Finally bought my first home but have no idea if my electricity use is normal or not, it seems off to me. Any electricians out there that can suggest if it seems normal?
My electricity provider says that we typically use 30-40kwh per day with some days up to 80kwh. I have no idea why the usage is so high. Almost all of the lighting is LED, and almost every appliance is natural gas. The only appliance that is electric is the clothes dryer.
Natural gas furnace, fireplaces, hot water tank, stove, etc.
It seems to be higher usage in the winter despite having three r2d2 air conditioners running in the summer time and almost all of our heating being natural gas in the winter. We have one plug in oil filled heater outside in the detached storage / workshop area.
We do have a well for our water system and that involves a water softener and UV filter and whatnot. Not sure how much power a well pump uses.
Does 30-40kwh average use with up to 80kwh sound normal or on the higher end?
I worry that something on the property might be siphoning power or something. We also suspect the previous owners of the property were probably growing pot, the outdoor workshop has a 200amp service and a breaker box with like 20 empty breaker slots that were filled in with just 3-4 remaining for the lights and plugs.
Any info appreciated!
last month I used on average 126kwh a day.
keep in mind my house is around 5600sqft and is tri-zoned for heating/cooling.
I also have a full server rack that runs 24/7.
My parents had a similar issue and it was the well pump cycling on and off constantly. Fixing the pressure tank solved it for them.
It was an older tank that needed bleeding, until at some point my parents replaced it to get a new bladder
I wonder if this might be the issue. I live in the basement next to the mechanical room so I can hear the well pump switch on almost every time a faucet is turned on or a toilet flushed.
Is it not supposed to do that?
We do have a large blue pressure tank but if it’s malfunctioning how would someone know?
It’s been a lot of years but I believe there was a little fitting you can connect a couple pressure gauge to
You’ll have to look it up or hire someone, because it’s not like an outright fail. The tank needs enough of an air pocket to compress and create pressure. If the bladder leaks you’ll lose the air: with nothing compressible there’s no way to hold pressure. Then it’s just a tank and your pump needs to run every time you use water. You’ll not only use a lot of electricity but shorten the life of your pump because it runs too often.
I’m sorry I can’t give enough specifics to go on but this seems like a good possibility you should look into. It may be as simple as bleeding or inflate the tank (free!), but worst case scenario of replacing the tank is a hell of a lot cheaper than replacing the pump
In the middle of summer, we use 7kwh/day.
I have an all elctric place and have not had to use my hvac system much because the weather has been in the moderate fall mode. I looked at my electric report and days that are low usage are like 18KW and 36KW is exceptionally high. Im in a condo though so we are talking not much above 1k square feet. However my wife has a tortoise and turtle so we have heat lamps going quite often. The hot water heater is a large part of costs when not using the furnance.
Mines $200/month now. Yay ai data centers
I get reports from the electric company every year, you might be able to request it to see what the average has been for the past few years
Do they provide hourly usage numbers? Sounds like it might not be consistently high but there are some peaks. Could you use those as clues?
I have a < 1000 sq foot house with a propane furnace and electric stove. We have an AC, and a few dehumidifiers. I have a well and a filter. My spouse works from home. I have a pottery kiln but I’ve used it like 8 times so it’s not pumping those numbers up too much.
In the previous year our average daily usage was 38 kWhr. Our usage is highest in the summer.
My max daily usage last billing period was 90 kWhr and I ran the kiln that day. My second highest day was 49 kWhr. From the hourly data I’m seeing a big peak at 6 and 7 pm. I’m guessing that’s from using the oven and both taking hot showers in quick succession (electric water heater). Might have also been the day I did a fuck tonne of handing with the orbital sander.
Anyways, getting a device to measure usage of devices is great but you might also be able to gleen info from a more detailed bill.
You dont say where you are.
I’m in the UK and we have smart electric meters. The app provided by the company let’s me see my usage over the last 12 months by day/week/month.
I’ve also just had solar panels installed that came with an app that lets me monitor real time usage.
My house’s base load is approximately 200w per hour (fridge/freezer/lights). And we use about 8kwh per day which includes turning the oven/microwave on.
