Odd electricity Usage

Dear Martyn
My wife thinks I am a boring old fart, I take all my meter readings every monday morning, A habit from my last job. we have a 3 bed semi. 1 fridge in the house 1 Fridge-freezer in the garage, 1 32" TV on most of the afternoon & evening, and double oven + ceramic hob, & a 10K electric shower.
Consumption varies between 11.5 & 12.5 units per day averaged over a week, except for Xmas week when we had company more cooking & more electric showers it went up to 14 units.
Hope this helps.

JonB
 
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10KWh over 12 hours = average load of 830W which given that this is apparently for just a fridge/freezer + 60W lamp + a few items in stdby mode does seem rather high ... maybe around double what I would be expecting without giving it too much thought. Assuming any immersion (or other water) heater is turned off (could it be a U/S switch so it's still on even when apparently turned off ?) and no other concealed heating anywhere or high power exterior lights with PIR then I think I might just be reaching for the Megger for a quick insulation test unless there is an RCD on the incoming feed !! Mind you, it could be where you find out that you're powering half of next doors stuff and have been for ages I suppose :mrgreen:

I've got no end of junk (several PCs, hifi, TV, microwave etc.) either always on or in stdby plus a very old and well knackered fridge/freezer but virtually nothing else so I will see what that comes out at over night and post the result in the morning. It should at least indicate whether 10KWh is reasonable or if my wild guess of double what it should be is way out ! Watch this space ......
 
take a very close look at your meter, are you reading .1 of a unit or .01 of a unit not whole units?
 
Possible causes:

1. Faulty meter.
2. Faulty meter reading.
3. Something powered overnight without you realising it.
4. Nextdoor has plugged his house into yours.

Regarding (3), has your immersion heater been left on (as previously mentioned)? If you're sure that the only appliance left on overnight is the F/F, then why not turn off all circuits except that ring main and the upstairs lights, just before you go beddy-byes, and see what morning reveals?
 
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OK, so under the following conditions:

1 x Very old fridge freezer on 24/7
1 x Microwave sat doing nothing except pretending to be a clock !
1 x PC on 24/7
2 x PCs in STBY
1 x Router, Switch, Hub, two Modems & a few other bits/pieces on 24/7
2 x SAT receiver in STBY
1 x DVD recorder in STBY
1 x CD player in STBY
1 x PABX and phones etc. on 24/7
1 x Radio alarm

Everything else turned off as far as I know and defo no immersion or other cooking/heating apart from a quick boil of the kettle - can't be doing anything in the morning before having a cuppa (or three) :)

Reading @ 22:30 last night 72838.4
Reading @ 10:30 this morning 72841.2

Total consumption over 12 hours a touch under 3KWh. Add a couple of KWh for your 60W lamp on all the time and various other lighting on for say 4 hours between 18:30 and 22:30 in your case and I reckon your 10KWh is defo around double what it perhaps should be !

If you can't find any *covert* heating, high power lighting, wiring disappearing towards next door or some rather embarassing finger or should I say eye trouble ;) then it's well past time to get the meter and insulation checked out properly IMO. Hope this helps

--
Mike
 
crafty1289 said:
what have you got all those PCs and modems and a PABX for? :eek:
Ah yes, probably should have posted a geek alert warning label or something before I posted all that shouldn't I ! - but it's not quite so bad as it first seems .... honest :D One PC acts as a web/ftp server, receives faxes and also performs a variety of logging, monitoring and control functions etc. so is on 24/7. The other two are my main PC which is only powered up as and when required plus another system I happened to be working on at the time.

The phone stuff is really just historic and is only a (relatively) small box on the wall kinda thing rather than something more suited to a large(ish) business environment. Many moons ago before sensible cordless phones existed it was the cheapest, easiest and most cost-effective solution to provide multiple extensions, least-cost call routing and fax/data switching etc. with a minimum of hassle. It also provided an easy no-cost solution for developing and testing s/w applications that used modems. The two modems are also largely historic and retained for fax/data and occasional dial-up access if/when required. I could easily live without virtually all of it now as it's rarely used in anger but it seems a shame to just dump it plus it is still useful(ish) ..... and apart from that I really just can't be @rsed to mess with it !! If it aint broke then don't try to fix it and all that not to mention that the 5 min job is almost certain to drag on for several days :mrgreen:

re PC PSU, ye olde server is a very low spec machine tweaked (hopefully)to near perfection for performance so it's more than adequate for the job but without the very much greater power requirements of a current spec machine with all the bells and whistles fitted. I thinks it's only a 200W max PSU and most likely running <50% .... and a large part of that is probably due to the fans !

Hmmm, wonder if martyn21 has uncovered that *secret* heater yet ???
 
There is something scewwiff here...

Overnight I have a large fridge/freezer(frost free) running, TV on standby, 4x PC,s running at 100% plus a laptop...

Meter reading at 18:00hrs = 3425.76
Meter reading at 00:00 hrs= 3429.18

This is about 10.3 kW/hr per 12 hour period, and my bills correspond...

You need a check meter installed..
 
Big_Spark said:
There is something scewwiff here...

Overnight I have a large fridge/freezer(frost free) running, TV on standby, 4x PC,s running at 100% plus a laptop...

Meter reading at 18:00hrs = 3425.76
Meter reading at 00:00 hrs= 3429.18

This is about 10.3 kW/hr per 12 hour period, and my bills correspond...

You need a check meter installed..

Nooooooo !!!! think I'll pass on that :LOL: although I don't think there is anything unduly wrong with my metering so wouldn't have a problem if one was fitted. Do the maths and it stacks up with what was recorded and pretty much matches my guesstimate beforehand as well. Also I would put quite a large sum of money on 3KWh getting logged with the immersion heater on for an hour (I think it's a 3KW jobbie).

Re your figures above, you presumably also need to allow for lighting during the period between 18:00 - 00:00 plus possibly heating (direct, central heating and water), cooking ..... so not really a fair comparison with what I did. The ONLY items powered during my overnight check were exactly as stated in my post - nothing else whatsoever. Also, the readings above give only 3.42 KWh over a six hour period so is there a typo somewhere as I can't see how you reckon ~10KWh/12hr ?
 

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