angrysaveruk
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Post by angrysaveruk on Dec 3, 2022 14:57:05 GMT
I have started to try to work out where the electricity I am using in my house goes using those plugs that tells you how much electric an appliance is using. I am finding it impossible to explain what the meter is registering, the amount the meter is reading is way to high to be explained by what the appliances are using. Am I right in thinking what appliances draw from the wall in KWH should reflect what the meter registers and that I have uncovered some kind of scam by the electric company?
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michaelc
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Post by michaelc on Dec 3, 2022 15:07:00 GMT
Is your's a smart meter - can you see in realtime how much it claims to be using? Then wouldn't the quickest way be to turn off all the circuits and add one at a time until you see a sudden unexplained jump? Then concentrate efforts on that circuit to find the culprit.
I don't have a smart meter and am thinking about installing one. I currently use a monitoring device that clamps around the meter tails. I find that surprisingly accurate.
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angrysaveruk
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Post by angrysaveruk on Dec 3, 2022 15:14:35 GMT
Is your's a smart meter - can you see in realtime how much it claims to be using? Then wouldn't the quickest way be to turn off all the circuits and add one at a time until you see a sudden unexplained jump? Then concentrate efforts on that circuit to find the culprit. I don't have a smart meter and am thinking about installing one. I currently use a monitoring device that clamps around the meter tails. I find that surprisingly accurate.
Thanks for the info have worked out how much the core things such as dish washer, fridge, freezer, washing machine and computer use. Which should pretty much account for most of the electric use and I am at 25% of my bill (gas is used for heating and cooking). Where the other 75% is coming from god only knows, the electric oven and tumble dryer have both been taped up by me so it cant be that.
No it is not a smart meter just a digital meter that reads down to .1 KWH. How can I get a device to give me a live reading on how many watts it is using in real time? - after some googling I think you must be talking about a clamp meter I will get one.
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dave4
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Post by dave4 on Dec 3, 2022 16:25:00 GMT
hidden in plain sight electric users, central heating pump, router, phone charger (infact any appliance with a voltage reducing plug) extractor fan.
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keitha
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Post by keitha on Dec 3, 2022 17:14:30 GMT
Fridge, Freezer, Dishwasher, Tumble dryer, heated towel rail, iron, Kettle, toaster
TV even on standby some use 20 Watts, Games consoles, TV boxes ( SKY Q is apparently particularly bad )
I suppose it depends on what you are using overall and how you heat the home and cook.
as an example, most days I'm below 5kWh and that's me being pretty frugal, I have friends who think with gas heating and hob that 20kWh a day is reasonable
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keitha
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Post by keitha on Dec 3, 2022 17:21:42 GMT
Is your's a smart meter - can you see in realtime how much it claims to be using? Then wouldn't the quickest way be to turn off all the circuits and add one at a time until you see a sudden unexplained jump? Then concentrate efforts on that circuit to find the culprit. I don't have a smart meter and am thinking about installing one. I currently use a monitoring device that clamps around the meter tails. I find that surprisingly accurate.
Thanks for the info have worked out how much the core things such as dish washer, fridge, freezer, washing machine and computer use. Which should pretty much account for most of the electric use and I am at 25% of my bill (gas is used for heating and cooking). Where the other 75% is coming from god only knows, the electric oven and tumble dryer have both been taped up by me so it cant be that.
No it is not a smart meter just a digital meter that reads down to .1 KWH. How can I get a device to give me a live reading on how many watts it is using in real time? - after some googling I think you must be talking about a clamp meter I will get one.
MY IHD gives pretty good readings, of course my best readings are from my Solar inverter that tells me at 5 minute intervals what I'm using, my Baseline with just Fridge and Freeezers, router, 2 alexa, IHD, microwave and oven clock running is about 100 watts but as the compressors kick in and out that varies up to about 200 Watts
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Dec 3, 2022 19:58:58 GMT
Fridge, Freezer, Dishwasher, Tumble dryer, heated towel rail, iron, Kettle, toaster TV even on standby some use 20 Watts, Games consoles, TV boxes ( SKY Q is apparently particularly bad ) I suppose it depends on what you are using overall and how you heat the home and cook. as an example, most days I'm below 5kWh and that's me being pretty frugal, I have friends who think with gas heating and hob that 20kWh a day is reasonableI currently use about 18 kwhr at night (storage heater and immersion heater) and about 4 kwhr during the day. That equates to about £5 / day, or £800 over the 6 winter months. Government pays £400 and I pay £400.
