Do some homes just “leak” electricity?

[Ridingthegravytrain]

I ask because we have always had what I believe to be high bills for our usage.

We had a new consumer unit installed last year and no issues were flagged with the electrics.

I have been really trying to get on top of it as we seem to be at least 5kwh above average per day.

I did some testing over the weekend taking readings each hour and turning things off at the rcb and it appears our kitchen uses 160watts per hour when nothing is turned on except the ovens (not in use just not switched off at the fuse, so only running the time on the display) and the fridge. This was consistent overnight also when we weren’t opening the fridge so the condenser shouldn’t be needing to run as much at night.

It’s a beko American style fridge freezer. A few years old. Well ventilated. Away from wall. Seals all clean and working fine as far as I can see.

Does this sound right? Immersion is definitely off as I have it switched off on consumer unit.

On Saturday we had everything turned off at the wall sockets all day apart from a half hr 30 degree wash, 40 mins tumble drier and then the kids played the wii for about 3 hrs and we watched telly for about 5hrs on our freeview box. When not being used all these are turned off at the wall. We still managed to use 11kwh from 9am Saturday to 9am Sunday. 7 of those were from 4pm-9am and we had gone to bed and turned everything off by 10pm.

Just seems very odd. Any ideas?

Garage and summer house are turned off at consumer unit and no lights are left on anywhere. When mains switch is pulled our meter stops turning.

It all goes somewhere. If that fridge 160w/h draw is an averaged figure from sitting overnight then that sounds reasonable.

They are only meant to run at about 1.3kwh per day I thought. Say around 500kwh per year. At that rate ours is doing 3.8kwh per day and 1400kWh per year.

Just wondering if anyone else has checked the performance of theirs and found it similar

For comparison - Ive just checked mine and we are 19kwh for the day. Heating was on this morning and dishwasher twice. Showers x 4. Fridge etc all plugged in and I'm working. It's cost £1.23 so far today.

Hmm. We don’t have the heating on in the morning at the moment and water is gas heated and showers don’t use any electric.

A fridge shouldn't be anything like that. A quick look AO Beko FF 414kWh pa. So something like 50W average.

it is going somewhere! Things that generate heat are the big users; immersion, tumble dryer, oven, underfloor heating, hob etc. That mystery overnight use is very odd.

The American-style fridge freezer is an obviously grossly ineffecient design, but I don't believe it should be using as much as that. Any specs on it?

I know, it’s weird. But this house has always seemed to use a lot of electricity and I don’t understand it as we do 2 loads of washing per week, sometimes 3. Only tumble dry in winter and that is only to iron dry setting not bone dry. No underfloor heating. Kettle only filled to amount we will use. Oven used maybe 4/5 times a week as I do a lot of slow cooking and stir frys. Virgin media internet hub is the only thing apart from the fridge, ovens, washing machine and drier and power switch for the boiler that isn’t switched off at the wall when not in use.

There are no specs on the fridge and I had it out over the weekend to check and clean the grills and coils etc to see if it was clogged up. It wasn’t and I could see nowhere on it that said what it’s energy use should be. It’s certainly not humming all the time, I hear it when it comes on like after I’ve opened the door. But it doesn’t stay on for ages and isn’t very noisy like it was on its last legs or anything. It is set on -18 eco mode for freezer and 8 degrees for fridge according to the digital thermostat.

I was searching mumsnet to see if I could find anything similar and the only thing was a post I did about 5 years ago 🤣 this is not a new phenomenon. It’s like there is a phantom draw somewhere.

Can you turn oven and fridge off , if you leave fridge door shut you should be ok

The add fridge back in and once it's settled. Add oven back

The only way to tell if something is very wrong is to turn it all off

We have the same problem @ridingthegravytrain. We've done so much investigation and can't really figure out where it's going.

I recently filled out a form to join a bulk buying solar panel scheme and when I put in how much electricity we use in a year (based on bills) it was above the maximum.

It seems that we have lots of little things that add up a very high amount but nothing that we can get rid off.

I really don't understand it. We moved house and our electricity bill doubled. It's a bigger house but the appliances are similar.

I keep looking at hiring a consultant to come and figure it out for us but I don't want to pay someone if they will just say that it's lots of little things that add up.

Meters do sometimes misread , reading double is not unheard of. Smart meters in particular have has lots of problems

But you must do proper test
Turn everything off

Have you stopped seeing use?

Turn on one thing with known power and see what the meter reports for it. Is it correct ?

