Home Forums Chat Forum Electricity use has jumped – what/how to check / monitor recommendations

  • This topic has 85 replies, 28 voices, and was last updated 2 years ago by IHN.
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  • Electricity use has jumped – what/how to check / monitor recommendations
  • martin_t
    Free Member

    Do you have any outdoor circuits? Those would be the easiest for neighbours to tap in to.

    Either way, it sound like you might want to switch off circuits one by one to help identify the source.

    IHN
    Full Member

    your Solar diverter doesn’t have the option for an automatic ‘boost’ does it?

    Possibly, I’ll check, although I don’t think it’s running at night as the airing cupboard is next to the bed/my head, and I hear the fan on the unit when it kicks in.

    julians
    Free Member

    We’re now checking the meter fairly obsessively, and overnight, from about ten last night to half six this morning, we used 12kWh. That seems pretty nuts, doesn’t it? We were in bed the whole time.

    yeah, thats a lot, we used 1.6kw between midnight at 7am last night

    bensales
    Free Member

    Immersion heater on a timer?

    Bought an electric car and forgotten about it? 🙂 You’d be surprised how many people don’t expect their electricity consumption to go up with one…

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    Bought an electric car and forgotten about it?

    I sometimes forget that I’ve already bought milk – but I’m pretty sure I’d remember buying a car 🙂

    IHN
    Full Member

    Bought an electric car and forgotten about it?

    Of course! *slaps head* 😉

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Check those ceiling mounted pull switches for showers and see if it gets hot. They can wear out and short and happily sit there burning hot for months then maybe burn your house down

    IHN
    Full Member

    Check those ceiling mounted pull switches for showers and see if it gets hot. They can wear out and short and happily sit there burning hot for months then maybe burn your house down

    Cheers, but don’t have any electric showers.

    markspark
    Free Member

    Just a thought, do you know what type of earthing system you’ve got? It should be noted on the paperwork the electrician gave you when the fuse board was changed

    IHN
    Full Member

    I’m chasing him for the paperwork, but he did install a new earthing rod as he couldn’t find the old one (as I say, old house, shared supply with next door, interesting wiring…). Why’s that?

    markspark
    Free Member

    I thought you’d say Earth rod (TT) system.
    There’s potential You could have a fault that’s sending current down to Earth through the rod. It’s unlikely to be this if everything in the house is rcd protected, but if the electrician has ballsed it up then it’s a possibility. Only seen it once before on an old installation but that was sending around 24A to Earth off a 30A rewireable fused socket circuit fault. Their electricity bill dropped a fair bit after it was sorted!

    IHN
    Full Member

    Hmmmm…. Is there any way I could check that myself?

    cheekyboy
    Free Member

    I strongly suspect your grid connection is not configured correctly and therefore ‘backfeeding’ your solar panels, this will convert the electrical energy into solar energy and reheat the sun.
    Hope this helps.

    IHN
    Full Member

    I strongly suspect your grid connection is not configured correctly and therefore ‘backfeeding’ your solar panels,

    Yeah, this is a thought/concern. We’re going to isolate the panels tonight and see if that makes a difference.

    Should we isolate the panels, or the panels and the invertor? It goes panels -> isolator -> inverter -> isolator -> consumer unit

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    At the AC isolator the consumer unit and the inverter – this would take the inverter out of the equation.

    If power was being back fed the I would also expect your generation meter to be displaying ‘rEd’ all night as the power would be flowing the wrong way.

    Edukator
    Free Member

    Surely you can just flip the breaker on the panels when they are producing and watch what the meter does: speed up, no change or slow down.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    ….. deleted for being daft.

    Surely you can just flip the breaker on the panels when they are producing and watch what the meter does: speed up, no change or slow down.

    eh?

    IHN
    Full Member

    Yeah, that confused me too.

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    He’s referring to the old rotary type but even newer meters should have a blinking light that increases/decreases frequency with consumption. The theory being it should “speed up” or blink more often when you turn the panels off during the day.

    To test the earth rod theory I’d turn the consumer unit off, if your meter is still drawing then something between the meter and CU is borked. Otherwise it’s one circuit at a time.