I looked at the saving associated with running the washing machine and dish washer at night, but it was more trouble than it was worth. The 3 things to avoid during the day are:
- Using the big oven (my microwave has a grill and convection oven, so that gets most use)
- Heating the water for a bath
- The storage heater has a convection heater built in, and using it to top up the heating on very cold days sends the meter into overdrive (not normally needed though).
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Post by bracknellboy on Dec 3, 2022 20:36:22 GMT
Is your's a smart meter - can you see in realtime how much it claims to be using? Then wouldn't the quickest way be to turn off all the circuits and add one at a time until you see a sudden unexplained jump? Then concentrate efforts on that circuit to find the culprit. I don't have a smart meter and am thinking about installing one. I currently use a monitoring device that clamps around the meter tails. I find that surprisingly accurate.
Thanks for the info have worked out how much the core things such as dish washer, fridge, freezer, washing machine and computer use. Which should pretty much account for most of the electric use and I am at 25% of my bill (gas is used for heating and cooking). Where the other 75% is coming from god only knows, the electric oven and tumble dryer have both been taped up by me so it cant be that.
No it is not a smart meter just a digital meter that reads down to .1 KWH. How can I get a device to give me a live reading on how many watts it is using in real time? - after some googling I think you must be talking about a clamp meter I will get one.
Kettle? Lights? Water/central heating pump? Apologies for stating the bleeding obvious, but if you are using a plug in power monitor, you are using it on accumulated power setting and measuring things like fridge/freezer over a decent period of time (several days) and then calculating its average use. Still, only accounting for 25% seems a bit odd.
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angrysaveruk
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Post by angrysaveruk on Dec 3, 2022 21:55:34 GMT
Thanks for the info have worked out how much the core things such as dish washer, fridge, freezer, washing machine and computer use. Which should pretty much account for most of the electric use and I am at 25% of my bill (gas is used for heating and cooking). Where the other 75% is coming from god only knows, the electric oven and tumble dryer have both been taped up by me so it cant be that.
No it is not a smart meter just a digital meter that reads down to .1 KWH. How can I get a device to give me a live reading on how many watts it is using in real time? - after some googling I think you must be talking about a clamp meter I will get one.
Apologies for stating the bleeding obvious, but if you are using a plug in power monitor, you are using it on accumulated power setting and measuring things like fridge/freezer over a decent period of time (several days) and then calculating its average use.
Yes I have been basing my audit of our electric usage by measuring the total KWH consumption over 24 hours for each appliance. I have tried to account for all the KWH usage and have found it to be way off. Currently the usage is over 400 KWH per month and this is after I have been careful. When you start looking at how much alot of things use like freezers and fridge (0.5 KWH per day each), Dishwasher (1KWH per day per cycle), Computers 0.3 KWH (depending on how long I spend talking rubbish online) it is very difficult to work out how it is getting upto 400 KWH a month.
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keitha
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Post by keitha on Dec 3, 2022 22:56:57 GMT
I have started to try to work out where the electricity I am using in my house goes using those plugs that tells you how much electric an appliance is using. I am finding it impossible to explain what the meter is registering, the amount the meter is reading is way to high to be explained by what the appliances are using. Am I right in thinking what appliances draw from the wall in KWH should reflect what the meter registers and that I have uncovered some kind of scam by the electric company? The other possibility is the meter is screwed, and is recording wrong. in my case I'm sure my old meter was wrong. how wrong, well it recorded use of just over 1000kWh in 2 years so about 1.5kWh per day, small wonder that the previous owner preferred to use electric heaters rather than the central heating.
