electricity usage

D

Delboy

Registered User
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Maybe somone out there can help me out on this one.

Myself and my gf live in a small 2 bed apt in Dublin. We were just looking at our last few ESB bills and cant figure out how we use the amount of units that we do....average 480 units on last 2 bills (240 units a month). Now I know this is'nt high by some standards and that in monetary terms it's only 80 euro per bill, but still we figure that this is way too high.

We have energy saving bulbs in all over the apt. We don't use the cooker every single day (its electricity powered). The TV on average (taking the w/e into account) is probably on 5-6 hours a day. Very few lights are on except in the rooms we're in. We do have an electric shower but that would'nt be on for more than 5 minutes a day (shower is brand new).We bought a PC at xmas but that gets very little use.We're both out and about during the day so the apt is empty, and all appliances are unplugged. The washing machine is on once every 2 days. So how do we manage to use 8 units of electricity a day!!!!

A leaflet with our latest bill from the ESB says the following makes up 1 unit of power:
electric cooker - cooking for 1 person per day
lighting - 20 watt CFL = 50 hours
TV - 6-9 hours viewing

I reckon from lights, TV and the cooker that we use roughly 2 units a day. Surely the electric shower and the washing machine is'nt using the other 6 units!!!!!

Has anyone any info on this matter or experience of checking it out? Our last few bills are based on actual readings so it's not an estimate issue.
 
Read your meter over an exact 24 hour period and calculate the units used. You're only talking about units used, as you have other standing charges and VAT lumped on the bill.

You might also like to read it over a weekend/holiday/xmas period and calculate the units used.

Let us know the figures.

From your bill, you are using an average of 8 units per day, which is 8Kw/hours per day (eg: a 100watt bulb running for 80 hours or 8 100watt bulbs running for 10 hrs or a 2Kw heater running for 4 hours or a 6Kw shower running for 70 minutes).

If the shower was run 4 times a day for 15 minutes, you would have almost come to the 8 units per day, which doesn't include heating, cooking or lighting. I know you say 5 minutes for shower per day, but I often say I only had 3 pints when I actually had 5.

A last one worth clearing off the tables is; at night with all the exterior apartment management lighting running, switch off your main switch and check if any hallway or outside lighting goes off. It shouldn't.

Hope this helps.
 
The shower is likely to be rated at more than 6kW. Vast majority of showers are 8.5 to 10.5kW, so will use a unit in close enough to 5 minutes.

You didn't mention hot water either, I presume you have an immersion heater? Put that down for a few units per day. These are generally around the 3kW mark, so can use a unit in 20 minutes.
Leo
 
I'd agree with SineWave - record the actual electricity usage on the meter for a few days/weeks to gauge what's being registered. If this seems out of whack with the actual loads that you have (immersion, heating, shower, kitchen appliances etc. - all of which should have a kWh rating stated on a sticker or whatever) then you can start investigating why this might be. If it is not out of whack then you may just need to start economising and being more energy efficient.
 
Our 2-monthly ESB bill arrived last night and came to 180 euro. I'm not hugely surprised because we'd just bought the place and wanted to be comfortable (it's a 3 bed semi which takes some warming up).

I'm guessing the usual suspects are largely to blame : electric shower, heater, dryer, oven, daytime lights etc. But I'd like to find out the power usage of some of the plug-in appliances, particularly because I leave my computer & cablemodem & wifi router on all day. These don't have a power rating so I can't calculate it myself.

Does anybody know of a device that you can plug into a socket, and will measure the power usage of a device that is subsequently plugged into it?

thanks
 
Not sure if this is relevant but I'll lob it in anyway ..

I saw a report on the BBC News website a week or two ago about domestic applicances that have stand-by settings. The report claimed that if there were no such settings, the UK National Grid could do with 2 less power stations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4620350.stm

In other words, leaving your TV or tumble-dryer on stand-by consumes electricity. It serves no technical purpose, just consumer convenience. So power off properly all such devices when not in use. And leaving your TV on stand-by is also a fire risk.

Also, are you making use of night-rate charges (assuming you're metered for this) ?
 
