We are a couple, leaving in a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. We work mostly during the day.
We use electricity for cooking, heating (only when very cold), fridge, large 6 foot fish tank, washing machine & hot water.
Our consumption seemed really high to me at 33kwh. Our meter is in the front Neibourgh’s yard and I was worried there was an issue with reading so I got a smart meter installed. But it is still the same.
How much do you all consume?
6kwh/day last quarter, was 4kwh the quarter prior.
Three person househould (one being a baby) and i've been WFH since March, wife and baby also home of course. Two bedroom unit, only air con in the bedroom and barely use a heater at the moment. Have gas for cooking and hot water.
33kW a week?
I used 5kW/day. Missus works form home too.
3 adults mostly using electric heaters and kettle multiple times a day. But gas water heater. Using 12kwh and I feel it's too much
6 kWh, family of 4. House has solar though.
21kw a day. 2 aircons for 8 hrs each. I have 3 monitors and 1 hefty 1kw computer with one SBC computer, 1 server, my wife has 2 computers and 3 monitors. 1 large tv that gets used alot. Large fridge, no gas so just electric hot water and wfm.
yikes !
<5kwH a day. Been like this for the last 2-3 years at this property.
2 adults at home. Cooking and hot water on gas.
Heating is electric, but never on.
No solar.
I feel that my usage is so low that I don't bother trying to conserve power anymore….
That's v standard, you're doing most off of gas. You should try to conserve more, if not for you, then for the environment.
My question is… how?
As you can see, no heating. Lights are low power. Can't remember when I last turned on the TV…..
The only thing I can think of it turning my computer totally off rather than sleep mode, and that's hardly anything as it is.
Yeah I think you're doing pretty well as it is…especially considering heating is electric. Similar to my situation and usage figures except my heating is also gas (but like you, I rarely have it on).
I think if you're really nitpicky you could look at costs of running your appliances - mainly fridge and washer and dryer…but at this level any gains you make will be minimal i.e. diminishing returns
Check if your water heater is working correctly. I had a defective valve on my heater and my electricity bill went through the roof for 3 months
14kwh. Single with 2 kids for a few hours each day after school and most of the weekends. Everything electric. No gas. No solar.
2 bedrooms, 2 people - 9.31 kWh - but will be higher for last couple month due to heater
2 adults in 4 bedroom house. We use gas for cooking and hot water.
1 person works from home around 75% of the time.
Summer is ~6kWh/day
Winter is ~10kWh/day
I live in a small apartment, 1 person with no gas, all electric appliances
Small electric water tank plus aircon
When I don't use aircon I average 4-5kw a day.
When I do, (which is most of the day now) is about 20kw
We average about 4kWh to 5kWh per day all year round. 2 adults and 3 children living in a 3 bedroom house. Cooking and heating is gas.
Do you have zero electrical equipment and use no lights throughout a day?
2 adults in 4 bed house with pool & no solar. Both work from home. Everything electric.
Summer is 24kWh
Winter is 17kWh
Family of 3 with solar and pool in QLD. Everything electric. Zero heating and A/C no more than 5 hrs per year. 7kwh/day all year round.
I presume that is net usage though right? i.e. usage from the grid, not from your solar production.
Yeah grid usage. Mainly at night.
Yeah, interesting, but not really comparing apples with apples.
That's not your per day usage then, if you're just included what you draw from the grid.
Mines currently at 14.8kwh (2 adults 2 kids) also with everyone home (Melbourne) during lockdown.
Sharing a graph of electricity consumption by week since January 2015.
Consumption factors:
* 2 adults, 3 teens
* 3 bed double brick
* Gas ducted heating + split system in evening in main living room.
* 5 wfh days per week (now 10 - 2 ppl x 5 days)
Wow, I thought I was using a lot and I have multiple servers running 24/7 + tech throughout a double storey house with 2 Adults & 2 Children. But I only use an average of 30kwh per day.
"only"?
30kWh/day is alot (see my previous comments)
That’s less than 40kWh which is what we use a day, and considering there are multiple servers running that sounds like a fair amount.
We use about 12 kwh per day, last week was 78kwh. Family of 4, swimming pool (although pump only on for a few hours off peak currently), 2 fridges, gas cooking, heating and hot water tho. Usually 1 person home all day with computer running.
