What is using the electricity?

[Diorama1]

I dont have a smart meter so I cant tell what is using electricity. I plugged in the dehumidifer this morning and wanted to know if it was using much electricity. I have a red light on the meter that flashes and the flashes get closer together when more electricity is being used.
I counted the seconds between flashes this morning and it was 62 seconds. I checked it a few mins ago and it is flashing every 6 seconds. I plugged out everything in the house including fridges and it is still flashing every 6 seconds.

What can be using the electricity and why did it increase so much? Am I missing something?

Is there any way of finding out without a smart meter?

Thanks

A smart meter doesn't tell you what's using electricity. Neither does an IHD (in home display) - this is just a screen that tells you how much electricity you've used in £ / KWh - a calculater effectively that translates the numbers on your meter.

Anything plugged in the loft like a faulty TV aerial?

Wired in smoke alarms?

Do you have gas heating and it switched on, as as the pump in the boiler uses electric.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the device that tells you how much electricity is being used, also uses electric.

Thanks I didn't realize that about smart meters, they wouldn't help me so.

Going from flashing every 62 secs to every 6 secs is a big jump so something is kicking in draining the electricity from this morning.

I plugged everything back in and it is now flashing every 8 seconds so less electricity than when everything was plugged out!

Does anyone know if an electrician could figure this out. With the price of electricity I need to know if something is faulty and sporadically using a lot of power.

Obviously, but it didn't start using a huge of amount of electricity all of a sudden at some point during this morning (unless its faulty)

Lights. Heating. As someone else says pump for gas boiler.

Maybe better to determine your actual usage from the meter rather than using that well know unit of electricity the light flash.

If for example every flash = 1 kWh then every 6 seconds would be 600 kWh per hour, or about £210 per hour if you are on the standard tariff. Which is quite a bit if you have turned everything off :)

But if it were 1 Wh per flash then it would be 21p an hour which is very little.

If you look next to the red light on the meter it will tell you how many flashes equal one kWh - it's often a 1,000. Look for "xxxx imp/kWh" ie impulses per kWh.

If yours is 1000 / kWh then a flash every 6 seconds is using about 600 watts. That's more than background use. Even with everything unplugged you'll have some background hard-wired use eg a modern gas boiler has electronics that need constant power even when it's not fired up, often about 12 watts. Also mains smoke alarms, mains powered central heating controller etc. But that's all relatively low power, say 50 watts total for a typical house.

An electrician could figure this out for you - obviously at a cost.

Is there a reason you don't want a smart meter out of interest?

Not everyone can have smart meters - I live in a flat in an old house and they tried to install one but the walls are so thick it didn't work, couldn't pick up the data.