I'm using about 6000 units a year; roughly 18 units a day at the moment, made up of 14 day and 4 night units.
And I can't work out where it's all going!
There's a modern, efficient fridge/freezer, and the pump for the combi-boiler, and a few things on standby ... but how on earth can that use 18 units a day?
Can there be leaks? Any ideas? Any tests I can do?
No heating? You could switch everything off and check that your meter has stopped turning. Then switch on items (or circuits at the fuse box) one at a time to see if there is a big demand on a particular circuit. er cheers
Jacob
In article , snipped-for-privacy@jpbutler.demon.co.uk writes
No - it's all gas. BTW ... thanks for your very quick reply, Jacob.
That sounds like a good idea. What do the flashes on the meter mean? Is each flash a thousandth of a unit?
People at home all day, lights on? What do use to cook? Computer(s) on 24/7?
Small loads on for long periods soon add up. 83W, yer less than average these days PC just the CPU box) will take 2 units in a 24hrs, add a monitor on for 12hrs and you have 3 units/day...
18 is nothing we chomp through well over 20 but then we cook by 'lectric.Don't know - there's nothing on mine which you'd call a "flash", perhaps your's is more modern.
cheers
jacob
It's not difficult to use this amount - I use even more, but I have got a pond pump running 7x24 and 3 computers on for most of the waking hours.
It's surprising how much power is taken by lighting, if your house is well lit. When it's dark tonight, go round and add up the wattage of all the lights which are on. You may well have a couple of kW or more. Run those for 6 hours, and there's 12 units straight away!
See what it says on the meter. Mine says 250 revs per kWh (unit). There are black and green marks on the edge of the disc which come round once per rev - so if you time a few revs, you can estimate your current (!) rate of consumption.
If you want to know how many units plug-in devices like fridges take over a
24-hour period, you can buy plug-in measuring devices from places like Maplins or MachineMart which will tell you.
This will usually be written on the meter - e.g. "1000 imp/kwh" means 1000 flashes per unit. Some meters have a blob on the LCD which goes on/off at whatever rate is indicated.
I'm using about the same. I have two PCs on 24 hours/day however and the occassional use of the 3KW immersion heater.
Do you have lots of very bright lights?!
M.
I've a similar split, so barely worth staying on economy 7. Mine seems to average between .6 and .8kW constant.
This with electric cooking, fridge and freezer, pc 24/7, telly or other pc maybe 5/7. Then there's lighting and central heating controls.
PC varies from 70 to 150W but interestingly the other one draws 4W even when off (little maplin wattmeter so accuracy not verified). On top of this we have numerous wall warts and battery charges which I now suspect mount up to over 100W, if I am right this becomes a significant part of the load, worth looking at one of those intelligent trailing multiple sockets to kill all ancillaries when the pc or telly is off.
AJH
It'll almost certainly be written on the meter somewhere, it is on our 'flashing' meter.
I use 15 during day and 6 at night. Have gas CH and cooker, PC on
24/7 and washing/drying/dishwasher on during night.
I average 9 during day and 6 at night. Have gas CH and cooker, PC on
24/7 and washing/drying/dishwasher on during night.
Leaving things, like the Tele' PC and tape/disc appliances, on Stand-By Mode isn't turning them off. They can be using just as much power in stand-by than they use when fully operating. Don't leave them in stand-by, turn them off properly.
I have a neighbour who's security light is on at night more than it is off. As most of them run at 500 watts they can bang the night time usage up enormously.
Mine's like that unfortunately, still trying to 'cat-proof' the garden as a few times I've seen the light on I've seen cats walking around at the back...
John.
per unit.
Mine's also 1000 flashes per kWh, so that seems to be pretty standard.
In which case your consumption in watts is 60 times the number of flashes per minute or 3600 divided by the number of seconds between flashes.
Shortly after moving into our current house I replaced the 500 watt halogen in our back yard with a sensor driven 60 watt bulkhead. The light level is more than sufficient in a smallish area. The 500 watt halogen (not PIR triggered) has been relocated to adequately illuminates the paddock beyond the yard. IMO most 500 watt halogen fittings are totally unsuitable for the usage they are put to. Usually small front gardens where they annoy the neighbours, or dazzle oncoming cars. In a previous house a PIR 500 watt halogen on the garage door pillar made it impossible to reverse into the garage due to the glare. It was replaced with a 15 watt Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) in a coach lamp on a timer.
I also changed the inherited 3 x 100 lamps at the front of our current house with 2 x 15 and 1 x 7 watt CFL's. As these are on daily in the winter from
4.30pm to 1am (no street lamps here!) they alone are saving us a fortune! I also use CFL's in all fittings in usually inhabited rooms.Our electricity bills are about a third of the previous owners of the house. We average 18 units per day in the winter. Given we're a family of four, living in a pitch black rural location, and I work at home on a PC three long days per week I'm pretty happy with this.
So you are outside every evening, in the winter? Why bother lighting the outside when you are, presumably, inside and still awake? Any tea leaf will wait an hour or two after you switch 'em off before quietly breaking in under the cover of darkness.
I do agree that using CFLs for the lights that are on most often is a very good idea from the lecky bill point of view. Pay back even at
5p/unit on our 6 lounge lights at =A39 each is/was something like 6 months.
Quite true thus far...
But this is misleading. For TVs, standby power is prolly under 5W - so it'll take 200 hours (call it a week) to chew up 1 unit. Ten such 'standby' appliances, though, will eat you 1 unit a day. It's certainly worth making your controls for AV appliances, PC peripherals, and the like convenient enough to operate that you can turn each group truly 'off' when you're not using them; but this is impractical for some gear such as your VCR which needs to keep its clock going, and other things which lose their settings when not connected to the mains.
For PCs, they'll usually use even less when 'off' but connected - but they'll use relatively plenty (say 50W) when in 'hot standby' - the ready-to-start-up-in-a-few-seconds mode which XP and probably earlier versions of Windows calls 'Stand By'.
For tape/disc appliances, they use little power even when 'fully' on (20-30W would be typical), and where they have a 'standby' mode, will use maybe a tenth of that.
Across the country, there's more 'background' load from all the small-power standby appliances (and the DECT phones plugged into the mains, and and and) than there was 20 or even 10 years ago; so if you multiply up all the 'standby' usage of our 20million+ households it comes to quite a lot. But multiplying up the heat losses from drafts, poor insulation, inefficient fridges, and the like chews up several such quite-a-lots!
Stefek
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