Average house for energy ~ How is it calculated?

[MrsRobinsonsHandprints]

Does anyone know how this is worked out?

Is it the mean, or medium (or mode even) it is useless anyway but just wondered as depending it maybe even more useless.

According to Ofgem, the average British household has 2.4 people living in it and uses 2,900 kWh of electricity and 12,000 kWh of gas. This works out at 242 kWh of electricity and 1,000 kWh of gas per month.

Of course, this is just the average consumption for a household of between 2-3 people. The more gas or electricity you use, the higher your bills will be. It also assumes you’re using a mix of gas and electricity, but if your home uses only electricity, you’d expect your electric consumption to be higher.

I think knowing precisely how it is worked out is less important than just being aware that it’s a general ‘average’ figure and that most individuals actual usage will vary due to several factors such as:

How warm you like your house, occupancy time, insulation levels, age/efficiency of boiler, how good your windows are and whether you shut your curtains at night, are you in or out of the house a lot

What your mix of gas/electric is, eg are you cooking, showering and heating on gas or electricity

How often are you washing your clothes and towels and how are you drying them

Do you have lots of gadgets, gaming PCs, big TVs etc et

Any specialist medical equipment or more frequent washing/bathing needs than average

Anything less common like hot tubs or fish/reptiles

Etc etc

But if you use above average and you’re 2 people in a small house, it should be clear that you might have scope to reduce your usage, but if your house is large, detached and has 5+ occupants, maybe not.

Also the ‘benchmark’ of the price cap amount and your bills are well below that, it’s an indicator that you probably can’t reduce it much further and if you’re in any way vulnerable, it might be a prompt to seek help if you can’t afford a more comfortable heating level.

There is some information published, DH gathered it yesterday.

We have a big house with 4 adults. We turn out to use quite a lot more electricity than expected, but significantly less gas. That apparently means DS1 can carry on with his ridiculous wasteful showers, but that we need to switch of the echos at the plug .