What's causing electricity spike during the night?

[sunshinyday80]

I've recently downloaded an app which shows smart meter data by the hour, and I'm quite surprised to see relatively large spikes of electricity use at strange hours (randomly between 10.30pm and 3am, so it's not the daily standing charge being added on). Can anyone help me work out what's causing it? It doesn't happen every night so there doesn't seem to be a pattern to it. We haven't got a hot water tank, no laundry done overnight. Only devices are a couple of phones being charged. Any ideas what it could be?

We haven't worked it out yet. It's definitely not the standing charge coming off as it's not a consistent amount or at the same time each day, and the spikes weren't happening while we were away for two weeks in the summer. I thought it may have been the fridge freezer, but it was very interesting to see that there were almost no spikes at all while we were away and the fridge was left on. So it must be something that's switched on while we're here, but still can't figure it out.

@sunshinyday80 gosh, how endlessly frustrating.

Is it an immersion heater?

Could be fridge freezer. Anti frost function can use a KW. May be coming on at night. Doesn't need to operate when you're away from home and not opening the fridge freezer. Might be worth running it down to empty and turning it off overnight.

Maybe appliances is faulty?

Buy one of these to test the appliance:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225042099842?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=b79agk5zrxg&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=xss7AK7xSrq&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

And ask on the mse energy forum, they might be able to work out what's going on

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/energy

Have you managed to figure out what’s causing the spikes? We’re having the exact same issue and I’m still scratching my head, six months down the line…
We’re with British Gas, who’s your supplier?

I wouldn't rule the fridge out because when you were on holiday the fridge wouldn't have been getting opened and closed in the day, so it would have been less likely to run frost-free cycles at night.

Hello OP, did you manage to find out what was happening? We’ve just had a smart meter installed and are getting high readings overnight and found your thread.

I never did, the ombudsman was hopeless too. Interestingly, we’ve recently moved from one computer system to another with British Gas, it’s meant that we lost historic data and temporarily lost current electricity usage data but it’s now back on my app and we’re no longer having the spikes! 🤔

I think I'd go to the fusebox and turn off some circuits at night to find out the general location of whatever's using the power. From there, I'd then start unplugging things on that circuit overnight to see exactly which device is causing the issue.