14-15 kwh per day, mainly due to heaters/ air con during peak winter and summer. Hot water usage is high in winter but it's through gas. Fairly frequent usage of electric kettle in winter too (for hot drinking water). Usage in the other months isn't as high.
Is drinking hot water a common thing? Guess it's not much different to hot tea etc.
I prefer hot/warm water for drinking in winter.. same as hot tea (without milk) etc.
I maxed out 33-35 in summer with ducted AC. Open living/dining/kitchen, 4bed, 2extra rumpus/study rooms + 3 fridges + pool (4hrs) - (gas water). Pre-solar - Winter was 20kw - Spring/Autum 25kw and Summer avg 33kw. Have 6kw inverter and 8kw panels puts me in credit each month now betwen $20-$120 and cost $50 each for jan/feb this year.
Daily average 14.98 kWh this year ( WFH since March ) | 30 Sq house in Melb | 2 Adults + 2 kids | Does not include heating or cooling and the house has gas water heater. The gas bills during winter months worries me!!
Was planning to install the 5kWH solar panels before Covid and hopefully will get it this summer. But not sure if it will reduce my heating bills during winter months :-(
Solar panels will make a difference. We just have a first phase set of 2kw panels. Installed about 10years ago or there abouts. Paid off. Using about 15kw. 2 adults 1 teen. Gas heating and HWS.
Remember also, high-powered desktop gaming computers can easily consume 0.5 kW or more per hour, so during a lockdown, if you are pillaging and rampaging in GTA 5 for more than a few hours a day, then it adds up.
Otherwise electric hot water system is usually the biggest power muncher. Can get it put on a timer so it runs maybe 4-5 hours a day instead of being on 24 hours a day (not that it heats all day and night though…) but still savings can be made there. Insulating your HWS helps a lot too, particularly if you have one that sits outside.
7.5kWh / day on average. 3 adults / 1 child, 4 bedrooms. primary cooking with gas. (before perma wfh)
14.3kWh with 9-5 wfh (2 people working full time)
42kWh in April
85kWh in May
97kWh in June
108kWh in July
Help!
2 adults and 2 kids in Hobart. Old weatherboard house, good sun (but cold), no gas, we heat the house using either panel heaters, oil heaters or fan heaters. I don’t think excessively but if it’s cold and trackies/jacket aren’t enough, we’ll
heat the room we’re in.
Smart plug sounds like a good idea. As does solar and air conditioning (they call it beat pumps in Tassie). Seems like heating is the main culprit. But 42kWh is highish as well for April when we didn’t heat much.
That is low. Anything under 10 per day is good
Is that kwh for the month or per day average for the month? Very different.
Per day average
Holy Sh!t. There's something wrong there? How much was your bill in July?
A few things to check.
* Ask your electricity retailer to check/calibrate/replace your meter
* Check for insulation in the roof, make sure it is thick, add some more.
* Check your water heater for leaks
* Look at investing in solar
$700 for July. Crazy!
Wow!
Hi, in tas also. First, check your hot water system. What is its temp set to? We moved in and temp was 80 degrees. I turned it down to minimum which is 60. First, no heat pump? Electric heaters chew up power big time. Second is insulation. You've probably got blown in insulation in roof? As long as you have something that's fine. However, your walls obviously have nothing. I reckon that's your problem. I'd honestly say insulate walls and get a heat pump or two. This is assuming you don't have something running chewing up power you are unaware of.
Another option is to get an energy metre you put in your metre box if aurora hasn't upgraded it so you can monitor power. I put one on main power and one on heat/hot water tariff. You can then see what your current power use is and switch things on and off in the house to spot the problem. I wouldn't worry about solar yet. You need to bring your power consumption down. I'm guessing but I'd say it's your hot water, lack of heat pumps and no wall insulation.
How would you insulate walls? I know you can do it if building a new home or putting up new walls, but what if they’re already there?
Good tip with the hot water.
Thanks
They're plasterboard walls most likely. Pick a small room and get to work. Most rooms have only one or maybe two at most external walls. So pick a room with one external wall and YouTube is your friend. Very easy to remove plasterboard, buy wool batts, place new plasterboard up, do the joints and paint it.
