How much electric is "normal"

[Pumpkinsarenearlyhere]

New to here but really looking for advice.
We moved into new house in Jan 25. Have now found the seller hid a lot and we have had to do significant work in the house. The seller was a DIY fan and had done most of his electrics- not well and left a lot of C1 fails. We have just had the top of the house electrically rewired because of the green goo coming out of the lights.
The new house also has a SMART meter, which we didn't have before (a SMET1 if that means anything). Our electric bills/usage have quadrupled and the electric company have been worse than unhelpful.
We are now at the point of paying for a check meter (£320) or switching suppliers (but could end up with the same issue)
We are 2 people with basic appliances. Washing machine on 4 times a week (and clothes dried outside in the summer). Oven on for about 20mins at night. Kettle boiled a lot! Electric shower for 3 mins in the morning. Have taken out lighting and replaced with traditional drop pendants. No hot tub and not growing anything unusual in the loft.
Current electric use is 280KwH/£85 per month

House is a bog standard 3 bed terraced house in the SE of England.

Are we using a normal amount or does this seem high for 2 people?

That’s about the same as me. We’re a house of 4 people, standard 3 bed terrace built in 70s and lots of glass (all doubled glazed) we do have a tumble drier and use it frequently as I have a 4 and 6 yr old! Would love to know what sort of house you were in to only pay £20 a month on electric if I understand your post correctly!

We’re also a household of two adults and we usually use about 90kWh a month so yes that does sound like a lot! However, we don’t have an electric shower and we don’t use the oven every day or do as much laundry as you, although I do work from home.

House of 3, new build. We use an average of 200KwH per month. Your usage does seem quite hurt although we are all out all day weekdays. Does anyone work from home?

The house previously was a standard 2 bed terraced house in the same area. It didnt have a SMART meter, but when it all went crazy a few years ago, I wasn't in a tariff and just put meter readings in on the 1st of each month.
Now in a 3 bed, but bed 3 is 7ftx8ft and cant see that making much difference on an electric bill!

I should have said, mine is a 4 bed detached in the midlands

3 bed terrace, 2 adults & 3 kids. I work from home 5 days a week. Gas for heating & hot water, electricity for everything else. We use about 300kwh of electricity a month.

Actual data;
Elec £ Elec KwH
Apr 24 19.30 81.62
May 24 17.81 75.83
Jun24 14.94 63.77
Jul 24 14.79 68.88
Aug 24 15.62 72.87

Apr 25 85.57 281
May25 76.14 243
Jun25 85.05 279
Jul 25 87.81 288
(1-18) Aug 25 45.74 147

We moved all the same electrical items and have had a house electrical conditioning test. It is a combi boiler and not looking at gas just now. The only differences in the new house are an electric shower and the oven. I get they would both use a lot more but not this level surely?
The lucky bit about the South of England is the weather. All doors open through the day, and heating hasnt been on since March. Clothes on the line (dreading using tumble)
It is just such a huge jump that we think it is wrong, but the supplier is saying it is normal medium level usage and wont do anything.
A check meter is a lot to pay if we are "normal"

@ExperiencedTeacher I work from home but also did in last house. More kettles boiled and laptop with extra screen on during the day.
Partner works Mon-Fri so not in during the day.

It's not that bad.

I live in 3 bed semi, work from home and have a hybrid electric car which I charge not very often.

I am not too careful with the electrics and use about 8-9 kwh per day, whereas you are using about 9 ?

Probably more of a mystery is why you were only using 2kwh a day in your last place which is very low.

The extra 7 kwh would probably get you 42 minutes of shower time (assuming 10kwh shower) or about 2 hours of oven time assuming a 3KW oven on all the time.

If you had a system boiler maybe it would be the immersion heater on. But you have a combi.

the major difference is the SMART meter v non SMART
The previous house was not and I paid similar for 10 years.

It may be that was too low, but the significant jump to this house just doesnt make sense

9kwh seems a lot for 1 day. ?

In my experience you need to take a reading every day, though with a smart meter, you should be able to go on the app/use the in house display, to see how much you are using in any hour, then work out what you were doing. The big culprits, electric showers, cold fill washing machines doing hot washes, tumble driers, dish washers, electric underfloor heating in bathrooms, recipes where the first instruction is preheat the oven to 200C. Also old fridge/freezers can be gluttons for electricity. Tv's, phone chargers etc are rarely the problem, though my hifi amp burns over 1kwh a day if I leave it on 24/7

Not really. Apparently an average 2 person household uses about 7Kwh per day.

The car charge is pretty meaty, 2.4 kw for about 5 hours a couple of times a week so that adds in an extra 24 kwh per week or 3 kwh per day.

I would be at about 6kwh per day without the car.

Like I say, the anomaly more sounds like your previous reading not the new one.

Was it a very old meter ? I mean there are things that can go wrong. A previous occupant could have interferred with it. Or it could have been dual tariff and got stuck on the cheap tariff (not sure how that works).