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sqh
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Post by sqh on Dec 4, 2022 1:58:21 GMT
Is your's a smart meter - can you see in realtime how much it claims to be using? Then wouldn't the quickest way be to turn off all the circuits and add one at a time until you see a sudden unexplained jump? Then concentrate efforts on that circuit to find the culprit. I don't have a smart meter and am thinking about installing one. I currently use a monitoring device that clamps around the meter tails. I find that surprisingly accurate.
Thanks for the info have worked out how much the core things such as dish washer, fridge, freezer, washing machine and computer use. Which should pretty much account for most of the electric use and I am at 25% of my bill (gas is used for heating and cooking). Where the other 75% is coming from god only knows, the electric oven and tumble dryer have both been taped up by me so it cant be that.
No it is not a smart meter just a digital meter that reads down to .1 KWH. How can I get a device to give me a live reading on how many watts it is using in real time? - after some googling I think you must be talking about a clamp meter I will get one.
Even if you heat water with gas you could still have an immersion heater switched on. What about lighting left on the attic, or an old style outside security light with a 500W bulb. Or a power shower.
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angrysaveruk
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Post by angrysaveruk on Dec 4, 2022 8:00:14 GMT
Thanks for the info have worked out how much the core things such as dish washer, fridge, freezer, washing machine and computer use. Which should pretty much account for most of the electric use and I am at 25% of my bill (gas is used for heating and cooking). Where the other 75% is coming from god only knows, the electric oven and tumble dryer have both been taped up by me so it cant be that.
No it is not a smart meter just a digital meter that reads down to .1 KWH. How can I get a device to give me a live reading on how many watts it is using in real time? - after some googling I think you must be talking about a clamp meter I will get one.
Even if you heat water with gas you could still have an immersion heater switched on. What about lighting left on the attic, or an old style outside security light with a 500W bulb. Or a power shower.
There are no other major appliances that use electric. I am going to rig a plug on the gas Combi Boiler so I can test how much it is using - should not be much according to the spec but I need to test it. Other than that the only thing I can think is something is faulty and leaking current to the ground - which I am going to work out how I can test for that or a broken meter. The whole thing started with my drive to reduce energy. We have done fantastic on gas consumption (reduced it by 70% with a combination of a wood burner, limiting hot water use and dehumidifiers) - electric for some reason seems to be alot harder to reduce.
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benaj
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Post by benaj on Dec 4, 2022 8:23:50 GMT
🤔
The annual usage in kWh shouldn’t be jumping more than 10% every year unless your household has more people living in the premise.
Keeping one fridge freezer on in a empty premise draws less than 2kWh a day
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easynow
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Post by easynow on Dec 4, 2022 8:37:24 GMT
Even if you heat water with gas you could still have an immersion heater switched on. What about lighting left on the attic, or an old style outside security light with a 500W bulb. Or a power shower.
There are no other major appliances that use electric. I am going to rig a plug on the gas Combi Boiler so I can test how much it is using - should not be much according to the spec but I need to test it. Other than that the only thing I can think is something is faulty and leaking current to the ground - which I am going to work out how I can test for that or a broken meter. The whole thing started with my drive to reduce energy. We have done fantastic on gas consumption (reduced it by 70% with a combination of a wood burner, limiting hot water use and dehumidifiers) - electric for some reason seems to be alot harder to reduce.
I'm no electrician, but if this was the case i'm sure your circuit breakers would be tripping out.
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Post by bracknellboy on Dec 4, 2022 8:58:55 GMT
Even if you heat water with gas you could still have an immersion heater switched on. What about lighting left on the attic, or an old style outside security light with a 500W bulb. Or a power shower.
There are no other major appliances that use electric. I am going to rig a plug on the gas Combi Boiler so I can test how much it is using - should not be much according to the spec but I need to test it. Other than that the only thing I can think is something is faulty and leaking current to the ground - which I am going to work out how I can test for that or a broken meter. The whole thing started with my drive to reduce energy. We have done fantastic on gas consumption (reduced it by 70% with a combination of a wood burner, limiting hot water use and dehumidifiers) - electric for some reason seems to be alot harder to reduce.
are those electric ? or passive absorbtion?
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