I don’t supposed you’ve got a bathroom light that you leave on or anything like that? We tracked down our weird overnight electricity usage down to a bathroom vanity light that had a heating element in to stop it steaming up. We were leaving it on because I get up several times in the night. I see in the dark now

No random lights left on apart from children’s night lights which are very low wattage.

What makes me suspect our electricity is we turned every rcbo off and my husband stood out by the meter and I switched things on one at a time and then off again and he said how fast the meter was turning. Weirdly when the immersion switch at the wall by the tank was off, but the immersion rcb switched on at the consumer box the meter was creeping round slowly. And it shouldn’t have moved at all.

I kept getting yelled at at the weekend for turning everything off including internet and insisting no one turns things on. My husband was trying to watch the rugby😂

Curiouser and curiouser...

The meter could be faulty. Your electricity supplier is responsible for that so maybe time to start a discussion. If it needs replacing and you don't want a smart meter, that is your right , they can install a replacement with the communication module removed. (Guess what discussion I've been having recently..) if it is already a smart meter then it is quite likely to be faulty!

@Flaunch

I don’t supposed you’ve got a bathroom light that you leave on or anything like that? We tracked down our weird overnight electricity usage down to a bathroom vanity light that had a heating element in to stop it steaming up. We were leaving it on because I get up several times in the night. I see in the dark now

Have you considered a standalone battery powered light with a motion sensor? We have one for our son in case he needs to get up in the night and he can’t reach the light switch.

Ha, I can relate, having recently switched to octopus I am being bombarded with so you want a smart meter every time I log in!

No smart meter here thank goodness.

The only way to test this completely is to switch off every single appliance, every socket and watch the meter. It should not move.

As you know it is your kitchen, turn off the ovens and just isolate the fridge freezer to see what that uses. Then turn off the fridge freezer and put the ovens back on to work out what they use. It doesn't have to be hours but a good 5 -10 minutes gives you an idea.

Do the same with the immersion. Record what each one uses.

Usually it is a faulty appliance (I used to work for a utility company) you can get a plug in consumption monitor so you can plug in your appliance to that and then plug that in to a socket if you wish to monitor something for longer. Fridge freezers do vary a bit depending how full/empty your fridge freezer is.

It could be a wiring issue re the immersion heater.

I would have all this information for an electrician to test the electrics.

When you say you are 5kwh above average per day, average to what? When I worked for the utility company 20 years ago we used to say the average consumer used 3300kwh per year. That was before everyone had a mobile phone, ipad, laptops not including more people have dishwashers, boiling water taps and coffee machines etc. My sons have 2 monitors each for their computers, Dh has 3, yes, 3 screens for work which are now here at home. Plus I have this computer in my lounge. So between 4 of us we have 8 screens all on at the same time.

I am with Octopus energy and I have a smart meter.

Interesting you said that, I have just bought an electricity usage monitor and will be obsessively checking everything out as soon as it arrives. Can be turning everything off again until the weekend as I’ll cut off the internet during work meetings!

I wouldn’t be so interested if we had loads of screens on or hot water taps or Alexa and various gadgets but we don’t. So it just doesn’t add up

And to answer your question I put the “average” at about 12kwh per day which I think is actually above average.

We come in at between 16-19kwh per day!

Peak use is 9kwh a day here - heating and hot water on oil, gas hob, washing machine 4 X a week, dishwasher daily, oven maybe a couple of times a week, tumble dryer maybe 10 times a year. Lights, TV , computer etc are small fry.

From what we use (I checked the wattage on everything we have at the weekend and did some calculations) I feel like we should be about 9kwh per day too.

Thanks for all the replies

My electricity usage meter came today. It’s my new favourite toy!

I plugged every single appliance to see what then used when on and when off and in standby.

There is something definitely weird going on. Our fridge when the compressor is on is 150w. The rest of the time it sits at 8 watts unless the door is opened and then it hops to 35 until it’s shut.

I added up all the TVs Xboxes tv boxes WiFi etc and calculated that if we had everything switched on for 24 hrs including the fridge running constantly at full power (150w) and the dishwasher on eco once a day it would add up to about 17kw. Which is what we use now 🤪

Reading this with interest. We had a huge bill in a house we’ve been in for 18 months. We’re obsessively checking everything at the moment. Husband is reading our meters every couple of hours. We seem to be using about 12 kw per day, but are three adults living in a small three bed semi. Two of whom are out of the house during the day. We think it’s possibly the electric fire. Had a gas one in the old house. I spoke to Eon and they said for a few days in December we were using 30 kw per day! I’m going to try turning everything off this weekend and see if we have a phantom electricity gobbler!

sounds like something up with the immersion if switched off yet meter still moves...??...these eat the electric !!