[Closed] electricity usage these days

Mine sits just under 300w, I should probably turn things off more when I’m not using them.

We're about to get smart meters at the end of the month. Apparently LED light bulbs make a huge difference.

LED lights are a huge reduction. If you think about the olden times, 200-400W of light was not uncommon in a lounge. Now mine has 9 bulbs at 3W each across several fittings. So a mere 27W. My house is 100% LED now, the last CFL being turffed out just before xmas.

Our lighting bill is higher than I wish it was.

Anyone on the look out for some Phillips MR16 LED dimmable bulbs?

Spent over £250 on them to replace all the filaments in the house which are on a fancy lutron system, assured that they were the correct bulbs, and threw the boxes away before realising that although on paper they are correct they don't play nicely with the system. At the moment the payback period for us going LED is infinite.

LED lights are great especially in work areas like the garage and kitchen. It's weird now when you go in someone else's house and they've got dim, orangey bulbs everywhere.

We also had a smart meter installed a couple of weeks ago and we're running at 2p per hour most of the time.

Overall, comparing today to the 1970's, I think the average house is using the same amount of energy, or more, nowadays.
LED lamps have reduced the power requirement, but even 30 years ago you didnt have a computer (or charger) plugged in, no Router on constantly, loads of items on standby etc.
Cooking can be directly compared to the 60's. It takes a set amount of energy to heat a saucepan to 90 degrees, that hasnt changed, the losses while heating the food have been reduced somewhat, but not by a great deal, especially if you still use an old open top saucepan.
Add in the vast array of electrical items we have now, and it is easy to see us using more energy now than 40 + years ago. Tumble dryers, electric showers, washing machines, jet washers, food mixers, TVs and computers on all day, outside/garden lighting, garden implements. None of these were in general use 40 years ago, every second house has most of them now.
House heating hasnt changed, apart from houses being insulated better, so less loss of heat.Electric heating is usually 95%+ efficient, and has been for all time.
We use too much, could you imagine 50 years ago, saying I'm putting my wet clothes in a tumble dryer, on a fine sunny day? It happens now, as people cant be arsed walking into the garden to hang washing up.

Actually been surprised how littlevour tumble dryer uses, kettle, iron and showers are the big power hogs, particularly the showers.

You'd not be wanting to pay our works electric bill, just over £16k in Feb, but this drops by about 20% in summer as we've got 240kw of solar panels on the roof.

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I'm on 61W right now - 1p per hour. Listening to a pair of speakers, router, TV, box, laptop plugged in or on standby (sorry world).

Not bad.

I hardly use any electric.
Induction hob and electric cooker are the biggest draws. Other than that a pc, TV and hifi amp gets used a bit. Everything switched off at mains when off other than fridge and freezer.
No tumble dryer, no kettle, no hairdryer, shower runs off combi boiler.

£45 a month for gas and electric combined

Ours is around the 300w mark typically, maybe up towards 400w. That's what I reckon is normal baseline - much above that and I wonder what's been left on! 470w as I look at the Owl electricity monitor.

Likewise, should really switch stuff off room by room to see. That's routers, lights, computers, chargers as per usual, small dehumidifier usually running in kitchen. Fridge, freezer (kitchen) plus garage freezer.

It's a bit like car running costs I reckon. Cars were easier to fix in the 70s, but broke down or didn't last that long. Much more reliable, fuel costs higher, service costs higher. Wonder if - index adjusted - they are less or more cost per mile?

Our background usage is 70W. Have had a smart meter for years (3rd party one) which logs power consumption every minute. It's pretty cool, you can see the fridge / freezer pump cycling on and off every few minutes.

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Overall, comparing today to the 1970’s, I think the average house is using the same amount of energy, or more, nowadays

That's kinda fair enough, as well as there being more of is, but has electricity production greenified enough to offset it?

A lot more than the 70s, but been reducing since 2002.

This is total usage of the UK, not per household (which have increased in number). Industrial decline is also in there as well as solar panels as no one keeps tabs on the domestic total solar generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_United_Kingdom

Much more detail on UK domestic energy consumption here:

50% increase since 1983.
That's surprised me. Though as I wrote above, we have electric appliances for everything nowadays. Even 10 years ago, who would have thought electric MTBs were going to be a thing?

This is my specialist subject and I can get really boring on it.

Electrical energy use in our licence areas has fallen about 1.5% per year for the last 10-15 years. Perhaps more - the readily available data doesn’t go back further. I think nationally it’s similar.

In terms of diversified peak domestic power use it’s gone though the floor, partly because even if the individual peaks are the same they don’t occur at the same time as much as they used to. (They never did but they do it less now - yes I did write that right).

The future? Well EVs and heat pumps and storage and more and more PV says the future won’t be like the past but what exactly it will be depends on how we play it.

For example digitalisation and time of use tariffs could be great or devastating for electricity supplies.

Keeps me in a job though.

Don't dare look at mine. A healthy reptile collection uses a lot of leccy!

In terms of diversified peak domestic power use it’s gone though the floor, partly because even if the individual peaks are the same they don’t occur at the same time as much as they used to. (They never did but they do it less now – yes I did write that right).

I thought they used to say everyone put on the kettle at the same time eg advert break in the Footie / Corrie etc and that's what the Dinorwig Hydro power plant was built for - supplying short term spikes?

I just look at the daily combined electricity and gas on the smart meter. Modern detached house, big loft conversion, all in most of the time (us 2, 2 teenagers, 6 month old pup), back door open loads for latter, Hive thermostat at the boss’s preferred level, Boys seem to be semi amphibious with extended daily baths......

It’s been a cold day outside, minus 4 earlier and now below zero again, and the meter says we’re at £7.02 so far since midnight..

Smart meter read -244W when I checked today, so I put the dishwasher on. It's quite useful for optimising our use of the PV panels.

Background here is about 250-350w with two fridges, pond pump, UV clarifier, trickle charger, etc, running. Typical daily use age for the 4 of us is about £3-£4 now that were both working from home. It used to be about £2.

Slowly educating the wife on better use of the PV energy. This week using delayed start on the washing machine to start about 10am, when PV generation is getting into 1-2kW range.
I manage the dishwasher, and this last few weeks have not run it during the evening as normal, but if its got space for the following days breakfast dishes, run it the following morning. This has knocked daily consumption from 9 to about 6kWh.

I think in the last 5 weeks, the solar PV has provided all our hot water on all but one really cloudy day. Uses a solar iboost immersion controller, and a big 300 litre tank stores enough to carry through poor PV days.