Typical electrical consumption in gas-heated house

[Andrew]

Just curious.

Do people here (with mains gas heating) measure their eletricity consumption, and wonder where it all goes ?.

The last time I looked at Combi boiler specs, they had a typical leccy consumption of 180 watts. Even an ordinary CH pump seems to be up to 60 watts and it all adds up. Sort of defeats the point of surrendering our

60 watt incandescent bulbs for nasty CF ones.

Out of interest, could people post their typical ?weekly leccy consumption and how they use it ?.

Mine so 'low' at one point that I ended up on an eXcel spreadsheet of 'suspicious' houses, and the EDF bod came round and had a good look at the meter and tugged on all the cables. I told him I liked a cold house and got the usual 'only doing my job' response.

Andrew

[John Rumm]

Hmm, but think where all the energy ends up...

[Vortex11]

OCD onset in my 50's has made me record meter readings every week for the past 4+ years.

This year (weeks 40:47 inclusive....basically October and November to date) 158 kWh per week. This seems like a lot to me.

I reckon quiescent consumption of my house is about 100 watts = 17 kWh per week. (Internet router; NAS; switches and stuff in standby)

I imagine the rest (still 20kWh per day!) to be 75% appliances (cooking; laundry; boiler leccy) and 25% the rest (lighting; TV etc)

Last year for same period 178 kWh. One less child here may explain........

D

[Tim Lamb]

Huh! 38 year old unwed daughter home overnight with all her washing!

New baby at her digs so appliance access is constrained.

[Bob Eager]

Somewhere between 200 and 230 kWh per week.

A lot of permanently running computers, and teenage sons who leave stuff on.

Most bulbs are incandescent apart from hall and stairs which tend to get left on a lot; they are CFLs.

[airsmoothed]

Similar scenario to Bob; around 18KWh per day average over last 10 years.

[ss]

Aug to begin Nov 2014 I averaged 51.18 kWh per week Begin Nov 2014 to date I average 59.33 kWh per week

2013 for Nov to begin Feb 3 months I averaged 86.53 per week.

[rbel]

Last 6 months average 72kWh per week - lighting is now mainly led or halogen, dishwasher, washing machine and tumble drier and kitchen small appliances, plasma tv, two computers, most selected with theoretical energy consumption in mind.

[Gordon Freeman]

I noticed my condensate pump was always warm even when no water going into it. Since it has a little green LED that's permanently on it occurred to me that it must be continuously drawing power which might account for the warmth, a check of the meter showed that it seemed to be using a continuous

10 watts presumably due to an inefficient power supply. Ironically the spec. sheet says that its peak consumption when pumping water (which it only has to do for about 30 seconds a day) is 1 watt!

[PeterC]

About 25kWh/week. The PC was built with cool 'n' quiet in mind and is 45W idling (and 7.5 years old); the TV, although 50", gives a good picture at

37W. Most lighting is CFL apart from 5 LED lamps. The vac. draws more for the first few seconds as it has to clear all the dust, fluff and spiders from its inlet before running properly then it goes into snowplough mode.

[Allan]

Running at about 3300 kwh/yr, so about 65 kwh/week (monthly readings for 10 years, figs above average for last 12 months). One person in house, computer(s) on semi-permanently, no dishwasher, gas CH, lighting is mostly cfls or halogen. i have a 'smart meter' with an associated (wireless) monitor/display which has the green/orange/red lights on it (for leccie) which provides an incentive/reminder to switch stuff off.

[Andrew]

Wow, that is low. Even in summer, when I am outside a lot, about 5Kwh seems to disappear somewhere everyday. I have wondered if getting one of those 80% efficient power supplies for the computer would have an effect. Mine is either on for hours and hours or off completely. I am tempted to get one of those LG 21:9 screens, but that would need a new video card, and might overload the existing 450 watt ps (8 years old). This could be an excuse to get a more efficient one.

I have an elderly Smiths outdoor pir which has a conventional mains transformer, so that is now run from a plug in electromechanical timer so it is only energised between 5PM and 6AM. The Swish autoglide controller uses 25 watts so that is now off until I can think of a substitute. I don't leave my router on 24x7 because I don't use wireless.

Most lights are CFL, with a 40watt fluorescent in the kitchen. In winter I switch the CFL in my anglepoise for a 60 watt reflector incandescant because it keeps my hands warm (but makes the mousemat bubble up).

[Andrew]

Sounds like you might derive a noticible benefit from using computer power supplies that are 80%+ efficient (assuming your pcs are all fairly standard, i.e. not Dell).

Andrew

[Jonathan]

Ours is 72 units/week in a gas-heated house.

Jonathan

[Bob Eager]

They are all 80+ supplies - I built all the machines. But there are nine of them.

[PeterC]

I can't recall the exact figures now, but when I built the current PC I bought a Seasonic 330W PSU (it's never been past about 124W, even on boot), out of curiosity I stuck it in the old PC that had a reasonable Antec 400W in it and the power dropped by about 15 - 20W.

15W would be roughly 130kWh pa. The exhaust temperature and fan noise also dropped noticeably.

My Anglepoise (now 45 years old and refurbished) and the (industrial desk lamp) are fitted with 3.5W LEDs (about 220lm) - my hands don't get warm!