High KW electric consumption

weths

Hi, I’m looking for some advice on what should be normal electricity consumption. Everywhere I look we are way out of any guidelines. We live in a modern 2 bed apartment fuelled only by electricity. There’s just the two of us. We have done all the things we can to reduce costs. Switching appliances off at the wall when not in use, only have the heating on for a couple of hours in the evening and do a couple of loads of washing a week using the drier for only heavy items. We installed an a rated dishwasher used once every 2 days and we have hot water on twice a day for an hour. Yet still our bill comes to 100 a week! Our consumption is around 10,000 plus KW per year looking at our bills - we have a smart meter installed too but before that the bills were high! One month last year we paid 700 for a month! Surely this isn’t right? Any advice / ideas why it’s so high and how to reduce it would be amazing 

Reed_Richards

What sort of electric heating is it?

Zandoni

Switch everything off in your flat and observe your meter to see if it's still registering, you could be paying for someone else's electricity too.

weths

It’s electric wall heaters, quite new and energy efficient (supposedly) we have two in the lounge and we only use those for about 2 hours a night, we don’t have it on anywhere else because of the bills

On-the-coast

10000+ KWH is a very loose definition.  If you mean “approximately 10000KWH then you’re averaging around £250/month over the year, and could be much less than that if you choose a tracking tariff.   Don’t worry about extreme winter peaks.  Just let it average out (as long as you’re taking sensible precautions.) 

frostysaver

You have a smart meter, so use it to find where the electricity is consumed. Time for some detective work:

1. Watch the instant current reading while going round the house turning things on and off. Something that draws 100W for 10 hours totals 1000Wh which is 1kWh. Put your effort into reductions that are worthwhile, instead of turning off a modern TV at the wall every night (maybe saving 1W)

2. Look at the history in 30min intervals. When is electricity used? Is it when your heaters are on? Is it some unexpected time? Then find the appliance(s) responsible.
If your energy providers website is rubbish, use one of the free apps to view your historic usage - Hugo, Loop etc

3. If you have concerns about one appliance - maybe a fridge or freezer could be faulty - buy or borrow an electricity monitoring smart plug for it. Some are regularly recommended on this board

BellaBlondykeTheThird

weths said:

Hi, I’m looking for some advice on what should be normal electricity consumption. Everywhere I look we are way out of any guidelines. We live in a modern 2 bed apartment fuelled only by electricity. There’s just the two of us. We have done all the things we can to reduce costs. Switching appliances off at the wall when not in use, only have the heating on for a couple of hours in the evening and do a couple of loads of washing a week using the drier for only heavy items. We installed an a rated dishwasher used once every 2 days and we have hot water on twice a day for an hour. Yet still our bill comes to 100 a week! Our consumption is around 10,000 plus KW per year looking at our bills - we have a smart meter installed too but before that the bills were high! One month last year we paid 700 for a month! Surely this isn’t right? Any advice / ideas why it’s so high and how to reduce it would be amazing 

It is likely you have expensive panel heaters. They are the most expensive formula of heating but if you can provide the manufacturer and model that will help confirm this. Also your hot water will be expensive immersion only heated so again the most expensive formula of heating the hot water.

dunstonh

I’m looking for some advice on what should be normal electricity consumption. Everywhere I look we are way out of any guidelines.

There are no guidelines and any figures quoted are either guesses or the mean.     It would include people who use oil or gas for heating or have solar panels.

You are full electric.  So, you are always going to be higher than average because you don't have half your cost going towards oil or gas.

One month last year we paid 700 for a month!

You use around 80% of your annual energy between November and March (October and April too if they are cold).   Over the warmer months, you will use far less.       So, if you measure months individually, you would expect the cold months to be very heavy.

As others on this thread have said, your heating is not ideal but not unexpected.   

One thing you can do to help us is tell us the following by looking at the in-house-display when it shows kWh (not £).
1 - With all your devices turned off or in standby as you would normally leave them as if you were going out (don't change any habits at this point) - what is the running kWh?    Ours is as around 112w  (used to be 84w but a couple of cameras brought it up to 112w).
2 - when the heating is on the the panels are running, what does the IHD says then as you current draw?

Gerry1

Sorry for the lecture, but you need to be more forensic !

Your energy usage is kWh, not kW (which is an instantaneous measurement of power).  Start by determining your annual usage from actual meter readings 12 months apart.  No estimated readings, only ones that are smart, taken by yourself from the meter on the wall, or by an official.meter reader (not a landlord or letting agent).

10,000kWh is a bit high but not impossible, especially if you work from home.  Long showers are one likely culprit.

As it's a flat, make sure you're not paying for another flat's usage, do my Meter Sanity Test.

Gerry1

It sounds like you have panel heaters instead of Night Storage Heaters.  If so, that's bad news because virtually nothing else costs more to run. If you could pick them up by yourself they're not NSHs.

With panel heaters, look at your bill to make sure you're on a single rate tariff, not Economy 7 or suchlike where the day rate is even more expensive.

Reed_Richards

weths said:

It’s electric wall heaters, quite new and energy efficient (supposedly) we have two in the lounge and we only use those for about 2 hours a night, we don’t have it on anywhere else because of the bills

All electric heaters (except heat pumps) have the same energy efficiency in that they are 100% efficient in converting electricity into heat so every kW of heat  uses one kW of electricity.  Night storage heaters are cheaper to run because you charge them overnight with cheap night rate electricity.  For your wall heaters I think you will be using day/single rate electricity and that's the most expensive way there is to heat your house, unfortunately.