Electricity meter reading far too high

[starbrightstarlight8888]

I moved house last month and took a meter reading of 3957, I then took one exactly a month later and it was 8192. This can't be right can it? That means a monthly electricity bill of around £700.

We don't have gas, we are electric only. We've had new radiators installed so they are brand new and efficient. We've still got electric underfloor heating in the kitchen and lounge which could be inefficient I suppose but not to the tune of £700per month.

We live in a detached bungalow, not a mansion.

British Gas are useless. They say it could be a meter fault but hey can't send anyone round to check until lockdown is over.

What do I do? We are accruing a bill of £25 per day at the moment.

Heating is on in the mornings and evenings only. We don't use a tumble drier or dishwasher. Washing machine is on a few times a week, nothing excessive. There's nothing I can think of that is costing a lot of electricity and certainly not £700 per month!

We are taking hourly readings and the meter is showing as using between 6 and 20 kWh per hour.

[AlwaysLatte]

That's a huge amount! Ours is roughly £180 a month with 4 bedrooms, a large annexe which is heated all the time and an electric car. Something is wrong there.

[TravellingTilbury]

I feel your pain OP! Now I can have the heating on just for a 2-3 hours a day, my usage has gone down to 50kWH in 24 hrs. But this is still really high! I am going to try turning my immersion completely off and instead of having the timer on see if I save by just clicking the hour boost button on before shower/bath.

Once the weather is a little warmer I will turn the electric boiler (for heating, not water) off totally and see if that brings it down a lot.

My meter box is outside (and doesn't shut properly) and it is a ball ache to keep checking the meter. I have to use gaffer tape to keep it shut...

I hope you figure it out!

[Juo]

Underfloor heating eats electricity as do immersion heaters.
I think it's a myth that it's efficient to leave an immersion on all the time.
One summer I left the immersion on all the time instead of just putting it on for a few hours a day. My electric bill rocketed.

[chomalungma]

What's the size of the immersion heater?

Assuming an immersion heater is 125 litres and you heat it up from about 18 degrees to 60 degrees, that's going to take 22,000,000 Joules of energy.

A 6 kilowatt rated heater can deliver that amount of energy in about 3600 seconds - which is about an hour.

So your 6 kilowatt immersion heater has run for an hour to heat cold water to 60 degrees - so it's used 6 units of electricity.

That's about £1.20

In theory, it shouldn't keep working as it will just deliver more energy and make the water much hotter. It should just cut off.

Electric radiators? - look at the rating and see how long they are running for

Or maybe the person before you has been fobbing you off and the readings were incorrect.

Our gas boiler broke down recently so I got some electric heaters from Argos. 2 kilowatt rated. I did annoy DS by putting my power monitor on the one in his room as he insisted on it being on all the time at the temperature he preferred.

I hope you find the cause.

[Ch3rish]

Maybe a silly question but is the floor warm when the switch is in the off position?

[SabrinaThwaite]

@SilverBirchWithout

LadyG - your problem is the dehumidifier.
10 years ago we were flooded. Company drying out our property set up 1 dehumidifier- it cost about £400+ a month to run (at prices then) - fortunately our insurance company paid.

Industrial dehumidifiers are rated at less than 1kwh, so running 24/7 for a month at current prices would be about £90. If you had a heater and a fan running at the same time (which you might for flooded properties) then that would add another 3kwh or so and would bump you up to £400 a month.

Ordinary home dehumidifiers are rated lower than industrial ones, so would be cheaper to run.

[chomalungma]

@PigletJohn

" I've still used 3.5 kwh in 2 hours with no heating on."

that suggests there is a small heater running somewhere (assuming you don't have herds of costly downlighters and spotlights).

My house, with 2 x fridge freezers, and the usual PCs, phone chargers and low energy lights, uses 300W to 500W when there is no heating on. Late at night, with most lights off, it drops to around 240W (my Owl tells me this). Heaters, cookers, tumble drier put it up. The dishwasher and washing machine have heating cycles but they only last around ten minutes each.

See - I want to be slightly pedantic here as you need to say how long you used it for to get an idea of how much it costs. Which I know you know

So it's kw / hrs (or units) that's useful.

Sorry for being pedantic

[JorisBonson]

I'm really quite invested in this thread now.

[chomalungma]

This site gives a good idea of how much it costs to run electrical items

www.npower.com/faq/how-much-appliances-cost-to-run

e,g, Games console: around 3p an hour: On average, games consoles use half a unit of electricity (around 8p) to power three hours of gameplay – or around 3p an hour. But some consoles are slightly cheaper to run than others – they say running a PS4 costs £28 a year, Xbox One costs around £20 a year, and a Nintendo Switch costs just £2 a year

[PigletJohn]

what, me?

