Energy costs. Oh dear.......

[AF62]

An aside. We have discovered that while we're asleep, we have a 0.5kw base load through the night (and day, obviously). This must be the refrigerator, the freezer and the wine cooler. So, running those is going to increase from 7p per hour to around 20p for 20 hours every day. Nothing we can do about that other than get rid of those three appliances. And that's not going to happen.

0.5kW seems quite high as that would be 12kWh a day.

When my house is unoccupied it uses around 4.4kWh a day which works out as a base load of around 0.18kW - I was away from mid Jan to mid March this year and I can see that the consumption for the whole of February was only 122.9kWh.

Unoccupied my house continues to run most things that are run whilst occupied (the fridge freezer, broadband, lighting, etc. - I keep the lighting, etc. running for security) so it is only the addition of washing machine, dishwasher, tv, and gas central heating pump that runs when I am home (plus obviously the EV charger).

I would be investing what is causing you such a high base load as that difference (0.5 vs 0.18) equates to over £1,000 a year.

Thanks for the thoughts. It's Mrs BD who gave me the overnight consumption from the display linked to the mains smart meter. You have me thinking, maybe either Mrs BD has made an error in what she's telling me, or I have misunderstood. Thanks again.

OK. Asked Mrs BD about the night time base load. From midnight to 6.00am this morning the display that's linked to the smart electric meter showed 3kw/hrs consumption. 0.5kw per hour. We have all less than a year old fridge, freezer, wine cooler plus a two PIR LED lights and two LED lights lit during dark hours. Plus a couple of alarm clocks etc... So the majority of the 0.5kw baseload has to be the three cooling appliances. I guess if you say each cooling appliance is around a 120w load and there's three of them running, it starts to make some sense. (The fridge and the freezer are both about 2m tall, they're quite large appliances). Thanks for the interest.

But are they going to have 120w load all the time?

Taking a couple of random examples - this tall fridge uses 116kWh a year, so 0.3kWh a day, so an average load of about 0.013kW - https://www.johnlewis.com/bosch-serie-4 ... e/p5123545

And this tall freezer uses 237kWh a year so 0.65kWh a day, so an average load of about 0.027kW - https://www.johnlewis.com/bosch-serie-4 ... e/p5135611

0.013kW plus 0.027kW is only 0.04kW (40w not 240w) so that's an awful lot of consumption by a wine cooler and a few LED lights to make up the other 0.46kW!

[BullDog]

An aside. We have discovered that while we're asleep, we have a 0.5kw base load through the night (and day, obviously). This must be the refrigerator, the freezer and the wine cooler. So, running those is going to increase from 7p per hour to around 20p for 20 hours every day. Nothing we can do about that other than get rid of those three appliances. And that's not going to happen.

0.5kW seems quite high as that would be 12kWh a day.

When my house is unoccupied it uses around 4.4kWh a day which works out as a base load of around 0.18kW - I was away from mid Jan to mid March this year and I can see that the consumption for the whole of February was only 122.9kWh.

Unoccupied my house continues to run most things that are run whilst occupied (the fridge freezer, broadband, lighting, etc. - I keep the lighting, etc. running for security) so it is only the addition of washing machine, dishwasher, tv, and gas central heating pump that runs when I am home (plus obviously the EV charger).

I would be investing what is causing you such a high base load as that difference (0.5 vs 0.18) equates to over £1,000 a year.

Thanks for the thoughts. It's Mrs BD who gave me the overnight consumption from the display linked to the mains smart meter. You have me thinking, maybe either Mrs BD has made an error in what she's telling me, or I have misunderstood. Thanks again.

OK. Asked Mrs BD about the night time base load. From midnight to 6.00am this morning the display that's linked to the smart electric meter showed 3kw/hrs consumption. 0.5kw per hour. We have all less than a year old fridge, freezer, wine cooler plus a two PIR LED lights and two LED lights lit during dark hours. Plus a couple of alarm clocks etc... So the majority of the 0.5kw baseload has to be the three cooling appliances. I guess if you say each cooling appliance is around a 120w load and there's three of them running, it starts to make some sense. (The fridge and the freezer are both about 2m tall, they're quite large appliances). Thanks for the interest.

