High electricity consumption and no idea why!

[AllTheChatsAboutTea]

I live in a 3 bed semi with 2 teenagers, one of whom has just left for uni. Our annual electricity consumption for the past few years has averaged 6000 kW which is really high. I’m paying Octopus £250 a month for dual fuel.

The house has GCH on a timer and a log fire used in winter. Usual devices - TVs, games consoles, laptop, echos. I turn off anything left on standby and turn off lights as I leave a room. Big America fridge freezer which is full. Electric oven but I tend to use the air fryer. I do perhaps 4 loads of washing a week. Very old tumble dryer used once a week for towels and bedding. Heated clothes airer for everything else. Electric blankets and sofa throw used in winter to avoid putting heating on unnecessarily. Layz spa hot tub but only used a handful of times in the summer and we turn it off in between. No electric vehicle.

Just had a smart meter fitted to try and figure out what’s going on. Our “live” consumption at 09.00 on a Saturday morning is rumbling along at 700W. Already today we’ve used 6.93kW! I’ve boiled the kettle and had a shower, that’s it.

Anybody got any ideas why our usage is so high? I’m wondering if we have an electric fault somewhere. It’s not a problem with the new smart meter as the readings have been high for a long time. Would I need to get an electrician out or call Octopus?

@AllTheChatsAboutTea it was 9p/hour that piqued my interest but that looks about right at current rates.

Your baseline usage seems high at 6-700wph (assuming the household was asleep in the early hours).
Mine tends to run at around 200wph in the early hours & daytime and 400wph in the evening with lights, TV etc (other than when we are cooking, the kettle goes on etc when it shoots up).

Have you got any smart plugs? Some of mine (the Tapo I think) have a built in energy monitor so you can see the half-hourly energy usage of appliances plugged into them.
It would be worth looking at the usage of the appliances which are on constantly.

That does sound high: you're averaging over 16kWh per day whereas we average between 6.9kWh (winter) and 11kWh per day in the summer. Two adults and two primary aged kids, four bed detached, electric everything except heating and hot water.

Our baseline usage averages out at 170-180W. That's with a fridge-freezer, separate full size fridge, and two further freezers. Our 55" OLED TV, brand new in May, uses just over 200W which surprised me a bit, but the only appliances which cause notable blips on the consumption graph are kettle and toaster, cooker, and dishwasher, which has two massive spikes to over 2kW for 5-10 minutes in each cycle. The washing machine raises consumption with a smaller spike at the start of each cycle but our tumble dryer is a heat pump so probably not a valid comparison. For what it's worth it only adds about 600W but runs for over two hours.

If I were you I'd look at the tumble dryer first. Is it a vented one? They're awful for electricity use.

Then the fridge. As PP have said, if it has lost some refrigerant then it will have to run longer to maintain the temperature.

Then, computers and games consoles, and any screens that go with them.

You can get electricity usage monitors for about £15, which you plug in between the appliance and the socket. Probably worth thinking about.

Interesting, I've just looked at my usage for this time last year when ds1 was back after uni - he moved away for work in January 25.
My evening baseline then was more like 500-700wph.
Ds1 would have been running his PC through the evening.

That's the exact point, a desktop pc with 2 monitors will be 350- 450W, one used for gaming with a fast processor and a quality video card can easily be 750W+. Maybe the OP son is mining crypto?

Are these hours at the bottom?? If so, something is drawing constantly from your electricity. It must be the fridge surely?? It's a huge draw all night

Definitely come back and let us know what it was xx

I idle at 2-300Wh when no-one's in the house - fridge/freezer bits and bobs left on, occasional well pump/septic pump.

On a Saturday morning with people up and about (but no washer) we'd go up to nearly 1kWh.

That's in a big house, oil-fired heating/hot water though.

TBH for me it's all a drop in the ocean compared to the 30kWh/day I use for the car, but we are looking at dropping the chest freezer and doing a better job at switching lights off when we're not using them.

You can pry the hot water tap out of my cold dead hands though (although it is auto-switched off overnight/during the day if we're out)

I missed your octopus reading earlier. Is anyone up through the night. My usage between 11pm and 6am is only 0.1 but yours is 0.4 so unless someone is up at that time I'm assuming it's your fridge freezer as not much is on overnight.

i am paying £540 a month for duel fuel! All is expensive these days!

There could be an electrical fault. Something like this happened to us long before smart meters were invented and we had to do it manually with a stopwatch and careful meter readings and we eventually discovered a wiring fault in our electric shower that apparently could have killed someone if it had gone undetected for much longer but it was burning loads of electricity even when not in use.

How big is your mansion? 😬

A small 5 modern bed, 3 teens and a hybrid car! It went up to £850 at one point!

I not sure I'd call a 5 bed small tbh, are you sure that's actually what you're using?

That sounds high to me. I’m in a 3 bed 1940’s semi with one adult ds. American style FF, electric oven/hob/shower. I have a fan on all night, year round, plus sometimes use a freestanding air con unit in the summer. TV or PC on pretty much all day. 3-4 loads of washing a week which mainly gets dried in a (fairly new) condenser dryer, Alexa’s in most rooms, tend to leave stuff on standby. Just looked and my electric usage averages at £90 a month, gas obviously varies over the year, but I pay £135 a month by DD and never in debt (in fact I’m £380 in credit currently).

Seems high tho when I have our spa up and running May to end of sept I use 300 a month or around 10 a day

now it’s off it’s around 250 a month so 7/8 a day

you are using 500 a month if 6000 a year

it was 14/16 a day and i was wtf but had 4 freezers and reducing one to 3 made a diff. Now have 2 and dropped again so I would def look at your fridge freezer