How much electricity consumption is too much? Is my home OTT?

HorseWhisperer

Hi all,

We have just had a home energy assessment done on our home, and one of the questions asked by the assessor was how much electricity we consumed per year. When I told him our total for 2024 was 6100KwH his eyes popped out of his head. I should qualify that we are a small farm and have loads of freezers x5, fridges x3 and electric fencing! We are at home all day most of the time as we are semi-retired, but there is just two us living here (6 bed, 260sqm but we only use 2 bedrooms unless family are staying).

Curious about the huge consumption we appear to have, I did a little digging around on the Octopus app and worked out that our current electricity consumption averages around 16KwH/day in winter/spring - the most was 20KwH on the coldest days in February when we had the heating on for about 8 hours a day in the cold snap (we only usually have it on for 5 hours a day as it's oil £££). However, when we were on holiday for four days in the first week of April we were still consuming 9KwH a day! Heating was turned off, but not the hot water, which is programmed to come on twice a day.

We cook with an electric oven and induction hob. In 2022 and 2023, when electricity prices first went nuts due to the Ukraine war, we cut back on using our oven substantially and tried to only use it once a week to batch cook. We've become a bit lax on that in the past 12 months so probably use it 3 times a week. We don't have solar or a battery to offset our consumption, or a heat pump to increase it, but those are in the pipeline.

Our living arrangements/lifestyle are not "normal", granted, but I am wondering what is a "normal" level of consumption of electricity? How much do you consume annually/daily? What size home/how many occupants is that for? I'd love to know how far we are off "normal"! Thanks!

moneytorques

You are using 3 times that of my 4 bed house with 3 occupants however I have PV Panels saving around 400kwh per annum. From your description it doesn't sound overly excessive, do you have Gas or Electric Heating, that is normally the largest energy consumption.

HorseWhisperer

moneytorques said:

You are using 3 times that of my 4 bed house with 3 occupants however I have PV Panels saving around 400kwh per annum. From your description it doesn't sound overly excessive, do you have Gas or Electric Heating, that is normally the largest energy consumption.

We have oil CH as per post. I just wanted to compare electricity consumption, rather than energy.

Scot_39

Ofgem produce 3 tdcvs for dual fuel.

The one we see most is 2700kWh pa,  but their high use is 4100 kWh.

For iirc 4-5 in a 4 bed as brought guide.

Just your excess fridges and freezers - at say 0.5 to 1 kWh per day -  could take you over half way from that 4100 to your level.

Sorry no idea of power so annual energy used by fencing - do you ?

QrizB

I would suspect the fridges and freezers, especially if they're more than a few years old.

Are they new enough to have EU energy efficiency ratings? Do you have the handbooks/labels or can you Google the make and model to get that info?

An early 2000s appliance could easily use a kWh a day, and you've got eight of them.

If you want to do an energy audit, some folk on this forum are fans of the Tapo P110 smart plug with energy monitor (not the similar P100 which doesn't have the monitoring functions).

Can you tell from your Octopus half-hourly data what time of day you're using your electricity?

teaselMay

The fridges and freezers will be using a lot. You'll be able to see how much from the days that you were away.

Just me and dogs in a mid terrace usually use 2-3.5 kWh a day depending whether I do the washing or not that day, think I have more washign than average. 1200 kWh last year hoping it'll be nearer 1000 this year. Gas heating/hot water, electric oven prefer to use the cheap air fryer

On-the-coast

Gas CH here.  (But hot water for sink & showers from immersion heater)

Largish 4/5 bedroom. 7500 kWh/yr
plus another 3000 for EV charging.  

HorseWhisperer

On-the-coast said:

Gas CH here.  (But hot water for sink & showers from immersion heater)

Largish 4/5 bedroom. 7500 kWh/yr
plus another 3000 for EV charging.  

Interesting you say you use an immersion for hot water as I was wondering if the imersion on our oil-fired hot water tank is maybe kicking in too much, though it is switched off. Makes me feel a bit better knowing someone else uses more than us, though I feel for you and your electricity bill! Do you have any solar/battery installed to help offset it? Many thanks for responding.

Peter999_2

My fridge/freezer uses slightly over 1kWh a day so your usage is about what I would expect.  9kWh while you are not there is actually very good if you are using 8kWh on just the fridge/freezers.

You are spending about £759.20 a year on your fridge/freezers.  Obviously if you run a farm and need them as part of that then that is fair enough but at least you now know roughly where your high usage comes from.

If you want to know exactly how much they are using you could buy these energy monitoring remote plugs -

 Tapo P110 (2-Pack) Smart Plug, WiFi Plug, Energy Monitoring, Electricity Usage Monitor, App Remote Control, Alexa Plug, Voice Control with Alexa & Google, Away Mode, Scheduling & Timer, Device Sharing : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

This is what I use to check electric usage for devices.    I put one on my fridge and left it for a couple of months hence why I know that they use about 1kWh a day.

HorseWhisperer

QrizB said:

I would suspect the fridges and freezers, especially if they're more than a few years old.

Are they new enough to have EU energy efficiency ratings? Do you have the handbooks/labels or can you Google the make and model to get that info?

An early 2000s appliance could easily use a kWh a day, and you've got eight of them.

If you want to do an energy audit, some folk on this forum are fans of the Tapo P110 smart plug with energy monitor (not the similar P100 which doesn't have the monitoring functions).

Can you tell from your Octopus half-hourly data what time of day you're using your electricity?

Thanks for responding to both of my posts ;-) Yes, I put it down to the number of fridges/freezers we have. And you're right about their age, as all but two are old/second hand. One is an undercounter-sized fridge which we only use in summer & autumn, to store fresh animal feed and orchard fruit in, and we're just about to switch that on again so we may see comsumption rise again. I'll do some Googling to try and find out their individual consumption in the meantime.

Thanks for the tip about the Tapo P110 - I'll follow that up :-)

I will also look at the half hour data and post it below. 

HorseWhisperer

Scot_39 said:

Ofgem produce 3 tdcvs for dual fuel.

The one we see most is 2700kWh pa,  but their high use is 4100 kWh.

For iirc 4-5 in a 4 bed as brought guide.

Just your excess fridges and freezers - at say 0.5 to 1 kWh per day -  could take you over half way from that 4100 to your level.

Sorry no idea of power so annual energy used by fencing - do you ?

Yes I suspect fridges and freezers are the main culprits. The electric fencing is on 24/7 and sends a single pulse of 7,000 volts once a second. The pulse itself is only around 150 microseconds long apparently.

Thanks for responding :-)