But are they going to have 120w load all the time?

Taking a couple of random examples - this tall fridge uses 116kWh a year, so 0.3kWh a day, so an average load of about 0.013kW - https://www.johnlewis.com/bosch-serie-4 ... e/p5123545

And this tall freezer uses 237kWh a year so 0.65kWh a day, so an average load of about 0.027kW - https://www.johnlewis.com/bosch-serie-4 ... e/p5135611

0.013kW plus 0.027kW is only 0.04kW (40w not 240w) so that's an awful lot of consumption by a wine cooler and a few LED lights to make up the other 0.46kW!

Something doesn't add up. I think I might have to look at the energy monitor myself. Perhaps Mrs BD hasn't read it right or something. The three cooling appliances aren't running 24x7. They cycle on and off on the compressor. Thanks for your interest.

[Dod101]

A wine cooler? Who are you catering for? My fridge does the job.
Dod

Um, not equivalent. A wine cooler does long-term storage, not at fridge temperature but at cellar temperature: I think 12 degrees is traditional. That's also better than a fridge for a range of food products, like most fruit&veg, or cheese. Not to mention English "warm" beer!

I had one (actually a three-way fridge/freezer/larder) for some of my time in Italy, and have missed it ever since.

I had no idea. Just shows......

[Dod101]

Then of course we have people deciding whether to use the washing machine every day or having a shower, or not putting on the heating (in June!)

Against that we have airport chaos. What gives?

Dod

[88V8]

Then of course we have people,,,not putting on the heating.

I don't get that.
Why turn off the heating?
Why not heat just one room (+ the room where the stat is, if only one stat) and turn off the other rads?
Heating one room was what one did, pre-central heating.
Are people so soft? Or have they forgotten.

We have become accustomed to using far too much energy.

Before 1953 our cottage had no electric. The occupants seem to have managed OK for 330 years by cuddling a sheep.

V8

[JohnB]

Buy a monitor plug. Not only can they do instantaneous power use, they can integrate it over the period from connection.

[BullDog]

0.5kW seems quite high as that would be 12kWh a day.

When my house is unoccupied it uses around 4.4kWh a day which works out as a base load of around 0.18kW - I was away from mid Jan to mid March this year and I can see that the consumption for the whole of February was only 122.9kWh.

Unoccupied my house continues to run most things that are run whilst occupied (the fridge freezer, broadband, lighting, etc. - I keep the lighting, etc. running for security) so it is only the addition of washing machine, dishwasher, tv, and gas central heating pump that runs when I am home (plus obviously the EV charger).

I would be investing what is causing you such a high base load as that difference (0.5 vs 0.18) equates to over £1,000 a year.

Thanks for the thoughts. It's Mrs BD who gave me the overnight consumption from the display linked to the mains smart meter. You have me thinking, maybe either Mrs BD has made an error in what she's telling me, or I have misunderstood. Thanks again.

OK. Asked Mrs BD about the night time base load. From midnight to 6.00am this morning the display that's linked to the smart electric meter showed 3kw/hrs consumption. 0.5kw per hour. We have all less than a year old fridge, freezer, wine cooler plus a two PIR LED lights and two LED lights lit during dark hours. Plus a couple of alarm clocks etc... So the majority of the 0.5kw baseload has to be the three cooling appliances. I guess if you say each cooling appliance is around a 120w load and there's three of them running, it starts to make some sense. (The fridge and the freezer are both about 2m tall, they're quite large appliances). Thanks for the interest.

But are they going to have 120w load all the time?

Taking a couple of random examples - this tall fridge uses 116kWh a year, so 0.3kWh a day, so an average load of about 0.013kW - https://www.johnlewis.com/bosch-serie-4 ... e/p5123545

And this tall freezer uses 237kWh a year so 0.65kWh a day, so an average load of about 0.027kW - https://www.johnlewis.com/bosch-serie-4 ... e/p5135611

0.013kW plus 0.027kW is only 0.04kW (40w not 240w) so that's an awful lot of consumption by a wine cooler and a few LED lights to make up the other 0.46kW!

