Electricity usage seems crazily high

[IndyCymru]

Hi! I’ve just submitted a meter reading (which I have been pretty bad at doing over the past few months) to our supplier, Bulb, and it’s dawned on me that we’ve used over 10,000kWh electricity since mid-August 2020. We are a couple with a small child living in a reasonably large but quite well insulated house. We’ve obviously been in a lot over the past year but this usage seems insane?! I don’t know how we’ve managed it.

Does this seem reasonable in any way to other people? I don’t have much to compare with but out gas usage hasn’t changed much and is pretty normal I should think (around 500kWh).

I have just checked my usage for the same day and my electric is £4.89. This includes a couple of washer and subsequent tumble drying loads. 3 adults in house. Can’t understand why yours is more than double. I have a fridge, a freezer and a fridge freezer. Electric cooking and gas heating and water. I definitely would try and see which appliances are eating up the electric.

Photo attached

During the night my readings are showing no more 3 or 4p per hour but yours are spiking to over 20p hour.

Fridge and freezer shouldn't be 20p an hour, are they old OP. You haven't accidentally left the freezer on fast freeze have you, I have done in the past and remembered a couple of days later.

Can you get the usage in KWh, as a monetary comparison is kind of pointless, given we're all on different tariffs.

This is my average daily for every day since 1 March. Each bar is a half hour period, starting from midnight. As you can see, our usage is high in the night but that's because we have an EV (and an EV tariff from Octopus, so we run the dishwasher at night as well).

Looking at it day by day, I don't tend to have any of those very big spikes (but our background usage is quite high as I work from home). Could that be the washing machine going on?

Thank you all for your suggestions. I can’t work out if it’s one dodgy appliance or a general usage problem - it’s baffling as we a small family with no obvious energy guzzling appliances or habits. I will look into getting a plug to test usage. As for the other ideas, the underfloor heating is off. The fridge and freezer are 4-5 years old but I’m going to switch the fridge off tonight (I did the freezer the other night and it made no difference). The big spikes tend to be when we are in the house, though not necessarily cooking. I’ll try boiling water on the stove and not using the microwave and oven tomorrow in case. Will report back!

It is going to be milder in the next week so a good opportunity to turn the floor heating off and see if it makes a difference

We use on average 18KHw a day. Our setup is:-
Heavy hitters:-

Dishwasher, Tumble, Washing - all big consumers as they have to heat water.

Large American FF
Large upright freezer
Electric ovens.

No UFH
No electric shower
No immersion heater.

So we use approx 7000 KWh a year.

Thanks. We were using 45kWh(!) per day in Feb, when I last took daily kWh readings. Usage went down to nil when I switched off all the fuses. Hmm…

That was a good experiment with the freezer but think you need to continue with it for other appliances or items. Is there any chance your UFH could be coming on in the night?! The overnight readings seems v high.

Is the underfloor heating absolutely definitely off? If I set mine to "away" for example, it still keep it "frost free" so it will heat it to 5 degrees. With the cold nights we're still having, that could explain the spike between midnight and 6am.

A second vote for the UFH being checked.

45KHw is a huge amount for daily use. It must be going somewhere and with that amount, it's almost certainly heat. (Or has the neighbour managed to tap into your supply??)

If you don't find the culprit then I'd get a thermal imaging camera. If you're near GU you can borrow mine.

OP I'm stunned at your daily electricity usage. I'm also with Bulb. This screenshot shows our most expensive day so far. The oven was on a couple of times, then there was the dishwasher and the washing machine.

Thanks all! It’s sort of good to hear it’s ridiculously high, as there must be something I can do about it.

I should say that prior to the smart meter starting to work last week, I did go through a process of switching off each fuse one by one for 24hrs (we’ve got 14, it took a while), but it was difficult to gauge the effect of each change based on just one daily kWh reading. It’s now much easier to spot a pattern, so I’ll start to cycle through each appliance/fuse again. The house was rewired in 2017.

UFH is on but set to never come on - will switch off the fuse again. Will report back…

We are 3 adults, two work from home on fairly hefty desktop computer setups with extra hard drives running and 3 printers, a greenhouse we heat electrically in the winter, and 2 dehumidifiers that run all year, one in the garage. We have 2 freezers and a large fridge. We used 7,200KWh last year, and we actually suspect we have something using more than it should or a faulty meter, and have been checking with monitors to try to find where we're losing it. So your usage looks suspiciously high to me.

I too think you usage seems really high, especially the usage between 6 and 12am Ours spikes when the oven is on, washing machine and dishwasher less so as we tried getting high efficiency models.

Hope you can resolve it.

Hi again…

I’m sure no-one is wondering, but here’s an update.

Bulb finally allowed our smart meter (installed by another supplier) to start working in early April. Finally we were able to use the app to see our usage hour by hour. We were spending £9+ daily, the vast majority on electricity. Having the data on hand and in graph form, rather than having to constantly take the number from the meter box, meant we were quickly able to work out that the immersion heater was the problem. Basically the hot water was on all the time, as the installing plumber had instructed us - we stupidly hadn’t questioned this and had ended up relying on electricity to heat the hot water, rather than gas. V silly. This saw us immediately reduce our energy usage to £4-5 a day. Fab.

Plot twist! Today I get an email from the melts at Bulb saying they’ve been overcharging us since we switched in Sept 2018 and our account is now £3,400 IN CREDIT. The bastards overcharged us £75 a month all along. No explanation, still less an apology. No wonder we were £2,000 in debt and stressed. I’m not sure if the smart meter has anything to do with it. There seems to be no question that the meter is actually correct, and I think we were genuinely using a lot of electricity, but it shouldn’t have been costing what it was.

Moral of the story: I’m a moron, put your hot water on a timer and if you’re with Bulb and think your bill’s a bit iffy, get them to check their calcs. I’m fuming and amazed. Thanks very much to everyone here who suggested loads of useful ideas and gave me an idea of what the usage should have been.

Thanks for the update - I hope they repaid their "mistake" back into your bank account instead of merely giving you credit.
Did they give you this option - £1400 is a lot of money to be owed.

Bloody hell, what a roller coaster. Would be nice to have the dosh back for sure, although not having a fuel bill for a good few months is also tempting.