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High Electricity Consumption at Night - Any Ideas Please ?

DRD

DRD

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Oct 26, 2014
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Location
Newark
Having just renewed my electricity Tariff using a comparison website, it works out at about £100 a month. I am still spending about £40 a month more on electricity than a friend with a similar 4 bed detached house.

My annual consumption - Daytime: 5,500 kWh, Night-time: 2,500 kWh. The latter figure covers a 7 hour period, suggesting that I basically use the same amount of electricity per hour day and night. This is despite having electric cookers, kettle, lighting ….. none of which are used at night.

I do not have mains gas at my house. Our hot water and heating is oil fired. I have one electric heater - the night time storage heater in my pinball shed, but this place is extremely well insulated.

I did have an old 500w PIR floodlight outside which I have now replaced with a 50w LED unit. This light only worked at night, it seemed to function properly, so I doubt that it was responsible.

I wondered whether the 13 pinball machines might be responsible. When "turned off" by the under game switches my lot is consuming current as follows:

Scared Stiff: 0.078a
Funhouse: 0.033a
Fish Tales, Addams, Banzai, Transporter and Genie: 0.015a
TZ and Whirly: 0.014a
ACDC, Paragon, Centaur, Fathom: 0

The total current draw is 0.214a. Over the course of a year ...0.214a = 51.36w, per day = 1.23 kWh, per year = 450 kWh. As electricity costs around 14p per kWh, total pinball standby cost = £63 or so.

My fridge and freezer will run overnight, but these are only a couple of years old with good energy ratings

Does anyone have any ideas what might be consuming all this power at night pls ?

Thanks
 
What about turning off from the mains the off button on the socket itself


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Didn’t notice anything with my bill with 10 plus machines. Will have to get my clamp meter out and measure the draw from them all.

Maybe check your loft for bright lights😑
 
what’s the power rating of the storage heater and how long is it in for each day?


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First thought is storage heater.
Do you have a storage tank for hot water? If so does that have an electric element ?
How many TV's or other items on standby
 
If you have a clamp meter, clamp the live tail from meter with all the breakers off then turn one on at a time to see which circuit is drawing the amps and go from there.
 
I’d be surprised if your pins are consuming much power. I’d suggest anything that heats is consuming your power at night - dishwasher, washing machine, immersion or tumble drier. Electric oven and electric grill.

If you don’t have access to a power monitor (currentcost is quite cheap and easy to use) - you could have a go with comparing overnight power consumption readings.

Check your consumer panel and suggest each evening you turn off one of the circuit breakers, and leave it off overnight, (rotate through one per night) and see if your overnight consumption reduces (obvs take a meter reading before and after you turn off the breaker). Check there isn’t anything critical on the power supply. Eg Your fridge/freezer will defrost if left off overnight.

You could at least determine which ring/supply is consuming your power.

If you want to get very nerdy with controlling your power consumption - checkout this open source project https://openenergymonitor.org/

Hope these suggestions help.
 
I have 6 pins plugged in 24/7 switchEd off by the normal switch like most ... 7 lights are on in dark hours all have leds, two TVs on standby and when I look at my smart meter at 7am it’s 27p
 
Washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher.. these can typically be running at night, particularly the latter, and use lots of power for sustained periods.
 
Does not matter how well insulated your shed is the storage heater still needs an amount of kw input to ‘charge itself’ so it gets hot.
How does it turn on? I doubt you are on economy 7 with only one of them.
 
Kenny Taylor said:
I would say the storage heater. Temp severely drops during the nite. That storage heater will chewing thru your consumption..
Click to expand...

As a rule storage heaters should only come on at night preferably using the Economy 7 tariff, not that its that cheap any more.
 
Thank you all for the suggestions guys.

Economy 7 did not work out the cheapest for us. We do not have a smart meter, it just happens to be an economy 7 meter from a previous contract.

I am going through the house, socket by socket to test the standby consumption of every item plugged into the ring main.

I do not use appliances at night (washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher etc). Unless there is a fault somewhere, the most obvious source of trouble would be the pinball storage heater. I do have a current measuring device that I can insert into this circuit to see what it consumes.
 
DRD said:
Having just renewed my electricity Tariff using a comparison website, it works out at about £100 a month. I am still spending about £40 a month more on electricity than a friend with a similar 4 bed detached house.
Click to expand...

Can only dream of such small bills, we use 20k plus kWh net of our solar panels per year.....
 
Hi David,
You need to change your meter to a single rate meter. Not economy 7. This makes a huge difference. (Sometimes double your unit rate for daytime). Ring up your supplier and immediately ask for a TOTALIZING of your account, so that you are on a normal single rate tariff not economy 7. Then ask to be put on there best single rate tariff straight away. Next demand for a new single rate meter to be installed. Otherwise you will not be able to switch suppliers easily. If you want a smart meter be sure they do not swap it for a economy 7 smart meter. Can book you in for a meter replacement within two weeks normally.....
Once you have the new meter installed then go on u-switch and compare for the best supplier. Doing the totalizing will revise your bill costs in 24 hours........K.
 