Something doesn't add up. I think I might have to look at the energy monitor myself. Perhaps Mrs BD hasn't read it right or something. The three cooling appliances aren't running 24x7. They cycle on and off on the compressor. Thanks for your interest.

From Liebherr's website the rating is 198 and 133kw/hrs per annum for the freezer and the fridge. Can't find the wine cooler just yet. Say the factory rating for all three appliances is 400kw/hrs per annum combined or approx 1.1kw/hr per day to run all three of them. Something is obviously not right with the data Mrs BD has seen on the smart meter monitor. Every day is a learning day, it seems.

[daveh]

An aside. We have discovered that while we're asleep, we have a 0.5kw base load through the night (and day, obviously). This must be the refrigerator, the freezer and the wine cooler. So, running those is going to increase from 7p per hour to around 20p for 20 hours every day. Nothing we can do about that other than get rid of those three appliances. And that's not going to happen.

0.5kW seems quite high as that would be 12kWh a day.

When my house is unoccupied it uses around 4.4kWh a day which works out as a base load of around 0.18kW - I was away from mid Jan to mid March this year and I can see that the consumption for the whole of February was only 122.9kWh.

Unoccupied my house continues to run most things that are run whilst occupied (the fridge freezer, broadband, lighting, etc. - I keep the lighting, etc. running for security) so it is only the addition of washing machine, dishwasher, tv, and gas central heating pump that runs when I am home (plus obviously the EV charger).

I would be investing what is causing you such a high base load as that difference (0.5 vs 0.18) equates to over £1,000 a year.

My base load is about 44W. Less than one old fashioned light bulb. My average daily usage is about 4kW per day so about the same as your base load. Being summer it's up a bit at 5 to 6 kW per day as I'm running a dehumidifier as otherwise the humidity in the house gets over 70%

[BullDog]

An aside. We have discovered that while we're asleep, we have a 0.5kw base load through the night (and day, obviously). This must be the refrigerator, the freezer and the wine cooler. So, running those is going to increase from 7p per hour to around 20p for 20 hours every day. Nothing we can do about that other than get rid of those three appliances. And that's not going to happen.

0.5kW seems quite high as that would be 12kWh a day.

When my house is unoccupied it uses around 4.4kWh a day which works out as a base load of around 0.18kW - I was away from mid Jan to mid March this year and I can see that the consumption for the whole of February was only 122.9kWh.

Unoccupied my house continues to run most things that are run whilst occupied (the fridge freezer, broadband, lighting, etc. - I keep the lighting, etc. running for security) so it is only the addition of washing machine, dishwasher, tv, and gas central heating pump that runs when I am home (plus obviously the EV charger).

I would be investing what is causing you such a high base load as that difference (0.5 vs 0.18) equates to over £1,000 a year.

My base load is about 44W. Less than one old fashioned light bulb. My average daily usage is about 4kW per day so about the same as your base load. Being summer it's up a bit at 5 to 6 kW per day as I'm running a dehumidifier as otherwise the humidity in the house gets over 70%

I am going to look a bit deeper into this. The monitor for the smart meter gives numbers that are sensible for charging the PHEV. But something is clearly amiss with the base load reading between midnight and 6.00am that Mrs BD took. It might be that she's read it wrong or simply mistaken what it said. Afterall, if it meters the PHEV correctly when it's charging, it should be working just fine at other times too. It'll take me a day or two of taking readings myself to understand it.

[AF62]

The monitor for the smart meter…

If you have a smart meter doesn’t your supplier’s bill give a breakdown of consumption every 30 minutes?

Sorry if a daft assumption as I have only experienced one company’s electricity smart meter billing (Octopus) and not only do their bills show that breakdown but you can also download the data to have fun with as well.

[daveh]

The monitor for the smart meter…

If you have a smart meter doesn’t your supplier’s bill give a breakdown of consumption every 30 minutes?

Sorry if a daft assumption as I have only experienced one company’s electricity smart meter billing (Octopus) and not only do their bills show that breakdown but you can also download the data to have fun with as well.

