Post your actual energy usage

[OllyM]

Fair enough. It's still an awful lot of gas usage though - I'm expecting to use anywhere around 6,000-8,000kWh/year so nearly 50,000kWh is staggering!

Are you having to run the tumble dryer and standby generator a lot? I imagine your house size is quite generous too, whereas I have a paltry ~1,000sq.ft

Dryer gets used a few times a week, standby generator exercises once a week for 20 minutes but otherwise I think it's only been used for a couple of hours this year.

My house is really old by American standards - the main part was built in 1890 so it doesn't retain heat very well at all and the boilers are not condensing/high efficiency ones so they chuck 20% of the heat out the chimney. With natural gas being so cheap the payback period on improvements would be really long and I plan to sell up within 5-6 years so it's not worth it.

 

[Sin_Chase]

I'm still baffled by some peoples crazy low electricity usage!

 

[squerble]

Got my bill through, so 28NOV-27DEC (including the cold snap):

£130 for 1179kWh of gas, inc VAT and SC.
£110 for 487kWh of elec, inc VAT and SC.

Effective electricity rate of 19.7p/kWh thanks to shifting stuff into the cheap Octopus GO window (of which only 56% was for car charging).

 

[MichaelAwkward]

I'm still baffled by some peoples crazy low electricity usage!

Equally baffled by some peoples crazy high usage.

Gas I can understand as it's very dependent on the type/state of property but unless you've got electric heating, the difference must surely just be the number of devices, type of devices (age/efficiency) and how long people are leaving them on for as well as the number of people in the house. E.g. 4 people using an electric shower twice a day vs 2 people using a mains shower once a day.

Since we're now at the end of Dec basically - we've used a total of 375kWh gas and 145kWh electricity, which is 98kWh and 26kWh less respectively than 2021.

 

[Richie]

I'm still baffled by some peoples crazy low electricity usage!

What would you call crazy low?

 

[Sin_Chase]

Estimated annual consumption:

Electricity: 2,804kWh
Gas: 5,800kWh

4bed semi built in 2015, 2 adults, wfh 3/5 days.

What would you call crazy low?

M1k3H's usage for example. 2,804kWh is about 3 to 4 months usage for us and we heat the house and water with oil. 2 adults, 1 child. I am also factoring in some BEV charging and a hot tub but even with the usage for them taken out of the equation our usage is massively more!

We have used 1,200kWh in December, although we did a fair amount of cooking for hosting christmas that's just under half the entire annual usage of M1k3H!

 

[Sin_Chase]

Gas I can understand as it's very dependent on the type/state of property but unless you've got electric heating, the difference must surely just be the number of devices, type of devices (age/efficiency) and how long people are leaving them on for as well as the number of people in the house. E.g. 4 people using an electric shower twice a day vs 2 people using a mains shower once a day.

Agreed! It's why I feel like some people must live in the dark and never watch TV/use devices!

 

[MichaelAwkward]

Agreed! It's why I feel like some people must live in the dark and never watch TV/use devices!

It just isn't the case though - my usage is probably one of the lowest in this thread and I've almost always got a TV on or my computer when we're home. I do 1-2 loads of washing a week (including sometimes using the drying function), cook every day on an electric hob, run a fancy bean to cup coffee machine several times a day, etc etc. Me and my partner aren't going without to achieve our low consumption - this is normal for us. Our gas usage is low because it's a well insulated property (and a first floor flat so benefiting from heat below rising), but our electricity usage isn't unusual I think. We certainly don't live in the dark, but all of our lighting is LED. We do have a mains fed shower (and gas central heating).

The only thing this year that we've done differently is literally turning stuff off at the wall instead of leaving it on standby.

 

[Sin_Chase]

It just isn't the case though - my usage is probably one of the lowest in this thread and I've almost always got a TV on or my computer when we're home. I do 1-2 loads of washing a week (including sometimes using the drying function), cook every day on an electric hob, run a fancy bean to cup coffee machine several times a day, etc etc. Me and my partner aren't going without to achieve our low consumption - this is normal for us. Our gas usage is low because it's a well insulated property (and a first floor flat so benefiting from heat below rising), but our electricity usage isn't unusual I think. We certainly don't live in the dark, but all of our lighting is LED. We do have a mains fed shower (and gas central heating).

The only thing this year that we've done differently is literally turning stuff off at the wall instead of leaving it on standby.

Based on your 97kWh usage in 20 days of December thats about 5kWh a day..... that's really low.

 

[Inked1]

Yes his meter is not calibrated correctly .....same happened to me was using 6 kw per day according to meeter then got a bill for £1500 2 years later when they realised

 

[MichaelAwkward]

Based on your 97kWh usage in 20 days of December thats about 5kWh a day..... that's really low.

