Help- my elec consumption has doubled in a year!

[Fayrazzled]

Can anyone shed any light on this? I have had a letter from BG as they are increasing my monthly DD from c£50 to c£100 for electricity. We live in a 4 bed Victorian terrace. I have looked at the bill online and it appears our electricity usage has doubled in the last year (i.e. it's not just a price increase that has caused our DD to increase so much).

We have had building work done this year to convert our basement to usable space so that is an extra floor (and it has halogen lights) but the heating comes from the GCH ( and we have a new efficient condensing boiler) and have had new double glazed timber windows installed throughout the house.

I have no idea how our electricity consumption can have doubled in the past year- I do have a tumble dryer but don't use it any more than I have in previous years). Any thoughts? (I have checked and unfortunately the meter reading is correct.)

Are you using the basement all the time (and also leaving all the lights on, on the other floors) - I have heard halogen are quite high consumers of electricity.

We probably have the halogen basement lights on more than is necessary- i.e. the children walk away and leave the lights on, but they're by no means on 24/7. Realistically I'd say about 5 hours a day.

how many halogens? on how much of the time? A single 100w bulb, left on 24 hours a day 365 days a year costs something like £80 in electricity. I'd be surprised if lighting could be costing you an extra £600/year though.

have you bought a new tv or any other new appliances?

Halogen lights are the work of the devil! they burn electricity like nothing else. We unfortunately have them recessed in the ceilings of our kitchen, diner area and hallway, a 4-way spot at the front door, another on the upstairs landing, two pendants in the office and three bloody great things suspended from the lounge ceiling, each with six (SIX!) bulbs in. All installed by the previous house owner. At some point we WILL have the money to replace them all! I use them as little as possible, preferring to use small lamps with energy saving bulbs for ambient lighting instead.

BG have just brought out a new tariff, haven't they (energy smart?) which includes an energy monitor. How about giving them a call to talk to them about it and saying you are concerned about your energy usage and want to reduce it. Our supplier (Southern) does a similar thing, and we've really cut down since using our energy monitor - it helps see exactly what you're using (and fab for convincing recalcitrant DH's to switch stuff off at the wall!)

Those energy monitors are fab and John Lewis have one for £34 now!

Deep fat fryers and tumble dryers are BIG culprits of electricity usage.

And leaving stuff on standby rather than switching off is another one that adds on units.

We have one of those energy meter things. One of the things we really noticed straight away is the absurd amount our dishwasher used. It cost over a £1 per load. We chucked it out in the storeroom and brought in the tumble dryer instead. I don't actually use that very often, but that only costs about 70p a load. We also stopped using the immerssion heater when we ran out of water, because that was nearly £2 an hour. It's far cheaper to put the gas on again and wait.

Washing machine is also quite high, and obv oven. Lights don't seem to make that much difference. Games consoles are also surprisingly high. If the kids are on the xbox or ps3 all afternoon it adds up.

The meters are really good for cutting back on costs. Our bills have gone from £90 a month to £60 now.

Yep, energy monitors are the way to go. It may well be that there's one or two things that are eating up electricity.

I think your new double glazing and boiler are red herrings in this case - if you're not heating your home on electricity, these won't affect your electricity bill.

So from the electricity point of view, you've got a whole new floor, with halogen lights that are often being left on...

I would recommend an energy monitor too - ours was free from our electricity supplier on an eco tariff. I can tell if a halogen light has been left on somewhere (usually the bathrooms!) as I have got used to what numbers should say when various appliances are on

I would get a freestanding lamp or 2 for the basement and put eco bulbs in them.

My friend has halogen lights and underfloor heating in the kitchen and they have doubled her electricity consumption to her horror!

Thanks for all your comments. We do have electric under floor heating in the kitchen which has been fitted this yeAR but it has been off in the summer. I am horrified to see it could be the halogen lights and the UF heating causing such a huge increase in electricity. I'm off to buy one of those elctricty monitors from JL now.

Thanks all.

You can get energy efficient replacements for halogens now I think.

there are really good low energy halogen replacement bulbs now - look for ones from megaman. they seem pricey, but the savings are big. I'd keep a 'real' halogen anywhere where you really need intense light (eg over the sink) but change everything else. DON'T get LED ones though - useless (just twinkle prettily...)

An increase to your DD doesn't necessarily mean that your daily consumption has doubled - it means that you've used more electricity per day on average between these two meter readings than you did between the previous two. Did the builders use your electricity supply while doing the conversion? I know (because we've got a monitor ) that halogen lights are ridiculously innefficient, but can't see that making all the difference.

It might be worth either getting a monitor with some extra features (DH likes ours as he can download all the data to the computer and see how consumption varies against time, it works out cost, displays data as instantaneous or cumulative...) or taking a few readings to see how much electricity you're actually using on a daily or weekly basis.

If the builders did use a lot of electricity then you'll need to pay for it of course - but at least you can expect your DD to come back down a bit next year

What else do you have in your basement? TV? Stereo? Wii? I used to work for npower and increases are usually due to this sort of thing.

Argos sell the OWL monitor in their energy saving section, I think it is £40. Ours goes crazy with the oven, iron (any excuse not to use it) tumble drier, dishwasher etc is on.

The underfloor heating would show up on the winter bills, read your meter daily for a week at least and see what you are using. Plus the halogens will cost a bit.

Think about turning off anything that has a transformer like a laptop charger, mobile phone charger, stereo etc

There is usually an energy helpline that you can ring and they will tell you what things cost to run. It is a bit eye opening.

fridges & freezers can increase their consumption if their seals are going or if their cooling fins at the back are dusty or covered or too close to the wall to get a good airflow round them. Our consumption went up noticeably when our fridge freezer was on its way out.

cat64 - were there any more details on the lighting? Did it specify whether the "light bulb" was incandescant or energy saving/flourescant (I'm assuming incandescant as it specifies 60W, but it would be interesting to know the energy saving equivalent cost - IIRC should be < 1/6 the amount, so 0.15p or under). Did it give wattages for the other lighting types?

I'm just thinking that its common to have a single 60W pendant light in a room, but with halogens you'd have multiple bulbs, which could increase the cost substantially. If you use energy saving bulbs by default then you might be comparing 0.15p per hour for a bulb, against 4p per hour for 5 halogen bulbs - which is a bit more of a substantial difference!

you all need to watch out for electric underfloor heating - we had some put in last year and it costs a fortune to run - we queried our usage and the lady said take a reading for a day then turn it of for a day and see the difference - so now we only have it on when its realy cold - not just to make the tiled floor warm on my feet - however we have had one in the bathroom for years - its low voltage and uses very little electricity

This is probably too late for op,but lots of local authorities can lend you a smart meter for a few weeks(here you can just borrow one from the library, just like a book) so you can get an idea what appliances are the main culprits in your house.
The other idea I had is that if the builders were the problem then after a couple of months you could ask your energy provider to look at your payments again.

I know someone who this happened to and the house next door had tapped into their electricty supply to heat the cannabis factory that was in the house!