The old SSE site did, provided you had opted in to allow them to take readings that frequently. I haven't really looked at the OVO site in detail yet, so far I've only looked down to daily level briefly, but I think I saw a tab that would let you look at energy usage over individual days.

Since I got the smart meter I keep an eye on what it's reading just before I leave for work and sometimes in the evening to make sure everything is off.

[James]

Then of course we have people,,,not putting on the heating.

Before 1953 our cottage had no electric. The occupants seem to have managed OK for 330 years by cuddling a sheep.

V8

You ad sheep? Pure luxury... when I were a lad we had to cuddle the hamster that had just been pulled from the icebox.

[richlist]

Just checked mine between midnight & 6am. Total of 1.79 kWh. I do have a hot tub running as well as all the usual stuff like fridge & freezer etc. Averages out at around 0.3 kW which is what I would expect.

[BullDog]

The monitor for the smart meter…

If you have a smart meter doesn’t your supplier’s bill give a breakdown of consumption every 30 minutes?

Sorry if a daft assumption as I have only experienced one company’s electricity smart meter billing (Octopus) and not only do their bills show that breakdown but you can also download the data to have fun with as well.

Thanks, yes it does that. It's a shame you can't zoom in to it for greater granularity, because then I would be able to see the three cooling appliances cycle on and off. I checked the monitor this morning as Mrs BD did yesterday. It shows almost identical readings as the day before. ~3kw/hrs used between midnight and 6.00am. At this point I think the remote monitor in the utility room that connects wirelessly to the smart meter has an error. Though it shows charging the PHEV correctly. Curious.

[BullDog]

Just checked mine between midnight & 6am. Total of 1.79 kWh. I do have a hot tub running as well as all the usual stuff like fridge & freezer etc. Averages out at around 0.3 kW which is what I would expect.

Thanks. It's looking like the remote smart meter monitor is showing an error. It's the same this morning showing about 3kw/hrs between midnight and 6.00am. And we don't have a tub!

[richlist]

Could your fridge or freezer be faulty and not cycling ? If either are running continuously would that account for the high energy use ? You could turn your freezer off for 2 or 3 hours (on a timer) to see if that makes a difference. It should maintain temperature with the door closed.

[BullDog]

Could your fridge or freezer be faulty and not cycling ? If either are running continuously would that account for the high energy use ? You could turn your freezer off for 2 or 3 hours (on a timer) to see if that makes a difference. It should maintain temperature with the door closed.

Thanks for the suggestion. No, none of three cooling appliances are running continuously. If they were, it would be very obvious as we have temperature displays which would head towards the South Pole. The other thing that supports it being an issue with the monitor rather than the appliances is that our real world energy consumption is pretty modest.

[monabri]

Wouldn't the user manual for the appliance state energy consumption? Lost manuals can often be found and downloaded from the Internet,.

My calcs for the annual running costs of a small, under the counter, freezer (70 litres) came out at just over £140 pa, comprising £110 day + £31 economy-7. These calcs reflect the newly hiked electricity charge prices).

The biggest cost was using an immersion heater (£564) with a standing charge being a not inconsiderable £176 pa.

[tjh290633]

My annual electricity consumption is about 3200kWh. That is 400W/hr near enough. I am not bothered about what things that are kept on 24/7 use. Weekly electricity consumption varies with season. 70kWh in winter, below 50kWh in summer, a combination of lighting and heating system use, for pump and boiler ancillaries accounting for the difference. beteen 450W and 300W per hour. When we have been away on a long cruise, in September, it averaged 25kWh/week, under 150W/hr.

TJH

[BullDog]

Wouldn't the user manual for the appliance state energy consumption? Lost manuals can often be found and downloaded from the Internet,.

My calcs for the annual running costs of a small, under the counter, freezer (70 litres) came out at just over £140 pa, comprising £110 day + £31 economy-7. These calcs reflect the newly hiked electricity charge prices).

The biggest cost was using an immersion heater (£564) with a standing charge being a not inconsiderable £176 pa.

Yes it does, I posted the annual consumption for the fridge and the freezer just up the thread. It supports there being an issue with the smart meter monitor (not the meter itself) rather than there being a real 0.5kw 24x7 baseload. Thanks.