[Mystery] £400-600 monthly home electricity bill with Octopus

Minato said:
I do not, I looked at it to see how much people were generating and if maybe I should invest in a system to cut my bills down. But given that in winter people are generating like 1-3kW a day it wouldn't really touch even my 'low use' (60kW) days.
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In the winter it's not how much you can generate but how much you can store during the off peak period. Even on a bad solar day I run my house on 8.5p electric all day then export what is left for 15p kWh. Soon my imports will be 7p kWh when I get my charge point installed.

Sounds like you've got a big house, if you have plenty of space for panels then a large system will generate well in the summer, which potentially builds up credit for the winter, couple it with batteries and there is plenty of savings to be had. Our gas and electric has been negative two years running.
 
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Ron-ski said:
In the winter it's not how much you can generate but how much you can store during the off peak period. Even on a bad solar day I run my house on 8.5p electric all day then export what is left for 15p kWh. Soon my imports will be 7p kWh when I get my charge point installed.

Sounds like you've got a big house, if you have plenty of space for panels then a large system will generate well in the summer, which potentially builds up credit for the winter, couple it with batteries and there is plenty of savings to be had. Our gas and electric has been negative two years running.
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Good point tbf, if I can generate >60kW in summertime then at least those months would be free.

Haven't looked into it too much yet as I've heard prices of panels are constantly decreasing, and I'd want to get loads of panels so makes sense to wait a bit I think.
 
Minato said:
That's good to know, thank you.
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To be honest I'd check your split units. Some use crankcase heaters in the compressors so if they're idle and it's cold they won't necessarily be zero.

I doubt it accounts for many hundreds of watts, but one of my Daikin units sits at ~50 W standby as it uses a heater.
 
Minato said:
Good point tbf, if I can generate >60kW in summertime then at least those months would be free.

Haven't looked into it too much yet as I've heard prices of panels are constantly decreasing, and I'd want to get loads of panels so makes sense to wait a bit I think.
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I can't see panels getting much cheaper, you can a decent 425w panel for £47.56 excluding vat, in the meantime labour rates will be going up, and summer is coming.

Batteries may get a bit cheaper, but now is a very good time to get PV and a battery system, and get as many panels as you can fit, even north facing roofs are worth doing along with the others, or if you have room a ground mount system.

If you want advice on systems post in the following thread.

Solar panels and battery - any real world recommendations?

is that the spot that you grow weed?
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk
 
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I didn't read all of the posts.

Yes, that is very high.

I think you need to go through the house looking at everything.

My base consumption is 21W and average in the day is 250W.

The most concerning for me would be the 661W. That's one heck of a lot if everything is off!

One suspect may be the central heating pumps. They are on all the time the central heating is on and many installations these days have more than one. Plumbers have a habit of just turning them up full, but they can use 100-125W each. A modern self-adjusting pump will usually use around 10W by comparison.

My biggest normal day to day user is the fridge. It's consumption is fairly low but it's on all the time and kicks in quite often.

Another hidden evil is underfloor heating in bathrooms. Quite popular at the moment, but they are fiendishly expensive to run.
 
The OP needs to get a thorough understanding of what's using what, and label all those breakers as well. It's a big house, but I suspect a lot can be cut back when you look at that list.

Flood lighting, if old style bulbs and not Led will consume a lot, 3 freezers the same.

At least they are on the right path now, and that 661w constant load needs identifying.
 
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This probably isn't the cause, but check your fridge freezers haven't got super mode turned on. I know somebody who had super mode turned on their integrated freezer for nearly a year after moving in and didn't think any more of it, because their food was frozen. After their electric bill settled down, they were getting fed up of constant high electricity usage so eventually managed to pin it down to the freezer.

Super mode is now turned off, their food remains frozen and their electric bill dropped - happy days!
 
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If you turn all the power off in the consumer unit, the smart meter should have a solid red light on it indicating no power is being used. Turn the CU off for an hour and see if the reading on the meter has changed. With such a large house, are you sure you have got another consumer unit somewhere?
 