    IHN
    Full Member

    should have a blinking light that increases/decreases frequency with consumption.

    Aaaaah, that’s what that light is…

    IHN
    Full Member

    To test the earth rod theory I’d turn the consumer unit off, if your meter is still drawing then something between the meter and CU is borked.

    Right, just done that, and gave it a good thirty seconds and there was no flashing from the little red light on the meter, so I assume no power being drawn.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    The theory being it should “speed up” or blink more often when you turn the panels off during the day.

    Yes but all that’s going to tell you is whether the panels are working or not – which is not the issue here.

    markspark
    Free Member

    If it’s going to Earth then it will be from a individual circuit so switching the whole board off won’t help. Maybe a simple test, assuming you don’t want to disconnect the cable from the rod and touch the end (really, don’t do that!) is if you have a smart meter with a tail clamp you could move that to the Earth cable between the board and rod and see if the usage value changes over the period of a couple of hours, if it’s not that then the reading won’t change

    goldfish24
    Full Member

    from about ten last night to half six this morning, we used 12kWh

    12kWh divided by 8 hrs is 1.5kW. So we’re looking for a big load. That’s about half a kettle.

    Instead of waiting and reading the meter you need to sit down and look at the live consumption. Easiest way with what you have is timing the gap between blinks of the light. Most meters blink 1000 times per kWh. Labelled as 1000imp/kWh. So at 1.5 kw it’ll be blinking 1500 times an hour. That’s a blink every 1500/3600 0.4s. A more normal rate would be every few seconds when there’s no big appliances on. Turn everything off. Then turn mcbs on in turn until you get the fast rate.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    I strongly suspect your grid connection is not configured correctly and therefore ‘backfeeding’ your solar panels,

    That would be very impressive as there is an inverter in the way which takes DC on one side and puts out AC on the other side. It only works one way….

    IHN
    Full Member

    Labelled as 1000imp/kWh.

    Yep, that’s what it says

    A more normal rate would be every few seconds when there’s no big appliances on.

    Yep, that’s what it’s doing. And double checked whilst boiling the kettle, and it blinked much faster then.

    Maybe I need to check what it’s doing in the middle of the night, I’m normally up at some point to have a pee…

    Out of interest, how should it blink when we’re exporting to the grid from the solar, will it not blink at all?

    IHN
    Full Member

    That would be very impressive as there is an inverter in the way which takes DC on one side and puts out AC on the other side. It only works one way….

    What if (and I’m grasping here) there was a problem with the invertor, could it be drawing power from the grid and then just losing it as heat? It’s in an unheated draughty stable, so it’s not like we’d notice the room warming up.

    **EDIT – although I assume it would be fairly warm to the touch if this was happening

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Yes but all that’s going to tell you is whether the panels are working or not – which is not the issue here.

    I was going with if it slowed down then something could be awry with the panel connection. It’s an easy thing to troubleshoot so why not?

    If it’s going to Earth then it will be from a individual circuit so switching the whole board off won’t help.

    But it will tell you if the meter continues to run. Again, easy to troubleshoot.

    Turn everything off. Then turn mcbs on in turn until you get the fast rate.

    Yup, now this. Once you have the circuit turn individual sockets/appliances off, if everything is off then you have a leech.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    What if (and I’m grasping here) there was a problem with the invertor, could it be drawing power from the grid and then just losing it as heat? It’s in an unheated draughty stable, so it’s not like we’d notice the room warming up.

    At 1.5 kW continuous draw I’d have expected it to have burst into flames some time ago.

    Have you thought about getting an electrician in? Someone who can stick a clamp on each circuit in turn etc and start narrowing down the problem….

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    @IHN is it drawing at the same time each night? Still wondering if it’s connected to a neighbours heating circuit or such.

    IHN
    Full Member

    At 1.5 kW continuous draw I’d have expected it to have burst into flames some time ago.

    Yep, fair enough. As I said, grasping…

    Have you thought about getting an electrician in?

    Yep, definitely, and if we can’t find anything doing obvious checks then we will. Thing is, if it was happening in the day it would be much simpler, for them and us, but it seems like it’s happening at night, and I doubt any sparky wants to be around at 3am…

    @IHN is it drawing at the same time each night?