On days when we charge the car that goes upto about 30kwh.
So yes, it sounds like you’re using a huge amount. If I was going to guess why,it’ll be the oil heater. It probably isn’t clicking off or isn’t reaching temperature. Next culprit will be the air conditioners. The pump probably only uses 300w tbh.
European here. House with ACs and we use 10 to 26 Kwh per day metered. So to me yours seems awfully high except if you tell me you’re 6 people and using the washing machine twice daily and baking something multiple hours.
They bake on gas there. The only things that use electricity is air conditioning and clothes dryer they wrote in the OP
Yes, so its an unknown insane waste of energy.
That oil filled heater is the issue. That’s effectively resistance heating, which is wildly more expensive than a heat pump.
If you live alone that’s a lot, if you live with 2 or 3 other people that’s regular amount
As a rule of thumb the most energy is used by things that deal with heat, that is heaters and heat pumps/AC, so i’d focus on efficiency of these
We are 2 persons and use 1/10th of that. Since it doesn’t scale linearly (things like heating the kitchen happens only once no matter how many people move in), it sounds like enough energy for a household of more than 20 people, and while we heat mostly on gas (about 15% of our usage is supplementary resistive heating), everything else from showering to cooking is on electricity, so depending on your setup and climate, 80 kWh/day could supply a household of way more than 20 people
They didn’t mention charging an EV and say everything besides AC and the clothes dryer runs on gas, so it’s either an uninsulated medieval castle size building retrofitted with a heat pump, or something is shorted to ground
It seems high to me. Do you have an electric immersion heater stuck on without a thermostat?
My usage is about 60kWh a day but that’s heating a pool and a hot tub which are by far the biggest consumers. It would be closer to 20kWh without those.
If you live alone that’s a lot, if you live with 2 or 3 other people that’s regular amount
40 is absurdly high for 2-3 people who do not use electric heating.
We do on average 20kWh a day with 2 people and that’s already crazy high. According to the monthly energy usage report I get from the energy company that’s about a normal usage for a familiy of 5. It’s that high because I have a lot of computers (servers), a home cinema with a large TV and a big amplifier driving 11 speakers and multiple subwoofers. In addition to the normal stuff like 2 electric ovens, a Quooker (basically my kitchen faucet keeps a 7 liter vat of water at boiling temperatures 24/7 so I can have instant boiling water from the tap) an induction stove, dishwasher, dryer and washing machine. Also in-floor heating which while gas powered means there’s an electric pump running 24/7 to keep the water circulating.
Me and a few colleagues are a bit obsessed with tracking energy usage, we all have solar panels and home batteries and with variable pricing you can make a little money buying electricity when it’s cheap and selling it back when demand and prices are high. We’re talking a few euros a day, not really worth the effort but it kind of became a game.
Just to say, we discuss energy usage a lot at the office. One colleague who lives alone in a regular size house uses about 2-3kWh a day. Another colleague who has a large house with full electric heating (heat pump) and who drives an EV may do 30-40kWh/day in winter, and that’s with a wife and 2 teenage kids.
if the company knows daily usage then there’s some kind of digital metering.
You should be able to see that too so look for it.
Energy companies love free loans by asking huge monthly payments based on incorrect energy usage predictions.
They have no ability to estimate your usage since you just started living there. Maybe the previous owner had an electric car and a pot farm.
Yes we do have a digital meter so they have a daily use estimate. Some days are around 30 but some are up to 80.
I don’t understand.
IS your usage up to 80 some days or is that and ESTIMATE based on the previous owner?
estimate based on the previous owner is bullshit.
Try and get access to the data. It’s live. That will give you a lot of insight.
This is the usage based on the previous billing period. Won’t let me go back any further.
Here’s my consumption for this year. 90m², 100 litre electric water heater and heatpump for heating the house. I only reach that 60kWh consumption in december to february when it’s -15°C outside.
We have one plug in oil filled heater outside in the detached storage / workshop area.
See that spike in the electricity consumption recently? It’s the day I was running a single 2kW electric heater in my carage while working on my truck.
This is our consumption for the previous billing period. Couldn’t manage to find a way to get a whole year off the website.
