Gas energy usage

pegeen2010

am with Octopus and have been monitoring my smart meter recently. With the sunny weather I have turned off the gas central heating for over a month. I don’t use any gas until I do the washing up at lunchtime. For the past couple of weeks there was no usage of gas registered over night or morning. Now, suddenly for the past 3 days out of the blue 31 pence is registering for gas on my monitor with no usage. 

teaselMay

Has it started registering standing charge where it didn't previously?  Check the octopus app or online

Netexporter

Do you havge a combi boiler, that provides instant hot water, or do you have a hot water cylinder?

Also, bear in mind that the IHD includes the daily standing charge in the "money" reading. Change to the kWh reading to see how much gas you are actually consuming..

FreeBear

pegeen2010 said: With the sunny weather I have turned off the gas central heating for over a month. I don’t use any gas until I do the washing up at lunchtime.

My combi boiler is a fair distance from the kitchen (some 12m of pipework). As a result, the tap needs to run for a few minutes before hot water appears. Soon after having the boiler installed, I did some rough sums, and it worked out cheaper to boil a kettle for washing up.

With the bathroom being the main consumer of hot water, the temperature has been turned down to ~45°C - This helps to boost gas efficiency by a few points (maybe a 2% increase).

With the old back boiler & DHW tank that I did have, it just wasn't worth keeping a tank of water heated up all day/week just for a few litres of hot water.

pegeen2010

The monitor showed 0 charge during the night for 2 weeks but is now showing 30p when there is no usage during the night until I do the washing up at lunchtime.

bagand96

pegeen2010 said:

The monitor showed 0 charge during the night for 2 weeks but is now showing 30p when there is no usage during the night until I do the washing up at lunchtime.

Are you sure it's not the Standing Charge? It's definitely in the right ballpark, especially of its the same amount every day? Most IHDs will include Standing Charge in the amount and it's added some point overnight. 

Your Octopus account will give you the answer in the Usage section, you can break down the graphs to hourly. 

MattMattMattUK

pegeen2010 said:

The monitor showed 0 charge during the night for 2 weeks but is now showing 30p when there is no usage during the night until I do the washing up at lunchtime.

Look at your meter reads rather than the IHD, these are available on the Octopus app, though I am not sure what the interval is for gas, it might just be daily.

What kind of water heating do you have, a boiler and a hot water tank, a combi boiler?

pegeen2010

It’s a combi boiler but heating is completely switched off. It only uses hot water for washing up at lunchtime. The boiler is in the kitchen.

kazwookie

Depending on how much water you need, it 'might' be quicker and cheaper to boil the kettle.

matelodave

Even a combi boiler with heating switched off will consume gas when you turn the hot tap on.

Gas meters only send there data to the leccy meter once every half an hour and the leccy meter communicates with the IHD, so the best you'll get is once every half hour but if you aren't using enough gas it may not register on the IHD but will be collected and sent to the DCC by the leccy meter usually once a day.

A lot will depend on how yours is set up, but as @MattMattMattUK says, read the meter and not the IHD as the data on the IHD isn't necessarily very accurate, especially when it come to translating the volume of gas into kwh and then doing the sums to come up with a cost.

pegeen2010

Yes but it shouldn’t be recording consumption first thing in the morning when everything has been switched all night off, surely? The standing charge is 28.44 pence.