Very high energy usage - advice appreciated
- Thread starter EdWard01
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What is an Owl thing?
Better might be a plug in monitor to check individual appliances, your Smart Meter should already have been supplied with an Indoor Display which will be better than an energy monitor for the whole house.
A wiring fault> Very unlikely. Something on which you are not aware of, possibly.
Ours is around 1/2 to 1/3 of yours and I am home all day, most days. Sub 50Kw per week. Gas heated and HW, 3-bed semi, two of us, I have probably more gadgets running 24/7, but all regular use lights are now all LED, we only have lights on in occupied rooms, otherwise they are turned off. I began the swap to LED, beginning with the most used lamps, as that would have most effect. Gas hob, double gas oven.
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I've never used a plug power monitor, so can't recommend any, but plenty on Amazon
Why not buy one with good reviews, and start with the outdoor freezer. Then check other freezer and fridge, then plug all the CCTV in to it.
And then your son's stuff.
Do each for 24 hours and you should have a good idea of where the power is going. If nothing is amiss, get an electrician round to check the boiler wiring, or at least check there are no cables in the loft going off to some unknown location ...
Why not buy one with good reviews, and start with the outdoor freezer. Then check other freezer and fridge, then plug all the CCTV in to it.
And then your son's stuff.
Do each for 24 hours and you should have a good idea of where the power is going. If nothing is amiss, get an electrician round to check the boiler wiring, or at least check there are no cables in the loft going off to some unknown location ...
Wouldn't a dinner gong be more effective?
You do need to be aware of your background load- the stuff that is on all the time either because it has to be (CCTV, broadband modem, Sky+ / Freeview +/any other sort of PVR, fridge, freezer) and the stuff that is on all the time cos we're lazy (TV, stereo, computer, laptop, computer monitor on standby, phone chargers left plugged in- some installed USB sockets probably draw continually, some have a hard off when there's no cable inserted). Every 1 watt (that's 1 volt at 1 amp) of background 24/7 load costs you 8.7 units per year- so about £1 on my current tariff. Some stuff I accept the pain and move on, some stuff I ditch.
Sorry, they're mentioned on here quite a lot. These https://www.theowl.com/index.php/products/energy-monitors/
They frequently crop up on Ebay. I prefer the model with a USB connector on the side, you can plug it into your PC and it will store data and produce graphs.
Some of the ones on Ebay look the same but do not have the USB socket
Some of the ones on Ebay look the same but do not have the USB socket
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Just buy a used one to go with your existing Smart Meter and re-pair it to your system, or borrow one from a neighbour. Most of them end up in the back of a cupboard unused.
Time for me to wheel out the graphs below again! Once they are properly configured, the "Owl things" are surprisingly accurate for the monitoring of whole-installation usage over appreciable periods of time (anything from a day or two up to 'years').
The below graphs show (separately for 'day' and 'night' usage) the comparison between my Owl and the supplier's meter over the pst 5+ years. As you can see, over those 5+ years there has only been a handful of kWh difference, out of a total (day + night) usage of around 40,000 kWh. That's plenty good enough for me!
Kind Regards, John
If the cameras are the usual domestic grade type, the IR LED's will only switch on after dark and likely not more than a couple of watts each. IR flood lights will be as much as 50w.
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The Owl thing or some thing similar were given away free by Scottish Power before the smart meter thing started, they connected with the internet and idea was Scottish Power used the info to give more accurate bills than simple estimated and with mine over the year around £10 out. And to be frank that was close enough, the yearly reading corrected any errors due to internet dropping out.
It had a current transformer which went on the meter tails with a small battery, and a mains powered display which went in the house, also some remote switches for sockets came with it.
However to measure less than 10 watt it was useless, it did have a log display so could see some thing switched on if general use was low, but the simple plug in energy monitor
worked far better. Borrowed my daughters, liked it so bought my own. I then bought the Energenie one 
which actually tells one less, but since computer linked you can see when the power was used, I have used it for all sorts including checking if the heater on my home brew was keeping up 
if it switches off then keeping the temperature high enough. Also used it to see when battery has fully recharged.
However I regard it as a toy, it saves me walking into the flat under the house to check on things, but it does not save electric, as said the non computer one did show when freezer was faulty, but most things have the power used written on the outside.
I would have liked to compare the halogen hob to induction hob, but since they don't plug in, not really possible, the computer does show average use better than stand alone, it rounds off the corners, this should have been a square wave really, but with electric heating as you say you have, if curtains are closed so inferred can not leave the house, does not really matter if heat coming from TV or heating system you can't destroy energy.
It had a current transformer which went on the meter tails with a small battery, and a mains powered display which went in the house, also some remote switches for sockets came with it.
However to measure less than 10 watt it was useless, it did have a log display so could see some thing switched on if general use was low, but the simple plug in energy monitor
worked far better. Borrowed my daughters, liked it so bought my own. I then bought the Energenie one which actually tells one less, but since computer linked you can see when the power was used, I have used it for all sorts including checking if the heater on my home brew was keeping up if it switches off then keeping the temperature high enough. Also used it to see when battery has fully recharged. However I regard it as a toy, it saves me walking into the flat under the house to check on things, but it does not save electric, as said the non computer one did show when freezer was faulty, but most things have the power used written on the outside.
I would have liked to compare the halogen hob to induction hob, but since they don't plug in, not really possible, the computer does show average use better than stand alone, it rounds off the corners, this
should have been a square wave really, but with electric heating as you say you have, if curtains are closed so inferred can not leave the house, does not really matter if heat coming from TV or heating system you can't destroy energy.It occurs to be that some people may think that very-long-term performance may not fairly represent the accuracy of the Owl on a day-to-day basis. The below is therefore just the first four weeks of the 5-year period I illustrated in the previous ~5-year graph ..
Kind Regards, John
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