The hardest part is doing the joints. It's worth learning and doing yourself. We have two rooms in a 3 bedroom house that get no direct sunlight in winter. The walls are besser blocks. It was common for the walls to be 1 degree. The rooms were unbearable in winter and turning on a heater meant condensation would form on the walls because they were so cold and humidity was do high.
I put up internal walls, added a vapour barrier,insulation, put up plasterboard, jointed it and painted it. I'm not a tradie. I paid for YouTube premium to get rid of ads and googled everything. It took me a month or more to do the first room. The second room took two weeks.
The end result? Those two rooms are now super toasty when a heater is on, no condensation on walls and I'm going to do the rest of the rooms in the house. It's completely worth it and not expensive. Around $500 to do a room.
However, I think you need to monitor your power usage first at a whole house level from the meter box. This will show you what is causing your bills to be so high. If it is the electric heaters, which I'm sure it is, then get heat pumps. You'll cut your power use by half at least. You may not need to insulate the walls.
@tessel: Well done! We have a room that could benefit from this. How did you handle the windows? Did you put a new sill in? Do you have any photos?
@kiitos: Windows I framed with plasterboard and used a pvc channel to add strength to the edges. I didn't frame around the windows like you normally would. There's a link below with pics and what I did. The reason is my walls were solid block and I had little space. I strongly recommend you do it. It's painful, slow, frustrating and my end result isn't perfect but it's definitely not horrendous. Happy to offer advice where I can. I was quoted anywhere from $1800 to $4000 by tradies and at best that was plasterboard internal walls with 10mm insulation.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6154180/yet-…
@tessel: Wow, thanks for all those tips. Very inspired to give that a go. We’ve got a smart meter and currently doing some isolation tests as I suspect it’s more than heating costs alone.
@Heiseman: If you've got a smart meter look at aurora+ if you don't have it already. If not it costs very little to sign up to and will show I think hourly use or something like that? Tas is a great place but as you know houses, excluding recent builds, are terrible in terms of insulation and overall build quality. My home was built in 1996. It's not that old but they clearly gave no (profanity) about insulation.
We purchased a wood heater when we moved in as you can't beat the heat and they are cheap to run. However, I got sick of hoarding wood and had the heat pumps replaced, one in lounge and one in hallway to take chill off the rest of the house, and had solar installed. If you ever do go down the solar path let me know. By then I'll be able to give some feedback on how worthwhile the shit load of money it cost me. Best of luck fighting the cold.
Thanks @tessell. I believe that's our biggest issue… we found out after purchasing that our ceiling has no insulation whatsoever. Still to action that…
Last month our average use - same sized house - 33kw a day. We don't even have a fish tank.
It was even higher in June and I almost had a heart attack when I saw the energy bill. I'm guessing we were using at least 40kw a day.
We only moved here a few months back. Used to live in an apartment that had double glazing and was never cold.
It is very cold here as single glazed windows and since we are WFH it is the split system heating/cooling which is killing us. It is highly inefficient as the house is modern open plan so single units spaced randomly around struggle to heat large spaces unless you turn ALL of them on. After my June bill shock, now I only turn on 1 unit downstairs and 1 upstairs. Downstairs unit runs all day at 21 degrees. Have a unit in our upstairs running all day and night but I drop it down to 18 at night.
The other thing pumping the energy bill is washing in hot water. I've been washing in more hot to kill germs given covid. Now I'm switching back to cold water unless really necessary to try to cut my bill further.
Heating the house to 18 at night is excessive. Get some flannel sheets/pyjamas.
^This
We open the windows at night (for ventilation) and wear a few sets of clothes to bed and have two wool doonas…never felt cold in Winter in Melbourne
Mines averaging about 17-24kw per day. But that's me working from home. Lots of TV time.
Normally It sits around 7-10kw per day.
We are a family of 3 with 2 adults and a toddler.
We are also averaging about 35kw per day. Also how do you guys keep track of your daily energy usage? I have been looking at installing Edgeconx energy monitor to see real time monitoring.
Engage efergy energy monitor. It's similar to your link. The one you linked to is probably more accurate but the efergy doesn't need to be wired in. CT clamp only and runs on batteries.