Yeah, that's about right - the eonnext app says 4kWh of electricity on average with a high of 8 and a low of 1 when we've been away.

We both work full time so we're out of the house from 8 till 5 all week, so that's evenings and weekend usage with my aforementioned coffee machine used once in the morning.

The biggest power consuming devices we have besides the oven, washer dryer are my PC and probably the PS4. We do have a fairly old Sony TV in the living room which probably uses over 100W when on, but we tend to only have that on a couple of hours a day at most.

Yes his meter is not calibrated correctly .....same happened to me was using 6 kw per day according to meeter then got a bill for £1500 2 years later when they realised

It's a smart meter (SMETS1) and I'm billed on actuals that match the readings I see on the unit myself so I trust it's working correctly since it was installed in 2018 and subsequently upgraded to work again with DCC, having been with several suppliers over the period.

 

[Inked1]

so is mine a smartt meter

 

[MichaelAwkward]

so is mine a smartt meter

Then what was the issue? Calibration is rarely a problem with electricity meters (per https://www.gov.uk/guidance/electricity-meter-accuracy-disputes). Do you actually mean that it wasn't submitting readings and you were billed on estimates until it caught up? That's not the same as it not being calibrated properly.

Even so, the fact that our gas usage is similarly low suggests that isn't the case for me (as it's even more unlikely that both meters would need to be recalibrated).

 

[M1k3H]

M1k3H's usage for example. 2,804kWh is about 3 to 4 months usage for us and we heat the house and water with oil. 2 adults, 1 child. I am also factoring in some BEV charging and a hot tub but even with the usage for them taken out of the equation our usage is massively more!

We have used 1,200kWh in December, although we did a fair amount of cooking for hosting christmas that's just under half the entire annual usage of M1k3H!

I don't have access to my old usage from past flats, but I do recall moving from our previous 2 bed flat (energy rating high C) to our current 4 bed semi (energy rating high B) and my payments remained roughly the same. I used to pay about £50 for the 2 bed flat (gas + elec) and about £55 for the 4 bed semi (gas + elec). Both are gas central heating and water, so from an energy allocation point of view are the same/similar.

So my assumption is that the usage being the same is only due to efficiency gains, e.g. My 2 bed flat had halogen GU10 spotlights in the kitchen and bathrooms, my house has led GU10 spotlights. Similarly, bulbs were halogen, now are LEDs. Appliances are newer and I always try and go for high efficiency (budget dependant ofc), whereas the flat was a furnished accomodation, so had the cheapest appliances they could buy.

For a bit more info, we are only 2 adults.

The house is so energy efficient that the upstairs heating comes on approximately 50 hours a year!!

We also have loads of people come to ours for parties, dinners etc, so tend to have people over and cook large meals often (at a minimum once every 2 weeks).

For the month of December we used a little bit under 300kWh. Last year, we had used 280kWh.

 

[Welshman]

Agreed! It's why I feel like some people must live in the dark and never watch TV/use devices!

Less than 150kwh of electric used in this house during december…..yes we have solar, but production is very low this time of the year. I also work from home and have tvs, sky q, laptop, multiple screens running all day. We also use ipads all day, with usb charging, no big power drawing computers are laptops other than the work one, up in my office.

my whole years electric and gas bill was around £1350….some are paying that monthly.

 

[Mickie]

2021
Electric 1912kw
Gas 6292kw
2022
Electric 1411kw
Gas 4262kw

Terraced new build but pushed energy saving this yr, appliances, draughts, insulation and log burner.

I should add that my average of around 4kw a day of electric is because I also built a shed with 4 solar panels on it.

 

[john_smith]

2022 Electric stats

8219 units - Split as - 8138 Go, 82 Peak
4677 generated from Solar
12896 total. I consume 99% of my generation.
£575 annual cost.

Approx £198 as "free money from the Gov"
2 x Octopus referrals = £100
FIT payments = approx £1300
£1598 income

Profit for the year, £1023. Nice

 

[Molep]

Electric 2020-2021-5458kwh
Gas 2020-2021-7993kwh


2021-2022
elec 5845kwh
gas 3750kwh

3 bed end terrace, gas ch 9 rads, elec cooking, elec shower, single glazed sashes secondary glazed (apart from 2)

 

[Stu999]

Electric 2020-2021-5458kwh
Gas 2020-2021-7993kwh


2021-2022
elec 5845kwh
gas 3750kwh

3 bed end terrace, gas ch 9 rads, elec cooking, elec shower, single glazed sashes secondary glazed (apart from 2)

How did you slash your gas usage so much?

 

[Molep]

How did you slash your gas usage so much?

hmmm just thinking on that, didn't have heating on until end Oct, but looking through Octopus energy's weekly stats they say I used none from mid Nov to mid Dec. So they must have screwed up there I reckon.