Typical Household Electricity Usage ?

Sounds high to me. There's two of us in a 3 bed-semi. Gas CH. Washing machine/tumble drier used 4/5 times a week ( My missus is a bit over-the-top in that respect) PC on all day and am presently averaging

Andy

Just a further thought. Is that usage on an actual reading over the period or an estimate ?

Andy

Have you seen any of your neighbours having electrical and/or botanical equipment delivered in significant quantities - growing lights, compost, watering systems, fertiliser?

Do any of them include hydroponics in their list of "hobbies"?

We use a similar amount, and have a two tariff meter. The idea is that the tumble drier runs at night.

A shade on the high side.

Tat could be 3Kwh/day

Lights? fridge freezers?

Or simply that it's a 'catchup' from a previous estimated reading..

You do realise you are with the most expensive provider! I ditched BG when they increased prices by 200+% over 2 years. Even their fixed price deal meant paying far more than a cheaper provider, but stupid people stay with them. I pay far less than BG charge for gas and electric, even after all the increases forced upon people to keep shareholders happy and meet projected incomes.

What they're currently doing is introducing Click * - number changes every couple of months, presently Click 6 - which having hooked you as being the lowest Online rate through the various comparison sites, they then raise after being with them for a further couple of months.

Their pricing policy makes a mockery of the suggestion that you should compare different companies and whilst obviously legal, in the present climate it smacks of mis-selling IMO.

Andy

So that's about 1.5kW continuously.

A room full of halogen downlighters is probably one of the biggest high loads which surprises people. My main lighting is all fluorescent, except the landing light which is 10 x 10W mini halogens.

When I last checked my load, it was equivalent to 0.5kW continuously. That included 3 always-on PC's (which is now down to just 2, and will go down to 1 when I get a round tuit and write a device driver).

Turn things off one by one, and check the meter slows by the expected amount. Don't forget to turn things like fridge/freezer back on though.

That seems high, I happened to be working out our average today, about 13 units per day in the winter, down to about 11 in the summer (it's hard to tell from the bills as we were away for 3-4 weeks across July & August), so your useage is about 3x ours.

As Andrew Gabriel has suggested, try switching things off one by one - or buy one of those power monitoring meters for about £10 -15 to see where the power is being used.

Is it possible you've knocked an immersion heater switch on?

Also check your lights, Mains voltage halogens can add up if you have a lot of them, and low voltage halogens can be expensive if the transformer is 'always on' - we've got some LV bedside ones that are great, but they run off plug-in transformers that are always warm; we've put them on a timer so they only take power between 10pm and 10am -along with the upstairs DECT phone charger cradle

Update.

Some of it is "catch up" from estimates- I have two meter readings between Jan 08 and Oct 08 that now corresponds to 20 kWh a day.

This still seems very high. - if I assume:

Washing-machine-dryer/dishwasher are both on once a day -> 3 kWh

Computers (x2) -> 0.5 kWh x 24 -> 12 kWh

Gadgets on standby 0.1 kWh x 24 -> 2.4 kWh (lots of IT stuff, 2 X TV, wifes "toys")

Ahhhhh......total looks like 17.4 kWh.

Bother.

Phil

A semi with four adults and PC's all over the place, tumble drier, dishwasher, rumbling away every day. Daily 12KW average.

Right now am averaging in this cool eastern Canadian climate, similar to northern Scotland? A four bedroom all electric about 40 year old wood frame single storey house, with unfinished in ground basement inhabited by one retired male, about 40 kw hrs per day. Overall average annual consumption will run about 80 kw hrs per day costing me about $240 Can. per month all charges and taxes in. That includes two computers running continuously some workshop work , cooking hot water etc. etc. BTW remember that any wasted heat from halogens etc. helps heat the house!

Seems high. We've 5 people, 5 bedrooms, daughters that haven't mastered the knack of turning off lights, PCs on nearly always etc. and our figure is more like 20/25kWhr per day.

Is the bill and estimate or are have some previous bills been underestimated?

Brian

Terraced 5 bed house, 9 PCs on 24/7, very little use of tumble dryer, efficient washing machine, not much else...about 25kW per day.

In message , Ian writes

Or maybe not.

For our usage - about 25 kWh day over the last year, BG is the second cheapest (by just a few pounds) on their Click Energy tariff . You do need to check though as they tend to bring new variants out whilst leaving you on the old one which has got more expensive

Dishwasher is negligable. Washing machine is negligable unless perhaps you do lots of high temperature washes. I would expect a tumble drier is quite significant if used often (I've never had one or felt the need for one, although I did build myself a drying cupboard using a dehumidifier about 9 years ago, which I imagine is likely to be significantly more efficient, and I have a number of uses for the condensate it collects).

That would be a very high reading for two computers. Make sure their screen savers are just set to blank screen, not so much for the sake of the monitors, but so they aren't chewing up loads of CPU running some fancy graphics, which bumps up the power consumption.

Anything recent will be

Thats about what I've got our consumption down to. Oil CH/HW but cook by 'lectric, virtually all lights are CFL or flourescent.

TV may well take more than you expect, particulary if it is a large LCD or plasma jobbie. I though "toys for females" ran of batteries...

Interestingly, I found that our new Hotpoint washing machine shows 10 watts when 'stopped' (just the power light on) at the end of a wash..!

most washers pulls some power even when supposidly switched off by the front button,

found this out when i put a whashing machine in my motorhome, running it off the inverter i found i had a small load on the inverter everytime i turned it on, turned out to be the washer,

the inverter manufacturer told me to check my washer, as they'd had this loads of times before when people fit them to boats and leave them running all the time with a washer plugged in.