All electric flat usage sky high - advice needed

daveyjp

No mention of cooking.  Ovens and hobs can consume huge amounts of energy over a short period. Microwave and aifryers may be more economical.

haze23

TBH, surprised you've managed to keep the heating usage (time) that low over the cold spells. That does imply decent insulation, so that's something.

As a quick sanity check, if you have 3 x 2kW heating running for 1.5-2 hours, that's 9-12kWh total per day without considering anything else, so maybe the total is more in line with expectations that at first thought?

Robin9

electric_city30 said:

Hello - looking for some advice. 

M.................

An electrician advised he thinks it’s the water meter, so we’re waiting on him for a solution like an off switch for the tank, or having it heat only in off peak times but we've heard nothing back yet...........

In the meantime just use the off switch -  may be next to the tank itself. May even be 2 switches

Don't think you meant "meter" -  more like "water heater" often called an immersion 

electric_city30

haze23 said:

TBH, surprised you've managed to keep the heating usage (time) that low over the cold spells. That does imply decent insulation, so that's something.

As a quick sanity check, if you have 3 x 2kW heating running for 1.5-2 hours, that's 9-12kWh total per day without considering anything else, so maybe the total is more in line with expectations that at first thought?

Hi - I mentioned that we only use one of the heaters ever, the others are completely off at the wall

electric_city30

Robin9 said:

electric_city30 said:

Hello - looking for some advice. 

M.................

An electrician advised he thinks it’s the water meter, so we’re waiting on him for a solution like an off switch for the tank, or having it heat only in off peak times but we've heard nothing back yet...........

In the meantime just use the off switch -  may be next to the tank itself. May even be 2 switches

Don't think you meant "meter" -  more like "water heater" often called an immersion 

Sorry I got my words mixed up - it is an immersion water heater. As it is in the attic it is basically impossible to get to day to day so I am switching it off at the fuse box every day - from others’ recommendations I will be leaving it on for an hour each day and seeing if we are have enough hot water from that

JKS$(

I'm in an all electric flat, which was a shock after having gas CH & a combi boiler for hot water.

I have a 120L immersion heater & I can get 3 showers & a bowl of washing up out of 1 heating cycle. Each cycle takes an hour using 6kWh. My tank has 2 3kWh switches. 

The previous occupant left 1 3kWh switch on 24/7, whereas I have 6kWh on for 1 hour twice a week. The rest of our usage is fairly similar - neither of used the panel heaters, neither use the tumble dryer (the flat has patio doors & gets up to 27C now on a sunny day), both use small air fryer or microwave for cooking.

My monthly usage is around 100kWh/month - hers 270kWh.

It may be worth playing around with the immersion, manually turning it off & measuring usage in the short term while you wait for advice from the electrician. If you don't have an IHD, the free Bright App can give you all the information (& more). Took about 2 days to get my account with then set up & I use it most days. (No IHD)

haze23

electric_city30 said:

haze23 said:

TBH, surprised you've managed to keep the heating usage (time) that low over the cold spells. That does imply decent insulation, so that's something.

As a quick sanity check, if you have 3 x 2kW heating running for 1.5-2 hours, that's 9-12kWh total per day without considering anything else, so maybe the total is more in line with expectations that at first thought?

Hi - I mentioned that we only use one of the heaters ever, the others are completely off at the wall

Sorry missed that detail. Well that's the point of a sanity check; so the majority of your usage is not down to room heating. From the other posts maybe some calculations on expected energy requirements for your water heating?

electric_city30

haze23 said:

Sorry missed that detail. Well that's the point of a sanity check; so the majority of your usage is not down to room heating. From the other posts maybe some calculations on expected energy requirements for your water heating?

Thanks for taking the time to reply! The water heater is definitely where we think the issue is coming from - I did a couple of days of using only one appliance per hour and reading the meter every hour to see if anything caused a surge - the heater didn’t even take it up by 1kWh when I tried that for an hour so feeling quite happy with that - when hot water was used was the time when the kWh shot up the most drastically. Definitely will spend the next few days only having it on for an hour a day to see how it works - I’m hoping the electrician comes back with a plan to install an easy to access switch for this so I no longer have to climb up to reach the fuse box every time which is a bit of a headache!

RedFraggle

My all electric 65square meters flat uses between 10 and 30 kWh per day but our water heater (gledhill thermal store) and storage heaters run on E7.
I'd suggest asking the landlord to fit an external timer to the water heater. I did that on ours as it had no need to run for the 7 hour cheap rate.
We use the electric shower so only need hot water for washing up. 
You should be able to find a sweet spot for the hot water tank that suits your hot water usage. 

Veteransaver

The water heater being left on shouldn't use significantly more electric overall assuming it is a decently insulated cylinder so I don't think that is going to account for your perceived excess usage. But if you are on a night tariff it would save money to make sure it is heated overnight and then only boosted during the day at peak rates.
February usage of about 17kWh average per day doesn't sound horrendous tbh. 
Your electrician friend using gas would probably average around 70-100kWh of gas in winter + normal electric so it isn't really a proper comparison and electric heating is always going to be 4 times more expensive unless using overnight cheap rate storage heating.
The water heating would probably be around 6kWh of that.
Add in likely 5 or 6kWh+ for heating (even having one of them on for 2 hours would be 4kWh,)
Then 1 or 2kWh for cooking/kettle and then all the other things like lights TVs / dishwasher/ washing machine etc I don't think it's bad.
We are quite frugal and use about 6kWh of electric a day and none of that is for water or heating