Calculating Energy Usage

MakingLifeMine

My electricity bills have been around £360 - £400 a month.

I live in a small 2 bedroom flat. 3 children and me. Children are out of the house from 7.45 am to 3.30 pm. It's only me during the day.

During the day, I have the following on;

• Fridge
• Fridge Freezer
• Mac Mini
• Virgin water device
• 1 Monitor
• Virgin Modem
• 2 LED lights in the living room
• 4 Way cable to charge devices

When the kids come home, they have their lights on and tend to play games but use the tablet, which does not use any more energy as they are charged during the day.

They are in bed between 7 pm - 8 pm.

This uses 643Kwh a month, and I am baffled about why it's this much or why I have this unrealistic expectation.

How can I measure what is taking up so much power?

Robin9

How do you cook, heat the property, heat water ?

Gerry1

Are your bills showing Actual (Smart or Customer) readings?

MakingLifeMine

Gerry1 said:

Are your bills showing Actual (Smart or Customer) readings?

I got them to install a smart meter assuming it would automatically update but I am still having to submit manually meter readings.

TheElectricCow

First things first, what heats the property/hot water? Generally heating things up will be the most significant source of energy usage for a household.

Secondly, what kind of electricity meter do you have? If it’s a newer smart meter tracking down high energy consuming devices can be a fairly simple process, but if it’s an older one that you have to read manually things might be a little more involved and you may need to take several readings per day to help identify the issue.

MakingLifeMine

Robin9 said:

How do you cook, heat the property, heat water ?

My home is all electric. I have an electric double oven. I use the oven often, and the microwave is used in the morning. I have a water heater that I turn on in the morning, off for the day, and turn back on in the evening.

I have apparently used 788 Kwh in February and 1126Kwh in January. 

pramsay13

We're around that for a 4 bedroom house so it's high, but not massively so. 
You'll probably have a lot more on than that, just without realising. 
toaster, kettle, washing machine, tumble drier, microwave for example.
How are you heating the house?
If you really want to you can turn off everything and then put them on one by one to see how much each device is using. 
Some of those things don't need to be left on so could be switched off.

MattMattMattUK

MakingLifeMine said:

Robin9 said:

How do you cook, heat the property, heat water ?

My home is all electric. I have an electric double oven. I use the oven often, and the microwave is used in the morning. I have a water heater that I turn on in the morning, off for the day, and turn back on in the evening.

I have apparently used 788 Kwh in February and 1126Kwh in January. 

There is your answer, it is not the things you listed in your first post, it is the oven, the heatijg and water heating. 
Electric oven - 2-3kWh per hour
Water heating - 2-3kWh per hour. It will only heat water if needed, but with four people, baths etc. then one would expect a reasonable amount to be needed.
Heating your home - could be anything from 2-10kWh per hour depending on what heating you have. Do you have panel heaters, storage heaters or something else? 
Laundry would be 0.5-1kWh per load depending on temp, age of machine etc at 30.
Tumble dryer could be 1-3kWh per load.
Washing machine around 0.5kWh per cycle.
As a general guide anything that generates heat uses a more power. The fridge and fridge freezer could use 1.5-3kWh between them, everything else probably 1-2kWh depending on specifics.

Gerry1

If you use only electric heating and your average use applies to a whole year then 7,716kW is about right for your flat.

What type of electric heaters do you have (e.g. storage heaters, panel heaters, connectors, oil filled radiators) and what is your tariff (e.g. single rate, Economy 7)?

Robin9

Not forgetting that Electric Shower

MikeJXE

A simple answer 

Move 

To dual fuel