Can't believe how many kwh of energy we are actually using

[TattiePants]

Stupidly, I've never paid any attention to how many kwh of energy we use in a year. I read the meter every month, know how much our monthly DD is and make sure that's enough to cover our bills and that's it. For most of 2020/2021 we paid £121 a month for gas & electric which for 4 people at home a lot during lock down, in a bigger that average house didn't seem unreasonable.

With the price cap rising yet again and after reading many threads on MN I decided to calculate our actual usage. Oh My Fucking God! In the last 45 weeks we have used 28,500 kwh of gas, with a current annual estimate of 31,500 kwh. The average usage is 12,000 kwh so how the hell have we been racking up so much!! Our electricity usage is pretty average. We have gas central heating / hot water but this last winter I was much more careful and didn't heat the house during the day when I was home alone. I just can't believe how much gas we've used despite me working under a blanket with a hot water bottle most of last winter. I guess on a positive, we've got LOTS of room for improvement!

Anyone else been completely shocked at how much energy they're using?

Yikes that is a lot of gas. I thought we were high on 18,000 a year! Is that from your bill or have you worked it out from meter readings?

Freezer uses a lot of power.

I have a 5 bed semi with gas Central heating and gas water. 3 adults, 2 children. 2 adults wfh full time. Last year I used 16,562 kwh of gas and 4,819 kwh of electricity. Apparently the electricity/gas usage is above average but they have no idea about the size of my house etc so I'm assuming for the size of house its normal.

Gas powered ?

You must have fixed on a super cheap rate as my gas and electricity dd was £136 a month on that rate and covered it about perfectly.

I've been on a variable rate for years, can't actually remember the last time we had a fixed rate. I've worked it out from our bills but that's based on accurate monthly readings. Completely shocked at our usage. Our electricity usage for 45 weeks is just under 3,000 kwh which seems pretty average.

Ooof your usage is huge!

I just checked our usage for gas
Last two years were 5000KWh ish each.

2 bedroom house with 2 reception rooms.
2 adults and 1 child

That's heating, dishes, baths and daily showers.

Electricity for our home is less than 1500KwH for last year.

That's WFH, washing, tumble drying, cooking, TV, Xbox and an 8 year old leaving the light on.

Scottish Power app is surprisingly useful :)

4 adults? That would be greater usage than 2 adults and 2 toddlers I would think. Lots of baths and dishwashing rather than short showers? Heating on high during winter or for a longer or a draughty house? Or do you put the heating on when others might not eg beginning of September through to May, when someone else would wait until November and switch if in March? Or a faulty or misread meter perhaps.

Gosh I’m not sure how your previous DD ever covered that usage?

Our usage isn't huge, it's astronomical. Last winter the heating was probably on for an hour in the morning plus 3-4 hours in the evening, perhaps slightly longer on a weekend. Daily showers for me and DH and both DCs are soap dodgers so shower every other day. A couple of baths a week for me (they'll have to go). That's it.

In our old Victorian semi, we used 31,000kwh of gas one year just for heating and hot water. Managed to get it down to 26,000 but we ended up burning more logs. Now, in our mid-terrace, we use about 20,000kwh which is heating, hot water and cooking - determined to get that down this year.

Exactly what I though/said up thread!!

@Alphabet1spaghetti2 2 adults, 1 teen and 1 pre-teen.

@Greentime101 that's what's confusing me and why I've never paid much attention to usage. The £ always deemed reasonable - in an average calendar year we'd be in credit over the summer and slightly in debit towards the end of the winter but it always evened out.

Your usage seems suspiciously high for what you're doing, I'm in a 5-bed detatched, with 2 adults and 2 kids and my gas usage this year will probably end up about 16,000KwH.

That doesn't seem right at all.

How hot do you have your water / CH, and how badly insulated is your house?

Do you have a small gas leak? Apparently not everyone can smell gas.
mil and fil had a high reading it was traced to a gas leak, which thankfully was on an outside wall. But they couldn’t smell it - only my Dh, who had been telling them he could
smell gas for weeks. (he then lived at home).

Yeah, this usage seems suspiciously high to me. If you have a smart meter I'd be tempted to try to use as close to zero gas as I could for a day or two, and see what my measured usage was....

I will check the settings on the boiler in case the water is set too high. Thermostat set to 19 when heating on, heating only on in cold winter months. New boiler 3 -4 years ago, regularly serviced. It's a 4 bed 1920's semi with quite large rooms / high ceilings and large bay windows but all windows are double glazed, cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, 6 open fireplaces but all have chimney sheeps in. The roof was in a state (99 years old) but that was replaced earlier this year so hopefully will help this winter.

That's a good point actually, we had a gas leak last year that was fixed but the engineer said it shouldn't have cost us too much. But our usage last year was way higher than previous ones 🤔

The dial for the hot water was closer to maximum that minimum so that's turned right down. It'll probably be cold showers in the morning! After the Bank holiday we'll try a couple of days using hardly anything and see how that affects the meter.

Our gas usage isn't as high as OP's, but still way too high. Looking at the data from our smart meter, we have averaged 220kwh. That's four adults using gas for hot water and cooking. I do bake a lot.

I'm going to cut right back on gas oven usage, and we won't have the heating on in Sept, so will check what difference it makes if we cook less.

OP, how much gas have you been using over the summer?

Collie - has your Scottish power app gone useless since the update a month or two ago? I can no longer view weekly or daily usage and can’t see how well we are doing compared with previous month - there are no live or running figures available.

OP did you say you’ve “calculated” your usage from your bill payments? If so this could definitely be inaccurate. Can you by any poss see meter readings in your bills that are 12 months apart (any 12 months in fact)? This might give you different figures?

Seems very high for what you have heating set to and so on. The large house with high ceilings maybe could be it? The heat just goes up and if your thermostat is downstairs then it could be much hotter in the space above that? Doesn't help you of course if typically sitting a metre above the floor downstairs.

Are you heating bedrooms? Can you shut doors to bedrooms and other rooms you aren't using and turn the radiators off so you are heating a smaller space?