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After much hassle from supplier, has one installed the other day.
It’s a bit interesting but basically tells me what I know but more accurately ie if you use stuff you use power, if you don’t, you don’t
But our electricity usage never really goes below about 300 watts, even in the middle of the night. We have a side by side fridge freezer and a small under counter freezer, and a lizard cage thing with a 60 watt heat bulb. Besides that tv and laptops on standby (I know - should be powered off), a battery powered
Hoover also
Is that usual ‘base’ usage?
Sounds similar to ours, fridge and fridge freezer plus a lot of devices on standby. It's not all the background stuff that costs,it's long showers and boiling a full kettle many times a day.
Saunas use a lot too.
You can get remote control sockets so if you want to turn off everything when you go to bed you just click 4 buttons on the remote and 4 sockets are switched off at the wall. Unfortunately the plug stays on standby waiting for you to turn it back on. Also, lots of TVs and other stuff automatically applies updates overnight which it can't do if switched off.
Don't have one at home (yet) but we stayed at a fairly small holiday let a few weeks ago. That seemed to run a base load between about 70-150W, a good proportion of that I assumed was the fridge
250-300W minimum is absolutely normal and average hourly consumption across a year will be circa 400Wh per hour - circa 10kWh per day. Probably a bit more with an electric shower (maybe 450-500Wh/h)
To make savings, you need to hit your 300W minimum.
The showers, kettles etc take a lot of power, but because they are short lived, do not take a lot of energy.
(and yes 1Wh/h is the same as running 1W on average all the time)
Much higher than mine - I'm at 70 W. If you're 230W over me then that is costing you £650 / year.
(230 W is a unit every 4 hours - so that's 6 units/day x 365 days/year x 0.30 £ / unit = £650 / year.)
The smart meter reacts within a few seconds so switch everything off (including the fridges) so you're at zero watts then gradually turn stuff back on to see what's using the electricity.
My “phantom load” is typically below 100w. I have a similar amount of fridges/freezers, household of 4.
Although the energy monitoring app I’m using says I’m in the bottom 10% yay me.
But I’m not doing anything special here… only thing I actively do is turn off tv at the wall, but mostly because that also powers down all my old hifi stuff too, and the amp doesn’t have a power switch!
Conclusion seems to be 300w is not abnormal, but you should be able to do better.
When I said “To make savings, you need to hit your 300W minimum”, I meant reduce the 300W minimum - as the two posters above have done.
As also pointed out many devices are not designed to be regularly powered down so switching them off each night is not very practical (plus the cost of changing all those plugs ramps up).
Yes showers and kettles aren't on for very long but they do draw vastly more power when they are on, changing from a 20minute to 5 minute 10kW shower will make a difference, convincing the women in my household of this, even with supporting graphs, is proving difficult.
Any appliance sold after 2009 had <1W consumption on standby (later 0.5) due to EU, so the standby thing is mostly a myth.
£35 a month here on both supplies, but I don't really use heating much, and just me at home.
After much hassle from supplier, has one installed the other day.
It’s a bit interesting but basically tells me what I know but more accurately ie if you use stuff you use power, if you don’t, you don’t
Smart meters are more for the provider than the consumer. They can track energy usage per hour so get better data on how much and when they need to supply. They also don't need to pay for anyone to read the meter.
(plus the cost of changing all those plugs ramps up)
Most of our plug sockets have a handy switch next to each socket...
Well the so@@ing lizard is costing a fair bit of my 300 watts. Can’t persuade my wife to get shot of it.
When I switched off supply to garage I seemed to drop about 100watts. Not sure how - there’s a robot mower charging station plugged in and a battery pack for strimmer/hedge cutter. Both fully charged.
Our overnight base load is 0.07kWh - about 3p an hour of which 2p is the standing charge. Typical daytime use (2 x home workers) and excluding cooking and washing is about 0.14kWH / 5p an hour.
I’ve done quite a bit to reduce gas and electricity usage - the latter is a lot harder but time clocks on a couple of things have helped nibble it down.