Conclusion - no matter how well insulated a pinball shed is, it takes a lot of energy to heat it ! I think the issue is that they tend to be detached structures. I own a detached rental bungalow and these get terrible EPC ratings. No upstairs to help insulate the downstairs and 4 external walls. In contrast, flats (with neighbours left, right, above and below and usually few windows) get much better EPC ratings.

My pinball shed/ home office has 4 inches of celotex in the walls plus plasterboard, plus OSB board plus 1 inch sealed air gap plus external cladding. I think 3 inches of celotex in the floor and 4 inches of celotex and 9 inches of fibreglass (was free) in the roof. It has the most efficient UPVC double glazing and internal dual skin metal roller shutters which also insulate a bit

Having now taken 2 sets of readings, they are as follows:

Night 1 - Total 7 kWh, of which my 3 kW storage heater took 6.4 kWh

Night 2 - Total 8kWh, of which my storage heater took 7.6 kWh

This amount of electricity was keeping the shed around 18 degrees in this weather. So if you assume 6 months a year of this that is about £180. 4 months a year is £120. Then add the £63 annual pinball standby cost, so the pinballs and their shed are accounting for about a fifth of my total electricity consumption before I even play a game.

Having tested every single item in my house that uses a 3 pin plug, the thirstiest overnight consumers are:

13 Pinball machines - 51w
10 year old TV/ HDD/ Soundbar - 26w
CCTV - 14w
10 year old TV/ Blu - 13w
Air purifier - 11w
Original 25 year old Bose Wave Radio - 8w

The plethora of transformers on things like routers, phones, mobile chargers, radios are all 0w to 4w
Appliances that are plugged in but not used (microwave, dishwasher …) use 0w to 2w each
Newer appliances tend to have much lower standby consumption than older ones
 
DRD said:
Conclusion - no matter how well insulated a pinball shed is, it takes a lot of energy to heat it ! I think the issue is that they tend to be detached structures. I own a detached rental bungalow and these get terrible EPC ratings. No upstairs to help insulate the downstairs and 4 external walls. In contrast, flats (with neighbours left, right, above and below and usually few windows) get much better EPC ratings.

My pinball shed/ home office has 4 inches of celotex in the walls plus plasterboard, plus OSB board plus 1 inch sealed air gap plus external cladding. I think 3 inches of celotex in the floor and 4 inches of celotex and 9 inches of fibreglass (was free) in the roof. It has the most efficient UPVC double glazing and internal dual skin metal roller shutters which also insulate a bit

Having now taken 2 sets of readings, they are as follows:

Night 1 - Total 7 kWh, of which my 3 kW storage heater took 6.4 kWh

Night 2 - Total 8kWh, of which my storage heater took 7.6 kWh

This amount of electricity was keeping the shed around 18 degrees in this weather. So if you assume 6 months a year of this that is about £180. 4 months a year is £120. Then add the £63 annual pinball standby cost, so the pinballs and their shed are accounting for about a fifth of my total electricity consumption before I even play a game.

Having tested every single item in my house that uses a 3 pin plug, the thirstiest overnight consumers are:

13 Pinball machines - 51w
10 year old TV/ HDD/ Soundbar - 26w
CCTV - 14w
10 year old TV/ Blu - 13w
Air purifier - 11w
Original 25 year old Bose Wave Radio - 8w

The plethora of transformers on things like routers, phones, mobile chargers, radios are all 0w to 4w
Appliances that are plugged in but not used (microwave, dishwasher …) use 0w to 2w each
Newer appliances tend to have much lower standby consumption than older ones
Click to expand...
Why do you want it so hot overnight? I allow my house temperature to go down much lower than that overnight (not that it does by much).
 
Moonraker said:
18 degrees overnight :eek: no wonder the usage is high. Happy with 10 degrees at SWL during the week before cranking it up for use Friday night or weekend.
Click to expand...

Because it has a storage heater in and the Mrs' home office is about 1/3 of the overall space. From now on she can warm her area up with a fan heater before she uses it. The storage heater is being turned right down. 10 degrees or so
 
Dehumidifier a few hundred watts set at 50% (adds heat) and a small 1kw fan heater which doesn’t come on often as it is set to the frost setting but still comes on for a few minutes every now and again keeps the room in my garage at 14/18c 24/7. Not noticed the extra consumption since I’ve had it from last March. Good insulation though, no windows and a decent door with double glazing.
 
Storage heaters are very inefficient. Ask an electrician to change the circuit to 24hr, get rid of the storage heater and fit a super efficient 1kw fully programmable electric rad. Initial outlay yes, but you’ll get your money back.
 
Our club / arcade / flat is averaging £1400 per month lol. I think turning off the games at the mains could save £200 a year but tbh that is on a par with throwing a deck chair off the Titanic!
 
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