We’ve fairly recently got a smart meter with Ovo. Still at the novelty stage of trying to work out what uses all the juice but puzzled by a consistent spike in usage at 1am. It works out at about 30p which, for context, is about half the overnight usage. Now I reckon that’s over £100 a year but I can’t think what on earth it is. Any ideas? We’ve got all the usual stuff, smart TV, laptops, tablets, fridge freezers, etc. but nothing that leaps out as using that amount at that time.

How long does the spike last? How much power does this equate too? 2Kw?

You haven’t got a storage heater under the stairs you weren’t aware of have you? 😉

It looks like about 300Wh and is absolutely round 1am but I can’t say from the graph how long it lasts.

I’d say its the fridge or freezer compressor kicking it. Check the stat setting.

Immersion heater on one of those old pin and wheel mechanical timers set for a very short duration….?

All the windows laptops waking up to check updates at 1am!

Standing charge?

Probably standing charge being applied

There’s no immersion or storage heaters. Not sure why the fridge freezer would start consistently at 1am.
I’m going to unplug all the laptops and TV and see if that affects it!

So how much do you pay per kWh for your leccy? I pay around 15p/kw so to spend 30p I’d need to run something for 2hrs at 1kw/hr.
300w/hr would cost me around 5p per hour.
Apologies in advance for the wrong units etc.

If companies apply a standing charge by ‘altering’ usage won’t that skew the whole network so supply companies will think they need to produce more power than is necessary?

I presume this info is coming from the monitor and not the actual meter

It’s the standing charge, ours from British gas does the same.

Could be the monitor is showing funky readings – depending on how it works the actual electricity use could be different. Worth checking on the Ovo website to see the actual readings (apologies if you’ve already done this).

If you can be bothered to wait up until 1 am then just go to your consumer unit with the energy meter in your hand and start throwing breakers in order until the use drops to a normal level. You’ll at least have narrowed down the options, or identified a fault in the meter or monitor.

Had this on electricity. Was standing charge

standing charge

Am I misunderstanding – they can manipulate meter readings in order to make it look as though you’ve used more powwah?

That sounds fairly dodgy

(or are they just adding to the bill, inwhich case why present it as a power spike rather than just “standing charge, 30p” ?)

Standing charge makes sense. The smart meter graph is basic so it could just appear as a spike.

Still going to turn all the computers off though 🙂

So they add on standard charge, which increases the units used, and then they charge you for units used on top as well ?

Nope on ours it just shows how much money each utility has cost you, so both get a small spike at 1am which is the standing charge for delivering the services, it’s not a spike in ‘usage’ but in cost.

You got to remember that the monitor thing is for your benefit only, they don’t use that. If you go and look at the actual electricity meter then it will not be ‘spiking’