300W sounds high, not that I've checked ours (no smart meter here). Fridges and freezers should switch on and off, not run continuously. Power supply/transformers might be a bit inefficient, if you have a lot of them. Switching off circuits (temporarily) should help to track down the consumption more accurately, if you have the time and energy. You can also get plugs that monitor consumption at the socket for a finer scale (but a lot more effort!).
But our electricity usage never really goes below about 300 watts,
Dumb question, do you mean 300w at any one time, or for the entire night?
We've got a pretty hawk-eye on our usage at the moment, given recent issues with a 1kW borehole pump running constantly for over a month...
300w at any one time
*phew*
We use about 2-3kWh (measured from a dumb meter) in about 9 hours overnight, so that's 220W-330W range, so seems about the same as us.
I think the main thing we could do would be to sort the venting on the in-built fridge freezer. It was here when we got here, and from I can see is pretty much in a sealed box, so must be working harder than it needs to.
When I switched off supply to garage I seemed to drop about 100watts. Not sure how – there’s a robot mower charging station plugged in and a battery pack for strimmer/hedge cutter. Both fully charged.
Well, unplug everything in the house, flip all the breakers, and then go one-by-one with the energy monitor in your hand until you find out where your power is going. If the display doesn't show zero with all the breakers open, then you have a faulty meter.
There's a 10 second lag on the display so it'll take a while.
Stuff that sucks power unexpectedly includes RCBOs (if you have a board full of them) and EV chargers without a car connected.
Our overnight usage is in the 250-350W range.
So whats the general consensus. Are these a good thing to have installed or a bad thing.
Seen a number of stories about incorrect billing to the meter itself failing to work. Are these just the occasional horror story, or do smart meters have problems.
If it saves money, maybe I should have one installed. But is there also a standing charge for having one ?. Over and above the current standing charge.
That does sound high OP - I have just checked and right now (with under counter fridge, American-style fridge-freezer, Sonos radio, laptop, router and mesh system running) current usage is 180w. I just switched the egg boiler on and it jumped to 580w.
Just had a look at ours, we're at about 290w/hr overnight. It'll be all the stuff on standby along with the fridge and freezer. With all the WFH it's forgetting to switch stuff off monitors and laptops at the plug that is a fair bit, along with the usual chargers/TV/gaming stuff.
Ours is sat at 130W as I work from home with a few (LED) lights on and not much else besides the usual fridge/freezer/radio/router/TV on standby.
I guess plenty of people might have a bigger house, more lighting, two freezers etc so 300W doesn't seem crazy, but yes, it's a lot more than I apparently use.
Are these a good thing to have installed or a bad thing.
Useful if you want to track how much juice you're using in an effort to reduce it, otherwise fairly neutral. I don't think you could ever say 'bad'.
But is there also a standing charge for having one ?. Over and above the current standing charge.
Nope
90-110 watts per hour over night here - big american fridge freezer, plus a smaller separate fridge, plus various TV's on stand by , phones charging etc.
What made a significant different to our load was increasing the temperature of the fridge/freezer by a couple of degrees. It does depend what your current fridge freezer temperature is as to whether you can increase it but ours were all set at the lowest temperature , so we increased it by a couple of degrees, so they dont need to work as hard.
Seen a number of stories about incorrect billing to the meter itself failing to work. Are these just the occasional horror story
Pretty much. Anything can go wrong, but people don't tend to hit the Internet to shout "I had a new meter fitted and it works exactly like the old one."
Consider other services. I had my first mobile in 1999, and today some 23 years later there's still areas where I'm out of signal. My broadband is 400Mbps, my boss's connection is barely enough to keep a stable audio connection over Teams (and his gas supply comes from a big tank in his back yard). Are these things inherently bad? Of course not, but you're always going to get outliers where things aren't straight-forward.
Caveat: there was an issue with first-gen meters ("SMETS1") where they lost their smarts if you changed providers, but many of these are now upgradable. The meter here is a SMETS1 type which was installed by British Gas before I moved in, it never worked when I changed to Pure Planet but after PP went bang and I was novated to Shell it just started working one day.