4 bed detached, both home all day. 2 DW loads a day, cooking briefly twice, 7 wm loads a week, no electric shower, average 11kwh pd.

When he is not home, 7-8. One extra lot of cooking, one extra DW load and him on the PS5 in the evenings adds 3-4 kwh.

The DW and WM are old and the DW is costly because it's too crap to put on anything other than the 65 degree cycle.

In the previous house with less crap appliances but the same setup, 8-10 kwh per day.

Electric showers cost a bomb to run. I did the maths on it 3 years ago and it was cheaper to heat up an entire hot water cyclinder to have a bath than for us both to have a ten minute shower.

Just to add - and this should be common sense for most people, but apparently not for my landlords. If you have built in fridges and freezers, they MUST be adequately ventilated, preferably with those grilles at the bottom.

Our house uses over 3kwh pd to run when we are not here (I turned everything off to be sure) - because the bloody things are constantly overheating and cooling (even worse when you have underfloor heating - but that kwh is a summer usage rate).

Our old house used to use 1.2kwh of electricity a day when we were away, which included: 1 full size fridge indoors, same in garage, 1 full size freezer in garage, 1 undercounter fridge indoors, 1 undercounter freezer indoors, 1 full size fridge freezer in the garage - only 1 of which was brand new. I am not obsessed with appliances btw - countryside living is a mare.

The difference is shocking. Just vent your bloody white goods.

We have a standard fridge freezer. It may be dated so pulling more, but again it moved from the old house.
Try not to use the dishwasher. There are only 2 of us so it takes longer to load than to just wash up!
@KievLoverTwo, interesting about the electric shower. May look to take this out.
It looks like we run high as coming in the same as 4-5people households. Even the washing machine usage by comparison (for 1-2 v 4-5) would be a difference.

Has anyone had any experience of a check meter?

Have you turned everything off, taken a meter reading and another one an hour later to see if it has used any electricity. Also check to make sure no one has turned your immersion on.
as it’s a smets1 meter you should be able to get it upgraded to a smets 2 meter

I would say it is more likely that your previous meter was reading slow. FWIW if we are on holiday for a week, we use around 2kWh a day - and your old house was using 2-3kW a day.

While your new house seems slightly higher than I'd expect for the 2 of you it's not ridiculous, and well within the bounds of normal.

I have a bog standard 3 bed terrace no electric shower but we use the washer a lot dryer when it's not sunny(small children) August was 275kwh/£84 so very similar. As others have said you usage is maybe a little higher but not really that unusual. Suspect your old place was actually low!

@Autumn1990 yea, we did a burns test (switched everything off for 15 mins then ran everything for 15mins) Used 5KwH for the burn. Was told this is high, but it would be if everything was on and we don't have everything on like that all the time.
Interestingly, cooking a Sunday dinner used double the amount (about 11 kwh that day). Perhaps we need to look at appliance usage if this isn't normal.

How do you get a SMET2 meter change? The supplier is saying it isnt faulty so they wont change.
Would prefer a SMART meter on dumb mode, but don't think any supplier would agree to that

You were using 2-3kwh per day before? That’s incredibly low.

Like others are saying, that’s away on holiday low.

The big difference between the 2 is the SMART meter. As was in the old house 10 years, was used to that level.
I preferred that level of usage and thought that was normal!!

You could get an energy monitoring plug and check individual appliances for 24 h each. Or redo your meter test and separate out individual rooms or appliances to see which are using the most electricity.

Our base use for fridge, freezer router and other IT equipment is more than 3kWh per day so would say your old usage was low and your new use on the high side of normal.

where are you getting the usage figures from OP?

do you have a small device which shows you gas and electricity usage which is talking to your smart meter all the time?

is it possible the device has the wrong ( or no ) cost settings for kWh?
is it possible the SMET1 meter has the wrong tariff settings itself?

Im sure Martin ( money saving expert ) used to caution about the older meters being set wrong and costing people ££.

Are the house lights all LED yet? They use a fraction of the electricity compared to the old bulbs.

Usually it is an appliance/device pulling far more than it should. You can get plug in electric consumption monitors which would tell you exactly what each appliance is using. We have Tapo ones from Amazon, they double as timers so multi use. In the app we can see when things are pulling power not just the overall consumption. In fact we have a whole home assistant in this house.

But with you saying that it doubled with a Sunday roast I am thinking it might be your oven. Is your oven a plug in one? Mine is. To access mine you have to remove the plinth at the bottom and you can see the plug. Check your make/model online to see if it is hard wired or plugged in. That is where I would start.

Yes I have experience of piggy back meters because I used to work for an energy company. Meters can run slow or fast but it is fairly rare considering how many meters there are. Re a meter change, it isn't as straightforward as it used to be. Before the local company owned your meter and billed for it. Now you could be billed by a different supplier and they have to arrange the meter change through the local company and get charged for it.

Personally I would order the monitors today and start with the oven.