    Don’t know, last night was the first night we measured. Plan tonight is to isolate the solar array and see if that makes a difference. I get that it probably won’t, but at least it can be crossed off. It will also be interesting to spot-check the blink rate on the meter when we’re not using anything.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    but it seems like it’s happening at night,

    You don’t have any of the old 500W PIR lights which are getting stuck on all night?

    The old Halogen ones ate current for breakfast….

    IHN
    Full Member

    You don’t have any of the old 500W PIR lights which are getting stuck on all night?

    We have PIRs, but they’re all LED (I think) and all go off pretty quickly. Something to check though. Would a blown one still draw? There’s a really old one, that never comes on and I assumed was bust, right up on the eaves at the back.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    Would a blown one still draw? There’s a really old one, that never comes on and I assumed was bust, right up on the eaves at the back.

    Unlikely – they normally fail by overheating and either the bulb dies or the holder fractures and the connection is lost.

    This is what I would do.

    Tonight, switch off half the circuits (maybe not the fridge / freezer). That will narrow it down to half tomorrow morning (either no current drawn and therefore the problem is likely in one you switched off, or current drawn and it’s likely on one left on).

    Then the next night, switch off half of the ‘guilty half’ from the first night.

    Repeat until you find the circuit which causes the extra load or you’ve eliminated them all.

    goldfish24
    Full Member

    My quick dumb theory is the phantom load is always there but during the day the solar is supplying it. You notice it at night. Quick to test, disconnect the solar – does the load increase?

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    Out of interest, how should it blink when we’re exporting to the grid from the solar, will it not blink at all?

    I can’t remember, but don’t forget that it will display rEd intermittently when exporting.

    paino
    Full Member

    Does the range cooker have one of those plate warmer compartments? We had one years ago that was operated with a cylindrical push switch. There was no light to warn us if was on or off & they don’t give out enough heat to notice if your walking past. Ours got left on loads.

    IHN
    Full Member

    Right, well, after a bit of experimentation last night, we’ve found the culprit!

    With the solar isolated, and just a ‘base’ load of telly boxes, router, stuff on standby etc, the blinky LED on the meter was flashing about once every three seconds. Quick maths (thanks Goldfish) got that to 20 times a minute => 1200 times an hour => 1.2kWh. That’s seems quite a lot for what (we thought) was on, but fits what we’ve been seeing usage wise.

    With a bit of structured circuit turn-on-and-offing, we discovered that none of the circuits in the house (and there’s only four of them – upstairs lighting, downstairs lighting, sockets, cooker) made any difference. However, when we isolated the feed to the annexe, the flashing dropped to about once every 20 seconds, so 3per min => 180ph => 180w, seems reasonable for the ‘base’ stuff.

    So, out to the annexe, which has it’s own ‘sub’ CU. Circuit switching found the culprit was on the socket spur in the stables. The excitement mounts….

    Out in the stable, there are four things plugged in, each on a switched socket. I switched them each off in turn.

    Was it the freezer?

    No

    Was it the extension lead to the, er, extension lead (I know, I know)

    No

    Was it the controller unit to the water softener?

    No

    It was none of these things. It was the last socket, turning that off dropped the flashy rate right back down.

    So, what’s plugged in to the last socket..?
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    …are you on the edge of your seat yet?

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    The thing using up all the juice, is…

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    *Masterchef-style dramatic pause*

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    The pump for the borehole. It’s running 24/7, and costing us, basically, a fiver a day…

    I’m going to call the people now to come and take a look to see what the problem is, but the kind if annoying thing is that we’re away next week but we can’t switch it off as it supplies next door too.

    Still, we’ve found the source of the problem, in no small part thanks to the advice on here, so thank all for your help.

    julians
    Free Member

    have a quick look at this, it might help you pin point the problem with the pump quicker

    https://www.northridgepumps.com/article-204_borehole-pump-troubleshooting-guide

    footflaps
    Full Member

    I’m going to call the people now to come and take a look to see what the problem is, but the kind if annoying thing is that we’re away next week but we can’t switch it off as it supplies next door too.

    Ask them to power it for the week when you’re away!

    They can just run an extension lead out to it…..

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