If it saves money, maybe I should have one installed. But is there also a standing charge for having one ?. Over and above the current standing charge.
Neither. In and of themselves, they should neither save you money nor cost you more. The big draw for me is that you never have to provide a meter reading again, or have a little man with a torch sniffing about your house to see if you're up to something naughty. But they come with a home display so you can use that to monitor energy usage; this is where the potential cost-saving can come in, when I first got mine I was like "I'm never using the kettle again!"
TL;DR - they're free and there's no downside to having one in the vast majority of cases.
Smart meters are more for the provider than the consumer
unless you have any kind of post FIT generation equipment and you want paid to export.
my in house display displays a"standby" load of between 150-250w
It also shows some load when the solar is more than covering the load at various instances
my OVO billing shows that the actual meter reports 0.04kw on a half hourly reading consistantly during the same standby period. (or 80watts) and 0 when ever the solar sees a sniff of light (ie the standby is covered about 18hrs a day at the moment) so take your house display with a pinch of salt
the half hourly output graph i get from ovo is by far the most useful part of the whole thing.
Overlaying that with the Solar output over the last year makes a battery being beneficial undeniable based on the cost increases forecast. - barring about 15 days of the year we would be looking at standing charge only with a 5kw battery....
I've gone through this process, definitely a useful exercise.
TVs and electronics on standby - tiny amount but they do add up, worth switching off at mains. The designed to be left on argument I don't buy into. You really worried about missing updates on a smart telly? It will do it when switched on if it is that important.
NAS drive - used more than claimed and is constantly on. I set up a power down schedule.
Dehumidifier - keep it in clothes drying area, used more than I expected, not as economical as a modern heat pump dryer I suspect.
Noticed a problem with the boiler running a pump when not needed. Overdue a service, timely reminder.
What made a significant different to our load was increasing the temperature of the fridge/freezer by a couple of degrees.
Yeah good point - I had the fridge on a boost setting as I'd just put some bits in that I wanted cooling. Just switched it back to the normal setting and usage has dropped from 180w to 90w.
Noticed a problem with the boiler running a pump when not needed. Overdue a service, timely reminder.
Yeah, a smart meter (and display) would possibly have allowed us to spot the problem with the borehole pump earlier, and we'd be about £400 better off 🙁
What made a significant different to our load was increasing the temperature of the fridge/freezer by a couple of degrees.
Ours is on the lowest (i.e. 'warmest') setting, and still runs quite a lot, thanks to it's lack of venting, really need to get that sorted
We were against smart meters as we generally turn off what we're not using and weren't keen on providing our usage data to our energy supplier.
However we bought a house last year and between us having an offer accepted in June and competing the sale in October the vendors had new smart meters installed. By the time we moved the energy crisis had started and there were no cheap fixed deals to switch to, and the heating system is an appoximately 30 year old Baxi gas fire/back boiler combo.
We were really grateful for the smart meter as it's allowed us to monitor how much energy we're using, especially gas usage and has allowed us to tweak things and see the effect on energy usage in real time.
Our last place had a combi boiler whereas we have a hot water cycinder here. The first night we turned off the heating and hot water at the programmer but left the boiler on, presuming that if the controller is not demanding heat the boiler won't fire up. It appears that the hot water controls on our programmer have no impact on when the boiler fires up, if the boiler is on it constantly heats up the water. The smart meter display telling us we'd used £3 of gas between midnight and 7am was handy as it prompted us to look into it right away.
We knew that showers use a lot, but were surprised at just how much it costs. The electric cooker also uses a lot more than we thought. Obviously we need to wash and eat so it's not something we can eliminate, but reducing time spent in the shower or turning it down a bit and using an air fryer rather than the oven do make a noticable difference to our energy consumption.
Our electricity consumption between midnight and 7am fluctuates between 0.01kwh and 0.03khw according to Octupus's energy consumption data. That's just running the fridge freezer, router, phone and a single drive NAS.
Some boilers have an 'Eco' mode that means if you're not using hot water, you won't use gas & 'Comfort' mode that periodically heats the water in the heat exchanger to give you hot water quicker when you turn the tap on.