If it uses 300W during the night, then, in an an hour, that's 0.3kWh

If it used 1000W, then, in an hour, that would be 1kWh

I have a meter that measures the usage.

I pay about 15p per kWh.

[chomalungma]

If it uses 300W during the night, then, in an an hour, that's 0.3kWh

Great. Thanks for adding the time used.

But 10 hour nights That's a long night

[TravellingTilbury]

The thing is, for those of us who have moved house and then had a huge increase of electricity usage (like the OP), we can pretty much rule out the day to day stuff (assuming wfh like before) because our general electricity usage (eg phone charging, running a fridge, washing machine etc) hasn't changed. Which logically leaves electric boiler (heater) or electric immersion heater (water) or both as the main culprits.

Good luck with figuring it out, OP. We are rooting for you!

[chomalungma]

I'm going for a cannabis factory with lots of hot lights.

[Beenaboutabit]

@chomalungma

I'm going for a cannabis factory with lots of hot lights.

Yup. Check your loft.

[TravellingTilbury]

What electric boiler do you have OP (sorry can't said, I can't find it)? Mine is an Amptec (Heatre Sadia) 9KW. Works great ... but costs a fortune to run ... www.heatraesadia.com/products/heating-and-ventilation/electric-flow-boilers/amptec#productgallery2

[Lovewinemorethanhusband]

I work for an Energy company dealing with consumption queries and complaints, Underfloor heating , immersion tanks and electric wall heaters are notorious for high usage., no one ever thinks they use a lot until you say turn everything off and then turn just those on 1 at a time and you will find your culprit. Do you have a digital meter or is it and old style clock meter as those are very easily misread

[BlueTimes]

Your meter isn’t faulty. It wouldn’t have stopped recording when you turned everything off if it was. So you are doing something differently to the previous owners.

I’ve never heard the advice you have been given by your plumber and electrician. I’d put money on the immersion heater being issue.

Do you have a one rate meter?

[starbrightstarlight8888]

We have a one rate meter that's an old mechanical type one. I've checked that it's 8000 something and not got a decimal point anywhere.
It's not the immersion heater. I turned it off and it's still 5kwh each hour with no heating.
Could be the 2 towel rails we've just had installed I suppose as they're on all the time as have no timer on them. Not sure they could account for pushing the bill up to £750 per month though.

[chomalungma]

Could be the 2 towel rails we've just had installed I suppose as they're on all the time as have no timer on them. Not sure they could account for pushing the bill up to £750 per month though

Lots of small power devices on for a long time can add up surprisingly quickly.

[BlueTimes]

@starbrightstarlight8888

We have a one rate meter that's an old mechanical type one. I've checked that it's 8000 something and not got a decimal point anywhere.
It's not the immersion heater. I turned it off and it's still 5kwh each hour with no heating.
Could be the 2 towel rails we've just had installed I suppose as they're on all the time as have no timer on them. Not sure they could account for pushing the bill up to £750 per month though.

What kWh are they?

[chomalungma]

If you want to narrow it down, try turning off all the circuits at the circuit board and then turn each circuit back on - and see what effect that has on the energy usage.

That should help you narrow down the circuit to look at. You can then work on the devices in that circuit and identify the culprits.

Unless it's simply a lot of electrical devices that use quite a bit of energy being left running for a long time.

[starbrightstarlight8888]

@chomalungma

If you want to narrow it down, try turning off all the circuits at the circuit board and then turn each circuit back on - and see what effect that has on the energy usage.

That should help you narrow down the circuit to look at. You can then work on the devices in that circuit and identify the culprits.

Unless it's simply a lot of electrical devices that use quite a bit of energy being left running for a long time.

I did this already and nothing showed up. The lounge underfloor heating switch kept the meter going when the underfloor heating wasn't on but I realised that switch is connected to the electric radiators too. The electric rads are on timed so also weren't on at that time although they were set to come in at a low temperature all day which I didn't realise so that might be why the meter was still going.

We just had a builder round who was totally confused too. Although our usage should be high it shouldn't be high to the tune of 100plus kWh a day.

I don't know what kw the towel heaters are.

[Lexilooo]

Towel rails are basically electric heaters so will be as greedy as leaving a heater on. You need to either get timers or turn them on and off as and when required.

[BlueTimes]

I’d really recommend getting timers or at least on/off switches for the towel heaters.

Can you turn your radiators off altogether?

[lydia2021]

I had friends with this problem. They found it was their immersion tank. The thermostat had gone so the tank kept heating up 24/7. Not saying it's your problem too but worth checking