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TarfHead said:
In other words, leaving your TV or tumble-dryer on stand-by consumes electricity.
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I presume you mean after finishing a wash? Note that it's not generally advisable to put on a washer/drier and then leave it (e.g. leave the house or go to bed) due to the risk of fire. Do people otherwise leave such appliances on standby? I can't see what the convenience is.
 
ClubMan said:
.. Do people otherwise leave such appliances on standby? I can't see what the convenience is.
Click to expand...

My wife's approach to turning off the TV at the end of the day is to use the power off/on button on the remote, leaving a red light showing on the fron of the TV. I usually do a sweep of the house before going to bed to make sure things are turned off properly.

But to get the benefit of night-rate, we put on the washing machine and tumble-drier and dishwasher at 11:00 and let them run and remain on stand-by until the next morning which, as I write this, makes me realise that we're probably negating the benefit of stand-by. Not to mention the fire risk.

DOH !!

Which raises an earlier question - how to you measure such usage ?
 
TarfHead said:
Which raises an earlier question - how to you measure such usage ?
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As mentioned above a couple of times - measure overall use by monitoring the meter reading (readings if day and night meters installed) for a few days/weeks. You can get special plugs adaptors that monitor individual appliances when you want to refine the investigations. However it should really be obvious from the appliances what the heavy loads are likely to be (as outlined above).
 
fullerand said:
Does anybody know of a device that you can plug into a socket, and will measure the power usage of a device that is subsequently plugged into it?
Click to expand...
I found what I was looking for:

[broken link removed]
 
I personally wouldn't bother with such adaptors until I had at least logged the meter readings for a while and then investigated which heavy loads are active and when.
 

Are you sure they have no information, I thought this would be compulsory under safety laws?

The information is not always easily understood but if for example it does not give the watts/kilowatts you can still calculate them if you know the voltage and amps.
 
An average PC would have a PSU rated at about 400W. Ignoring the monitor for the moment this would mean that you could run this for 2.5 hours on a single unit (kWh) of electricity costing about €0.14 if I recall correctly. Your router's power usage is likely to be miniscule in the greater scheme of things. Even the PC's usage will pale into significance when compared to thinks like immersion heaters (often 3-6kW - i.e. up to 6 units of electricity an hour), electric heaters (again rated in kWs rather than Ws) and so on. By all means optimise your use of all electricity but you'd be better off initially concentrating on the heavy loads and making sure that you are using these efficiently first then moving onto other appliances.
 
The best thing to do is switch everything off and go to the meter. There is a dial that should not be spinning if no electricity is being used. If th dial is still turning, you may have left a light on in the attic for example.

TarfHead, you need a special meter (dual meter) to run on night rate tarrif. Did you have this installed?
 
You could always trip the master switch on your "fuse" board and then check of the meter dial is not spinning. If it is then somebody else may be connected to your meter!
 
Have you checked your bill to see if its was an estimated reading ? Look for an E next to the units

Our last 2 bills (which were also our first) were way over what we used nearly double, we took a reading rang it into them, they then issued a new bill showing their estimate being half of what we used and then our customer reading on top of that!! Don't know who they are trying to fool with the revised etimated usage
 
dam099 said:
Are you sure they have no information, I thought this would be compulsory under safety laws?
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I'd have thought so too, but there's no ratings at all on my (admittedly Aldi-bought!) PC.

Going by what ClubMan says above, I'll assume that my PC's PSU is 400W, which means that it uses 9.6 units per 24hrs, which at 14c/unit comes to 40 euro per month!

Thanks for the tips, will keep an eye out for stuff on standby between now and the next bill
 
paddyc said:
Have you checked your bill to see if its was an estimated reading ? Look for an E next to the units
Click to expand...

Yes, it was an estimated reading, but I checked the meter and they weren't too far off.
 
fullerand said:
... I'll assume that my PC's PSU is 400W, which means that it uses 9.6 units per 24hrs, which at 14c/unit comes to 40 euro per month!
Click to expand...

400W is the maximum power usage, unless you have lots of extras drawing power, your actual usage will be less than that, perhaps even more like the 200W mark.
Leo
 
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