0.01 to 0.03 kWh is 10 to 30
Watts!!?!
Most of our plug sockets have a handy switch next to each socket…
Can't reach a lot of them without moving furniture and there's probably at least 20 double sockets downstairs. Stuff is designed to stay on, ever waited for a Sky box to boot up? It's all first world inconvenience to turn it off but as we live in the first world it is too inconvenient for most turn off.
Looks like our 30 year old upright fridge / freezer is getting on for 50% of our background load, not surprising given it's age.
For what it's worth I've changed everything I can to LED, added PIRs inside and out, added some smart plugs so it's easy to turn off all the side lights in one go and even added a time clock.
The thing that I hadn't appreciated is that the energy companies are getting around the price cap by bumping up the standing charges, there's been no justification for increasing the standing charges, so much for the price cap. As it's a fixed reducing energy consumption reduction won't impact that growing part of our bills.
what are people using for their energy monitoring? my smart meter isnt smart and i dont have a display for it. ideally i would like a web based reporting tool
The thing that I hadn’t appreciated is that the energy companies are getting around the price cap by bumping up the standing charges, there’s been no justification for increasing the standing charges, so much for the price cap.
Most suppliers are increasing standing charges, but it doesn't get round the price cap. The price cap is the total somebody would pay for a nominally typical usage, so if they increase the standing charge they have to reduce the cost per unit to stay within the cap.
"The thing that I hadn’t appreciated is that the energy companies are getting around the price cap by bumping up the standing charges"
The standing charge increase reflects the cost (levied by ofgem on existing suppliers) of switching the customers of the failed retail energy companies to the ones that are still going. It's capped as well - so like the cap on gas / electric cost means almost all retail energy suppliers are making a loss on it.
0.01 to 0.03 kWh is 10 to 30
Watts!!?!
You're right, however it's actually double that I think as Octopus spit it into 30 minute intervals yet report usage in kWh. I missed that when I first checked. Still seems very low though.
what are people using for their energy monitoring? my smart meter isnt smart and i dont have a display for it. ideally i would like a web based reporting tool
Our smart meter is smart, it uploads the data to Octopus so you can view your usage when you log in to your online account. You can view daily, weekly, monthly or yearly data, but it seems to just display the most recent data. So yesterday, going back one week, one month etc. You can download the data too.
what are people using for their energy monitoring?
The dumb meter, a pen, and a piece of A4 paper
You’re right, however it’s actually double that I think as Octopus spit it into 30 minute intervals yet report usage in kWh. I missed that when I first checked. Still seems very low though.
Indeed. And like I said during the same periods the in house display shows 200-300 watts for same period.....
Our electricity consumption between midnight and 7am fluctuates between 0.01kwh and 0.03khw according to Octupus’s energy consumption data. That’s just running the fridge freezer, router, phone and a single drive NAS.
I doubt that's accurate at all!
(So you have nothing else on at all?
No oven/microwave (clocks)
No phones charging
No TV or stereo on standby
Sky box
And don't forget that the energy meter display uses power also!!)
what are people using for their energy monitoring? my smart meter isnt smart and i dont have a display for it. ideally i would like a web based reporting tool
This app,it downloads data from the energy company,so as long as your meter sends the readings to the energy supplier it should work.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hugoeneryapp.prod
Our electricity consumption between midnight and 7am fluctuates between 0.01kwh and 0.03khw according to Octupus’s energy consumption data.
Do you mean some nights you use as little as 0.01kWh in an 8 hour period, ie just over 1W of power on average over this period of time?
I think someone is confused as to units and numbers here.
Or perhaps you switch off at the mains when you go to bed 🙂
I doubt that’s accurate at all!
(So you have nothing else on at all?
No oven/microwave (clocks)
No phones charging
No TV or stereo on standby
Sky box
And don’t forget that the energy meter display uses power also!!)
As I mentioned a couple of posts back, I think these figures need to be doubled as I hadn't realised Octopus list consumption in kWh but list the consumption in 30 minute windows.
