How many kWh of electricity do you use a day??

[User952539]

I know I know it’s another energy one but ours seems to have gone nuts.

im being told by British Gas that we are using over 11000 kWh of electricity every year. We don’t have electric heating. We don’t think we are particularly big users of electricity but we clearly are.

google seems to say that the average is 4000 for a detached family home. This is making me question how ours can be so large since whilst our house is quite big it isn’t full of people using power in every room.

how much do you use on average a day according to your smart meter? And how big is your house/how many in it?

We've used around 3500kWh over the last year, so around 10kWh per day, 2 adults, one and a bit teens in a 4 bedroomed semi with gas central heating. Hoping it will be less this year as we are going into the office much more.

OK so I have started reading my meter every morning and before I go to bed and I am adjusting if we charge the car and we are actually averaging just over 10kw per day without the EVs. Which seems more in line. Washing machine has been on 3 times a day as trying to get on top of holiday washing. Usually it's once or twice. Dishwasher twice a day (sometimes 3 times with all 5 of us a home at mo). One large ff, 1 set of fridge doors, I wfh, dh wfh 3 days a week, 3 older teens. 2 tvs and sky boxes. Multiple devices.
One EV uses c70kw for a full charge. Hybrid much less. My mum's ev is charged once a week too.
On my elec rate a full EV charge is c £20 which gets me c 200 miles. I guess elec use will be higher or lower depending on mileage. With no school runs I am not charging that much.

insane amount of washing and dishwashing to be doing

It’s the electric showers which are the culprit in our house. If we ever have solar we’ll change them to a mixer style.
I’ve bought shower egg timer things but no one uses them. I wish there was a timer that just stopped the shower after it had been on for a time.
Once uni starts and we’re child free we should notice a drop in use.

Are are a four bed wfh & gaming household and our use is around 9-10 kw a day.

On quieter days it's around 5kw but that's rare.

56 kWh over 33 days for leccy.

30 a day is a huge amount

mine is high at 12/14/16

guessing from what you said we have 4 tv on stand by. WiFi. Lappy. 3 fridge /freezers - fish tank - sure it’s the fish tank !!

plus other lamps alarm clocks - cameras etx

do I phone charges plugged in cost much

Asking an unrepresentative uncontrolled sample on here isn't going to tell you anything that British Gas, with it's millions of customers, hasn't already. You use nearly 3 times the average for a large household with non electric heating.

So either you're using a lot more than you think so need to find the source - something that heats or cools, eg electric shower, fridge freezers, reptile/fish stuff, gaming PCs, immersion heater, your meter is faulty, or your neighbour is stealing your electricity. So that's what you need to investigate.

We are family of 6 in a big old single glazed house. Last year we used 10000kw but there was a lot of work being done in the house with various plumbing/ decorating things and we were also running 2 dehumidifiers 24/7 as the house was damp.
I’m hopeful we can get this down over the next year as have changed to cold washes, dishwasher only on once per day, not using dryer. We’ve also got the heating sorted now so won’t be using electric heaters to keep us warm this winter.
We do have an everhot which is an electric aga style cooker but very programmable so not using as much as I had feared!!
We’ve been trying to get solar panels quote since we moved (almost 2 years ago!) but no one interested as we are listed and it’s not the most straightforward of roofs.

Around 10kWh per day. The dishwasher seems to be our biggest electricity guzzler, so that will not be used in winter to save a wee bit of money. We’re a 2 person family in a 3 bed terraced house.

15/16 per day Victorian house two oldies, gas heating mainly though not using any at present.

That’s higher than mine and I seem to be one of the highest

Buy some smart plugs of the kind that also monitor energy consumption. Plug the most likely culprits (tumble dryer, washing machine, fridge, oven, etc.) into those and then you can get more accurate information on which appliance is using the most energy. If it's significantly different from the manufacturer's energy rating then it'll also help you track down faulty appliances!

This sort of thing: TP-Link Kasa smart plug, Eve Energy smart plug, or plenty of other brands do similar things if you google for them.

dishwashers are not big users.

I have a usage meter

mine draws about 2.2kW while it is heating the water for the hot wash and the final rinse. about ten minutes each. Thats 1 third of an hour x 2.2 kW = 0.73kWh

i don't know what you pay per kWh, but if it was 25p that means the dwr costs about 18p per cycle. Probably a day's worth.

Hand washing uses considerably more hot water, especially if you wash up several times a day and/or change the water when it gets filthy.

my washing machine uses about half that per load

the tumble drier, however, uses many times as much because it runs the heater for longer.

churning and pumping energy is insignificant.

About 10-12 on a normal day. Usually a wash, tumble dry and dishwasher load a day plus DH WFH with computer equipment and then a gaming PC or two are on in evenings.

I expect that will be the hot water.

A 3kW immersion heater makes hot water at the rate of about 1 litre per minute, and an old style (not white) cylinder usually holds about 100 litres, which is enough for a bath, in about 100 minutes, so uses about 5kWh. A bit less in summer as the incoming water supply is not so cold.

gas boilers are quicker, and cost much less than electricity because gas energy is cheaper, even though there are losses from the pipework and heating the boiler itself.

insulation of cylinders and hot pipes reduces wastage, though some plumbers claim it warms the house so is not wasted. I disagree.

In july our average daily electricty usage was 5.4kWh

and gas 8kWh

though the electricity is not really representative as the solar panels reduce daytime usage, and there is no heating being used. Appliances are used during sunlight whenever possible. The cost of solar panels means it is not a good investment in money terms.

Mine seems pretty high compared to these. Averaging at about 13-14 a day over spring/summer, small 3 bed mid terrace. I did suspect it was high for our usage so should keep more of an eye on it. 2 adults one toddler, 1 laptop WFH each day, small fridge and freezer, small dishwasher once a day, washing machine twice a week, some devices on standby. No leccy shower. Fans on about 50% of nights over the last 6 weeks, but seems punchy…

Whatever mine is though, yours is definitely, surely too high OP!

This month August we have averaged 6.5 kWh a day so far , only 2 of us , both out at work full time. Electric cooking, gas showers, Have done loads of daughters uni washing though 🙄. I would say 10 a day is pretty average ?

This is where smart meters come in handy you can see how much you are using and what each appliance uses when it’s on.

when there is nothing on in our house, just the things on standby , alarm/cctv fridge etc …….. we use about 90 watts.

We are with Octopus and I am sad enough to look every morning at what our gas and electricity usage has been the previous day! It's still shockingly high, but significantly less than it used to be before we started monitoring more carefully. I really never wanted to turn into my Mum in the 'turn off the light' sort of way (although in many other ways I'd love to be like her!), but I'm getting there!

I do this too. Sadly despite tweaking all sorts of things including putting everything on eco mode and using less of everything I still can’t get it under 12kw for electric and about 4kw for gas.

All the advice seems to be about reducing usage but even with us doing all we can we still won’t be able to afford the bill for our actual usage.

I'm using about 3kw per day electricity, that's with:
Working from home, one person in the house.
Boil kettle once for only the amount I need, cook on electric hob or using halogen oven (I don't turn main oven on) every second day, reheat in microwave on 2nd day.
Turn off everything with an LED light at the wall when not in use.
Hairdryer for a couple of minutes every other day.
Don't leave things on charge once charged
Dry clothes outside or in a warm place, not using dryer.
About 3 loads of washing per fortnight on 30°C.

Gas - on for half an hour once a day to heat water, also about 3kwh per day.

About half my bill is the daily standing charges though, so I am still paying £80 a month, double what it would have been last year, and they would like me to increase that to cover the winter.