pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Dec 4, 2022 9:04:08 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.
400kWh per month does seem a lot if you are making an effort. I'm on half that, not counting my electric car. Silly question but could another property be connected to your meter? If you turn off all the circuits in your house does the power consumption go to zero, or not? Edit: just seen bracknellboy's comment on dehumidifiers. If electric, they will use a lot. Why do you need them?
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Post by bracknellboy on Dec 4, 2022 9:11:25 GMT
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.
Yes that does seem high (assuming you are not a household of 4 etc. etc.) We are currently using in the region of 185-220 a day (I've not done a rigorous overtime average, but a check on the meter shows the lower figure for November, the higher figure for the last few days. EDIT: Corrected to remove confusion created when I changed time period in mid post
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angrysaveruk
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Post by angrysaveruk on Dec 4, 2022 10:31:20 GMT
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.
400kWh per month does seem a lot if you are making an effort. I'm on half that, not counting my electric car. Silly question but could another property be connected to your meter? If you turn off all the circuits in your house does the power consumption go to zero, or not? Edit: just seen bracknellboy 's comment on dehumidifiers. If electric, they will use a lot. Why do you need them?
The nearest house is about 100 meters away and I have checked for hidden wires running across my garden from my garden lights - my neighbour is in the "Jewelry Business" so nothing would surprise me. Basically I am only regularly heating about 3 or 4 rooms with radiators so I use the dehumidifiers to stop condensation, I have accounted for how much they use in my audit. I have come to the conclusion it is probably a faulty meter, MichaelC mentioned a "Clamp Meter" that will be very useful since I can use it to verify the current usage recorded by the meter by hooking it onto one of the wires that comes into the consumer unit.
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Post by bernythedolt on Dec 4, 2022 12:16:44 GMT
Could you turn your electricity supply off completely at the consumer unit for a few minutes? Check whether the meter wheel continues to rotate, assuming it's that type. Trip out all your circuits. One circuit at a time, feed a circuit in, check the rotation speed, trip that circuit out again. Might offer some idea of the heavy user. I like michaelc's clamp meter idea best though.
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Post by moonraker on Dec 4, 2022 15:53:09 GMT
Just checked my Ovo bill and am £550 in credit, and unless the next three months are exceptionally cold I'm unlikely to use anything like that. I tried to adjust my direct debit payments online but the website will only accept increases. I'll send in my latest meter readings and then haggle with an "agent".
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Post by jevans4949 on Dec 4, 2022 16:45:11 GMT
Just checked my Ovo bill and am £550 in credit, and unless the next three months are exceptionally cold I'm unlikely to use anything like that. I tried to adjust my direct debit payments online but the website will only accept increases. I'll send in my latest meter readings and then haggle with an "agent". I have Ovo,and found recently they had introduced a minimum direct debit based on their estimate on the online site. Eventually a tmy wife's insistence I phoned them (after a couple of number choices, you can hang on for a human being, although this may involve a 20-minute wait) You can ask the operator to reduce the DD, but this will have to be approved by the Revenue Control team, so don't be too ambitious.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2022 17:13:53 GMT
Mrs Bobo ended up sending our supplier her spread sheets to show that our monthly DD was too high, they caved.
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keitha
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2024, hopefully the year I get out of P2P
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Post by keitha on Dec 4, 2022 23:09:34 GMT
Yes that does seem high (assuming you are not a household of 4 etc. etc.) We are currently using in the region of 185-220 a day (I've not done a rigorous overtime average, but a check on the meter shows the lower figure for November, the higher figure for the last few days. 185 what a day, watts, kilo watts ? or did you mean kWh a month not day 1 is low the other is very high
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Post by bracknellboy on Dec 5, 2022 8:17:22 GMT
Yes that does seem high (assuming you are not a household of 4 etc. etc.) We are currently using in the region of 185-220 a day (I've not done a rigorous overtime average, but a check on the meter shows the lower figure for November, the higher figure for the last few days. 185 what a day, watts, kilo watts ? or did you mean kWh a month not day 1 is low the other is very high keitha: corected. I had intended to be using the same metric as the OP and which I had bolded. kWh / month. I had changed tack part way through the post for more sensible comparison, but had not tidied it up. Now corrected.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Dec 5, 2022 8:52:26 GMT
I track my usage very carefully, but the baseline load here is 300w, so 7kwhr a day, 210 a month. This is the always on stuff of fridge/freezer, modem/router/access points, smart plugs, car charger controller, smoke alarms, sewage plant, ups, Rasp Pi running it all.
This is dwarfed by cooker, immersion heater, washing machine, heaters etc. Good news (in winter) is it all comes out as heat.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2022 11:47:37 GMT
what's a "w" ....?
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angrysaveruk
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Post by angrysaveruk on Dec 5, 2022 17:17:36 GMT
Thanks to MichaelC's suggestion about Clamp Meters I am pretty sure I have a faulty Electric Meter. There is no way this thing is working correctly. Initially I purchased a cheap model that cost me about £10 and has confirmed the meter is reading garbage and my wife is not to blame. I am going to buy a very expensive version now with higher accuracy and take readings over a month, after which I am going to find out what the legal situation is on faulty meters. I think it is reasonable to assume I have been paying too much since I purchased this property along with this meter 12 years ago. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions.
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registerme
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Post by registerme on Dec 5, 2022 17:52:23 GMT
I think it is reasonable to assume I have been paying too much since I purchased this property along with this meter 12 years ago. At some point I found out that I'd been paying the neighbour's (a family of four) gas bill for x years. And they'd been paying mine. There was an upper limit on compensation that didn't come close to making up for the difference. But good luck anyway, I have zero sympathy for any of these firms!
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nick
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Post by nick on Dec 5, 2022 18:06:36 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 a lot harder to reduce.
You could buy an energy monitor that you can clip on to the live wire going into your meter. The sensor can determine voltage, amps and thus wattage being used very accurately - I bought one several years ago to try and work out where all my power consumption was going. This is a link to the one I purchased for c£40 which has a wireless remote monitor which sits on my desk - uk.efergy.com/elite-classic. Alternatively you could just request installation of a smart meter which will provide the same info and will be installed free (I don't have enough surrounding space for a smart installation apparently). With a energy monitor you can then turn off all the power circuits on your main consumer/fuse/RCD unit and switch each ring on separately so you can see how much power each circuit is drawing, eg upstairs/downstairs plugs, lighting, oven boiler etc and narrow down where power is being drawn.
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michaelc
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Post by michaelc on Dec 5, 2022 18:25:29 GMT
Question I have about smart meters is do the current crop provide usage data in realtime? I had heard that some/all (?) only provide data every 5 minutes.
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