We don't have anything else on. We got rid of the TV years ago and just watch stuff on our laptops, we don't leave anything charging overnight. There's no clock on our oven, we unplug the microwave when not in use so we can leave the door open without the light being on as it fills up with steam/condensation and the clock doesn't keep proper time. The smart meter monitor is plugged in but the display turns itself off just before midnight, I'm not sure when it turns itself back on.
We also don't have any smart devices etc plugged in. The stereo is unplugged as we're decorating the front room, and we use our phones as alarm clocks. There's literally nothing else on during those times.
The consumption figures where what Octopus are listing on their website from midnight to 7am yesterday morning.
Do you mean some nights you use as little as 0.01kWh in an 8 hour period, ie just over 1W of power on average over this period of time?
I think someone is confused as to units and numbers here.
Or perhaps you switch off at the mains when you go to bed 🙂
No that's within a 30 minute window. So somewhere between 0.02kWh and 0.06kWh in a one hour window if we double it. I expect the flucuations are from the fridge freezer cycling on and off and the NAS drive spinning up or checking for updates?
And yes everything except the above is switched off, no chargers are left plugged in and nothing is left on stand by.
Here's the consumption data for that time period. Obviously after 7am the consumption massively increases. I only mentioned what we use as the OP mentioned their consumption.
Consumption (kWh), Start, End
0.01000000000000000000, 2022-06-07T00:00:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T00:30:00+01:00
0.02900000000000000000, 2022-06-07T00:30:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T01:00:00+01:00
0.00900000000000000000, 2022-06-07T01:00:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T01:30:00+01:00
0.02900000000000000000, 2022-06-07T01:30:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T02:00:00+01:00
0.00900000000000000000, 2022-06-07T02:00:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T02:30:00+01:00
0.02900000000000000000, 2022-06-07T02:30:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T03:00:00+01:00
0.01400000000000000000, 2022-06-07T03:00:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T03:30:00+01:00
0.02500000000000000000, 2022-06-07T03:30:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T04:00:00+01:00
0.01700000000000000000, 2022-06-07T04:00:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T04:30:00+01:00
0.02100000000000000000, 2022-06-07T04:30:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T05:00:00+01:00
0.02000000000000000000, 2022-06-07T05:00:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T05:30:00+01:00
0.01800000000000000000, 2022-06-07T05:30:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T06:00:00+01:00
0.02100000000000000000, 2022-06-07T06:00:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T06:30:00+01:00
0.01800000000000000000, 2022-06-07T06:30:00+01:00, 2022-06-07T07:00:00+01:00
Well I went through the process suggested - bl@@Rudy obvious really.
Main house circuits draw about 120w base load; extension / utility around 100w; garage about 100w
Utility was about 30w for tv / bt box etc on standby , so that’s worth switching off. Only gets used 2 or 3 times a week anyway. 60 watts for so@@ing lizard vivarium thing
Garage was a surprise. Turns out plugged in battery pack for garden tools drawing about 80w. Can’t believe that’s all the time but switched that off also
Thanks for suggestion. Off to Google ‘how to kill a lizard….’
I’m away at the moment but according to Octopus over the last couple of days my house has used between 6 and 7 kWh. So divide 6000 by 24hrs = 250Watts?
I should probably turn some more stuff off.
Sounds about right. Amazing how much power you can get through doing nothing!
I wonder if the fridge/freezer could stand being switched off at night. After all its sealed and insulated and it would only really be for 6 or 7 hours.
I think it would then depend on how much power it takes to re-chill everything but you'd need to look at the sums and use a thermometer to gauge by how much the temp has changed with it being off and if it uses more power or just the same.
I suppose unless theres a boost setting on it, and i dont think so, might find the power used will be about the same as it running normally.
This way, and with a wind up alarm clock you wouldn't need a smart meter at all to tell you what you re using overnight, power off at the mains and consumption would be zero.
I wonder if the fridge/freezer could stand being switched off at night.
If it's insulated well enough to maintain the temperature and keep the food safe, it would only use a small amount of power, and that would be the same amount whether overnight or in the morning. So no point. And if it not insulated well enough, you could save a small amount of power only at the risk of your food going off.