heater on".

Rodders53 said:

My modern 210 litre unvented HW tank has a daily standing loss figure of 1.95 kWh.  That's when not using any water from it.  Mine is not atypical for the heat loss from an unvented tank of that size.

So, if you use no hot water at all, your tank will leak ~2kWh a day. It will leak those 2kWh whether you switch your immersion heater on for one hour, or for twenty-four.

Rodders53 said:

The maker quotes a reheat time of 175 minutes for the 3kW immersion heater - let's call that 3 hours on so 9 kWh - if we use all the hot water from it.  {It takes 23 minutes to reheat via the indirect loop and oil boiler - but will be the same 9 kWh of energy.}

Using your numbers, if you drained the tank while the immersion and the oil boiler were both able to re-heat it, it would take about 20 minutes. It woud use ~1kWh of electricity and ~8kWh of oil.

However that leakage will contribute to warming that part of the house, so not entirely lost...

pensionpawn

alexanderalexander said:

My household comprises me, my wife, and our 11-month-old son. 

I have seen that our electricity bill has been quite high recently, and having examined it it looks like we're using around 20 kWh of electricity a day -- which is a lot for a small household. I can't, however, work out where it's all going.

We do have an electric oven/grill, which is probably the biggest single consumer of electricity as we use it fairly frequently, but we don't have a tumble dryer and our heating/hot water is gas powered. Other than that, we just have the standard range of appliances. We have low-energy lightbulbs throughout and try to switch things off.

Our wiring is very old (we will be getting it re-done when we renovate next year) so I was wondering whether there is even any possibility that it's somehow leaking electricity, but I can't see how that might actually be the happening in practice!

Does anyone have any ideas about what's going on? Could it even be the case that our meter is faulty?

There are three of us in our 4 bed detached (with electric oven, induction hob, gas C/H & H/W) and use around 14 kWhrs a day so far in December, of which around 4 is UFH. As others have said get a meter and work out what your baseline overnight consumption is and go from there switching devices on during the day to see what is burning the Kws.

dunstonh

I have seen that our electricity bill has been quite high recently, and having examined it it looks like we're using around 20 kWh of electricity a day -- which is a lot for a small household. I can't, however, work out where it's all going.

20kWh is easily achievable but also usually easy to reduce once you realise what your devices use.

For average households the big ticket energy guzzlers are:
Dishwasher not being run on eco mode (even worse when set to high temperature)
Washing machine set to hot loads
Gaming PCs and consoles
Budget model fridge/freezers (Budget American !!!!!! and chest freezers especially).
Lighting that hasn't been changed to LED (especially Halogen spots) OR lighting that has been changed to LED but inefficient LED.  e.g. you can get Philips LED bulbs at 2w with greater light output than LED bulbs using 15w (including older Philips bulbs or their lower quality versions)
TVs with poor configuration - such as leaving it on shop mode with high brightness and contrast or turning mobile connectivity on 
Sky boxes or similar brands(Sky Q and mini boxes eat a fair bit in standby).
Electric shower (not powered shower as they are cheaper to use but the type that heats the water)

A general rule of thumb is that if there are moving parts and/or something gets hot then its likely to be drawing more electricity than you probably realise.

Budget white goods (such as washing machines and fridge freezers) tend to be cheaper to buy but use more electricity.  We replaced our American FF last year after finding it was using nearly 3kW per day.  The replacement American FF was the most efficient one on the market at the time and uses about  0.66kW per day.

Halogen spotlights tend to be an issue due to the quantity.  A Halogen spot may draw 8-12w each but usually they are in banks of 5-10 spots.   So, turn a set of 10 halogen spots on and you are drawing 80-120w.

Summer last year we were drawing just over 20kWh a day.  We got it down to 4-6kWh a day.    Our idle (everything off or in standby as we would normally leave it) before the changes was about 250w.     Now it is about 84w

I spent less money in electricity in 2022 and 2023 than I did in 2019 when prices were lower all because of the changes made and what I learnt from this group.     Tapa P110 plugs helped as well.   Buying a couple of those and learning what each device uses and then moving them to another device to learn that was a good investment.

FreeBear

dunstonh said: Halogen spotlights tend to be an issue due to the quantity.  A Halogen spot may draw 8-12w each but usually they are in banks of 5-10 spots.   So, turn a set of 10 halogen spots on and you are drawing 80-120w.

G4 halogen capsules are more likely to use 20W. GU10, 50W or more (I use 100W in one piece of kit).

Bendo

FreeBear said:

dunstonh said: Halogen spotlights tend to be an issue due to the quantity.  A Halogen spot may draw 8-12w each but usually they are in banks of 5-10 spots.   So, turn a set of 10 halogen spots on and you are drawing 80-120w.

G4 halogen capsules are more likely to use 20W. GU10, 50W or more (I use 100W in one piece of kit).

Surely by now noone has halogens in the GU10s when LED replacements have been available with a similar lumen output for years.

Swipe

FreeBear said:

dunstonh said: Halogen spotlights tend to be an issue due to the quantity.  A Halogen spot may draw 8-12w each but usually they are in banks of 5-10 spots.   So, turn a set of 10 halogen spots on and you are drawing 80-120w.

G4 halogen capsules are more likely to use 20W. GU10, 50W or more (I use 100W in one piece of kit).

I can concur. I have 6 x GU10 50W spots in my kitchen which only ever get switched on for a few seconds while I turn my lamp on.

JSHarris

I found it easy to swap our old MR16 halogens (at our last house) for LEDs, with a massive saving in energy use.  IIRC the halogens used about 50W each (and ran very hot indeed) whereas the LED replacements were only around 5W or 6W each.  We could light the whole kitchen for less than the power used to run one of the old halogens.

Swipe

JSHarris said:

I found it easy to swap our old MR16 halogens (at our last house) for LEDs, with a massive saving in energy use.  IIRC the halogens used about 50W each (and ran very hot indeed) whereas the LED replacements were only around 5W or 6W each.  We could light the whole kitchen for less than the power used to run one of the old halogens.

Can you do a straight bulb swap with new LEDs these days or do you still have to change the transformer?

JSHarris

Swipe said:

JSHarris said:

I found it easy to swap our old MR16 halogens (at our last house) for LEDs, with a massive saving in energy use.  IIRC the halogens used about 50W each (and ran very hot indeed) whereas the LED replacements were only around 5W or 6W each.  We could light the whole kitchen for less than the power used to run one of the old halogens.

Can you do a straight bulb swap with new LEDs these days or do you still have to change the transformer?

I think that depends on the type of transformer.  Mine was one of the large, round ones, that output 12V AC at mains frequency, 50Hz.  This was fine with the much lower current from the LEDs, if anything it just ran cooler and so was less stressed.  The problems seem to be when the transformer isn't really a transformer, but an electronic supply.  Often these work at a much higher frequency and this causes the bridge rectifier in the base of some 12V MR16 LEDs to overheat (because the diodes in the bridge rectifier aren't usually fast switching types).  For installations with an electronic supply then the best option is probably to swap the supply for a DC one.  12V DC supplies are fairly cheap and MR16 LEDs work just as well on DC as they do on 12V 50Hz AC.