Looking at the list of appliances I don't think your bill is that surprising.

edit. to be more helpful, some of your demand may be periodic, such as the AC units. For example, if the AC units are plugged in to the socket ring then testing that ring might show no impact initially. Is there any chance that you have the AC units running?
 
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SpeedFreak said:
Looking at the list of appliances I don't think your bill is that surprising.

edit. to be more helpful, some of your demand may be periodic, such as the AC units. For example, if the AC units are plugged in to the socket ring then testing that ring might show no impact initially. Is there any chance that you have the AC units running?
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The AC units are definitely not running as they're turned on/off via remote. The cover thing opens up and air starts coming out. The external units also start making noise etc. They've also all been installed less than a year ago so in top condition, not old/faulty/crusty.

I've a builder that knows the house's electrics better than me coming around soon, so hopefully will be able to do some more digging with some testing kit. Showing him the pictures of which breaker I identified, he reckons it's something on the pool side.
 
I saw an article about something very similar to this a few days ago. It turned out the meter was not converting correctly or something like that, so was basically doubling their usage. I think that was an older meter though, not a smart meter. They had to go to the papers In the end to get someone to actually check properly!
 
With 3xfridges and 3xfreezers, that prob going to be 10+kWh straight away just on normal settings/temps. What's your heating source/setup in the whole house? Definitely no immersion heaters on for any water tanks, as they guzzle electricity. Time to get a few Tapo P110 or alternative elec monitoring plugs and test on various appliances for a day at a time and get some more in detail readings.
 
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Minato said:
The AC units are definitely not running as they're turned on/off via remote. The cover thing opens up and air starts coming out. The external units also start making noise etc. They've also all been installed less than a year ago so in top condition, not old/faulty/crusty.

I've a builder that knows the house's electrics better than me coming around soon, so hopefully will be able to do some more digging with some testing kit. Showing him the pictures of which breaker I identified, he reckons it's something on the pool side.
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Salt or chlorine pool?

Does it have a heat pump?

Does it have a cleaning robot?
 
Terminal_Boy said:
Salt or chlorine pool?

Does it have a heat pump?

Does it have a cleaning robot?
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Chlorine
Yes we have an ASHP and a gas boiler both for the pool - but both are currently turned off as the pool is empty as we were doing some renovation work for the last year or so. Another big reason I'm keen to get my spend down, because when the ASHP goes back on it'll really crank my usage up.

No cleaning robot, done by hand and with the filter/pump system etc.

1pudding1 said:
With 3xfridges and 3xfreezers, that prob going to be 10+kWh straight away just on normal settings/temps. What's your heating source/setup in the whole house? Definitely no immersion heaters on for any water tanks, as they guzzle electricity. Time to get a few Tapo P110 or alternative elec monitoring plugs and test on various appliances for a day at a time and get some more in detail readings.
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a ~64kW gas boiler does all the central heating and hot water. One wing has water underfloor heating, the rest of the house is radiators. There are 2x 500L cold water storage tanks, and 2x 300L hot water storage tanks with embedded electric immersion heaters (confirmed again to be turned off). There are a few pumps for circulation and pressure - Grundfos Magnas and Grundfos Scala2 pumps respectively. I've turned all these off via breaker with minimal impact on the power draw.
 
Fully off as in the breaker feeding them is off or in standby?

I remember reading that HPs (like split AC) can have a frost protection mode built in that makes them heat up slightly if environmental conditions trigger it.

Do you have an fish ponds with pumps or filters?

Do you have any PIR security lights?
 
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Might be worth your while buying a cheap AC-capable clamp meter. You can then measure the current on each individual cable in your consumer unit and/or distribution boards in real time - rather than having to try to monitor usage on a zappi/ciu.
 
I have nothing to add other than to say having read this thread I am now fully invested into following until the reason is found out !
 
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