What's the average electricity consumption per household?

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Confused by kW and kWh?.

meldreth

MSE_Laura_F said:

kW stands for ‘kilowatt’, a measurement of energy. A kilowatt is 1,000 watts.

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kWh stands for 'kilowatt hour' and is the measure of how much energy you use. One kilowatt hour is equal to 1,000 watts per hour. For example, if you use an appliance rated at 200 watts for five hours, you'll be billed for 1kWh.

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7/11/23: Corrected to measurement of energy (previously electricity). Thank you all!

Hi this is my first visit here so please bear with me, my partner and I live in a two bed terraced bungalow all electric with a heat pump, we use 6300 kWh of electricity per year ( this is second year her so only just got the annual consumption) this seems a lot but I cannot find out what the average consumption is for a similar property in the UK can anyone cast a light on this please 

victor2

meldreth said:

MSE_Laura_F said:

kW stands for ‘kilowatt’, a measurement of energy. A kilowatt is 1,000 watts.

💡💡

kWh stands for 'kilowatt hour' and is the measure of how much energy you use. One kilowatt hour is equal to 1,000 watts per hour. For example, if you use an appliance rated at 200 watts for five hours, you'll be billed for 1kWh.

💡💡

7/11/23: Corrected to measurement of energy (previously electricity). Thank you all!

Hi this is my first visit here so please bear with me, my partner and I live in a two bed terraced bungalow all electric with a heat pump, we use 6300 kWh of electricity per year ( this is second year her so only just got the annual consumption) this seems a lot but I cannot find out what the average consumption is for a similar property in the UK can anyone cast a light on this please 

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Gerry1

TL;DR: The good news: you don't seem to be doing anything dramatically wrong.  The bad news: there's no magic bullet to lower the bills.

It's difficult to give a clear answer because there are so many variables.  You might be in Shetland, stay at home all day, like it tropical and have lots of hot baths.  Or you might be in Scilly, go out to work, prefer it temperate and have short lukewarm showers.

If everything is boringly average then if you had gas you might expect to use 11,500kWh of gas and 2,700kWh of electricity.

Your heatpump might have a SCOP of 3.0 so that becomes 3,833kWh plus 2,700kWh electricity totalling 6,533kWh.  Given that bungalows use more enegy because all the rooms have a roof directly above, that suggests your consumption is pretty much bang on average.

All that's left is better insulation, shorter showers and turning down the thermostat.  Also perhaps using an air fryer or microwave rather than the oven.

@matelodave is the bungalow guru who can tell you how to get the best from your heatpump.

matelodave

As @Gerry1 says I've got a three bedroom detached bungalow of 140m2 and a heatpum which is now 13 years old. Its reasonably well insulate having 300mm in the loft, 25 year old double glazing and indeterminate cavity wall insulation which was installed when it was built in 1986. We are at home all day so the heating is on from around the middle of October to the middle of April

Over 13 years  our average electricity consumption is around 7200-7500kwh a year of which I guess 4000 is for general use including hot water (from the heatpump) cooking, washing, tumble dryers etc and around 3500 for heating. 

Some years we've used more and some less, the worst was 8600 and the best was around 6000kwh. This past 12 months we've used 7102kwh. We used just over 972kwh this past December whereas our usual December average is around 1200kwh

It took me a while to tweak it to my satisfaction and I'm pretty happy the way it works - we are warm 24/7. TBH we probably use more energy with our toys (computers, 3D printer and other stuff) and the tumble dryer than we do heating the place.

I dont reckon yours is far off the mark but you could try reducing the flow temp a bit and setting your hot water to between 45 and 50 degrees. The lower the flow temp the more efficient it is although it takes longer to get the place up to temperature. We never let our place get cold, just turn the flow temp down 4 degrees overnight so it doesn't cool down much. We do have underfloor heating so the response time is very slow compared to a radiator system.

QrizB

meldreth said:

Hi this is my first visit here so please bear with me, my partner and I live in a two bed terraced bungalow all electric with a heat pump, we use 6300 kWh of electricity per year ( this is second year her so only just got the annual consumption) this seems a lot but I cannot find out what the average consumption is for a similar property in the UK can anyone cast a light on this please

@meldreth Ofgem publish TDCVs - typical domestic consumption values - for dual fuel and split-rate electric-only properties. They don't currently publish specific TDCVs for properties with heat pumps.

However, for a dual-fuel property the average TDCV is 2750kWh of electricity and 11500kWh of gas. If we assume that you have replaced the gas with a heat pump with a COP of 3, the TDCV becomes (2750+3830) ie. 6580kWh of electricity.

That's fairly close to your number.