Average in Winter is 48kwh per day, and this doesn't include the free solar energy. Some times as high at 66kwh on the really cold days
13kwh from the hws
7.8 kwh househould
rest is heating(Canberra)
No gas so entirely on electricity.
Last house and current house are the same
2 Adults, 3 kids, 2 fridges, pool, gas cook, heating and hot water (instant)
average is around 22kwh a day.
Where do you people gets this number from? 20kwh per day? is it on the actual meter in the box? I have just moved into house with solar panel, how can i see how much it generate and how much have i used?
Usually it's on the bill. Should have a break down on what average you use per day.
22Kwh a day
3 ppl (2 WFH during the day). 2 workstations. There are always ON: 2 homepods, 1 NAS server, 2 fridges, 1 freezer, surveillance camera.
Electric cooking & heating, gas/solar water heating.
thats pretty low for 3ppl.
I guess u have solar?
And gas. Common theme I see here. People with low kwh usage but using gas.
22-48 kwh per day in winter. with solar
3 adults and 1 baby.
gas cooking
9 kWh per day
6 Adults. Gas for water and cooking.
6 Adults @ 9kWh per day? That's brilliant… any tips?
Do you have any kids as well or only adults? Ours is much higher than yours with 5x adults.
Only adults. We basically never use a heater or air conditioner. Nothing else really.
Couple with 15 month old.
Pre-WFH: 4-6kwH/day
2 x WFH now: 9-10kwH/day
Gas for Water and Cooking.
It's how many kWh, not how MUCH kWh.
Thank god. Thought the sky was going to fall. Can you please check all threads? Thanks.
Average per person/day over 1 year = 4.14 kWh. Summer lots of aircon, practically no heater in winter. Off peak hot water.
Single household, ~9.21kWh per day in my last month's bill. No gas. Same time last year was ~6.17kWh
Cook 2 meals a day, 7 days a week. I don't ubereats
Toaster, oven, microwave… kettle 3x a day
Really old fridge, not energy efficient at all
2 hot showers per day
WFH with 2 laptops and 2 screens, so that's 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, then 1 laptop after that in front of the TV
Split system heating runs from 9am to 10pm most days
Sonos speaker runs from 9am to 5pm while I work, need the white noise
Felt like my usage is pretty high for a single household
5 person household (3 kids under 8).
3 Bed 50yr old house
Gas Hot water, ducted heating and stove top.
Electricity for the rest (so really just lights, power points, dryer, aircon in summer)
We use between 8-13 depending on the month. (Sept-Dec are the cheapest i believe due to no dryer or air con)
I thought I'd share mine too and at 33kw you're is high for just the two of you. Mine figures below:
Daily averages consumption (thanks Fronius)
Jul: 57kw
Jun: 44kw
May: 42kw
Apr: 31kw
Mar: 21kw
Feb: 21kw
Avg Jan: 31kw
So why are you using almost 3 times the electricity in july then feb/march…? Clothes dryers running a lot?
I honestly haven't checked our electricity usage til this post.
I'd say maybe cos we use gas heating or maybe other heaters for winter which still needs electricity? (Mind you we use the same units for cooling in summer). Can't think anything else being used differently… nope don't use dryers (use airers around the house over the heating vents).
Just looked at last years usage and they're roughly the same (except July this year which is a blip). Will keep an eye out on it.
One thing I just noticed is that instead of an average 11% direct usage of solar last year during the day, this year it's between 20-30%.
Yikes, just scrolled up & forgot to add we have 3x gas hot water systems so maybe they're adding up. Also have 5x fridges (2x bar ones) which probably don't help.
I really need to turn some of this stuff off I've realised. Don't even get started on the tech stuff which has accumulated.
yeah, it is very weird to use that much more elecricty (especially in a modern houser with led's etc) - ours goes up purely due to the dryer…
We (Couple) have a battery, so .1-.5kWh, which is what's just drawn when more then 3kWh is used due to inverters/batteries limit (e.g 1kWh drawn for 1min when kettle runs).
Thanks to this deal: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/488461
OP, check the fishtank pumps, they chew quite a bit of power as they run 24/7.
To give you an idea, a 40w 24/7 pump will chew through almost 1kwh/day.