using 1000kwh electric a month!!

I use Econonomy 7
Winter my bills are £75pm roughly
Summer £35 roughly
Winter
Heater in lounge on others are off. Electric shower used twice a day. Immersion on for 1hr at 6am. TV and two PCs in use occasionally projector and amp with ps3 now and again. Washing machine on twice a week. Usual cooking etc. Small oil radiator for a couple of hours if I am using PC in spare bedroom.
All in all not too bad.
 
Ok so last night i turned off immersion heater completely, did a read before i went to bed and woke up and the storage heaters have used 8kwh (is that any good)
Compared to other night with immersion heater on i used 25kwh
So the immersion heater in that 2 hour period the night before used around 17kwh!!!!
I am stunned!
Over a month thats £56 of electricity!!
I never have a bath (electric shower) and only do one lot of washing up at night, so will leave it off for good now and will use the 15minute boost if need be!

My day rate read is 5kwh, maybe a little too high but im more than happy with that now i know
A) i had the readings the wrong way round
B) i have found the culprit being the immersion heater

Surely such devices should be banned if they consume so much energy?
Also idiots like me who dont know these things, should be shot
 
I had a flat with a similar set-up for hot water/heating a few years ago. Storage heaters are pretty miserable really, they cost a fair bit to run (even with Economy 7) but by the time you're home from work or whatever they're cold again.

I ended up buying a couple of small cheap oil-filled radiators to use during the day/evenings and just had the storage heaters on a fairly low setting so the flat wasn't freezing cold in the mornings when I woke up.
 
Surprised nobody has picked up on the fact you are on quarterly billing - this isn't always the cheapest method. Use a comparison site to see how much cheaper it would be on a monthly tariff, either way with the same provider or somebody else.

I also agree with everybody else about buying one of those energy monitors that clamp on to a wire going into your meter. They aren't terribly accurate, but they will definitely help you narrow down what's using what. The first few hours of using mine, I was going round turning everything on and off. :D:o
 
darael said:
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I also agree with everybody else about buying one of those energy monitors that clamp on to a wire going into your meter. They aren't terribly accurate, but they will definitely help you narrow down what's using what. The first few hours of using mine, I was going round turning everything on and off. :D:o
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I did that too :). I got a DIY Kyoto Wattson energy meter (no longer trading) as a gift one year and promptly went round the house turning everything off, especially all the wall-wart psu's that you forget about. I eventually got the usage down to 50W when the fridge freezer or central heating wasn't cycling.

Then I did the opposite when the opportunity arose - how high could I get it at a peak? The Wattson had a max reading of 10kWh which was easily exceeded!
 
Turn down the thermostat on the immersion heater by removing the cap on the element it only needs to be around 60 degrees its prob turned up full
 
shatpank81 said:
Amazing, thank you for that
Both of them on tank was both set to max
There were no temp readings on it just a - & +, so i set it quite low, not the lowest point though
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Id put it at least halfway as it needs to be around 60 degrees to stop legionella (kills bacteria)
 
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I'd look at running the immersion heater 24/7. Keeping water hot may be cheaper than heating it up. My tank will only lose 2.3KW of heat in 24hrs if I turn it off completely.
 
40/month is unrealistic for an electric-only flat, IMO... especially over the winter months.

We had an all-electric top-floor flat that was practically three stories tall with massive single-pane windows along the whole one side of the apartment (it was a converted auction house).

That was 120-150/month over winter, mostly thanks to the electric heating.

For a more normal flat, I'd still expect 80/month quite easily.

My base-level estimate may be way off though, because I've never been all that great at being economical.

The last student house I lived in was combination of electric and gas and between 3 of us, that worked out to about 100-110/month in total... so it doesn't seem too excessive to me to get that kind of bill for a 2 bed flat.
 
mattyg said:
I'd look at running the immersion heater 24/7. Keeping water hot may be cheaper than heating it up. My tank will only lose 2.3KW of heat in 24hrs if I turn it off completely.
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It will still lose 2.3kw of heat when it is hot, it would lose less if left to cool down as the temperature difference will decrease.
 
I'm not surprised about your immersion heater at all.

Basically your boiling a huge kettle from practically cold every night.

You either leave them permanently ON (they are on a thermostat so they only "top up" the heat in the tank) or you leave them permanently OFF.
 
So peeps whats the best course of action you recommend??

Never had one of these before and ideally would like to keep electric to about £70 a month tops if possible, i know my daily electric use is fine its just night time electric use

Like i have said i never use the bath and only do washing up once a day (about 3/4 of a bowl of water if that)
The only time the bath is used is if daughter needs one, but at mine that is perhaps once a week.
So do i need immersion heater on all the time for that?
 
I am the same with all electric except i have a one bedroom flat.
3 storage heaters,one small one on in the hall.
Water comes on for 45 mins at 7.30pm (work nights)
50"tv gets used on a sunday and monday (daughter)
Pc is on 3 hours a day
Kettle twice a day
oven twice a week
every bulb in the flat is led

I use a calor gas heater if it gets to cold,warms the flat up nicely and is cheap to run.

My bill is £75 a month with usage about £70
 
Now you have lowered the thermostats it will save you a lot, best to leave the night immersion on permanently, and use the boost during the day should you need to, economy 7 is a fraction of the cost of peak time electricity so make the most of it, also economy 7 heats the whole tank so should stay hot all day where the day time only heats half the tank.
 
when you say leave it on, do you mean set the timer to run through the night or just leave it powered on?

think ive been missold my electric with first utility, i have the terms etc when i joined but it appears i pay 11p odd for night rate and 10p for day rate.
also im not on an economy 7 plan, just an electric only plan?
 
This isn't Kist a cost issue, you should not be using 1000kwh a month regardless of what you're paying.

Sounds like everything is on full power all night, and thus chewing through the electric.
 
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