2013 Electricity bills too high. Here are some tips

ctgarvey

I have a 4 bed detached house, moderate lighting, cooking, computers, 1 occupant, no electric heating, but electric shower.

I no longer use the immersion .Too expensive to have a large 3KW Kettle (which is in effect what it is)- replaced with instant electric tap.

100 Euro/month with Airtricity. This is high compared to all the other posts so I set about investigating...

1.Could it be faulty meter?..
See detail below, but if you knock off all breakers to your house and your meter is still running then yes you have a faulty meter. I didnt have a faulty meter...They appear to be rare.But check yours for peace of mind.

2. Could it be the difficult to isolate 'leakage current' problem as per internet posts? Airtricity had apparently never heard of this even if every industrial electrician knows all about shorts to earth , insufficient isolation, ground loops
etc, not to mention the fact that every transistor/capacitor electronic gadgets/assemblies have natural leakage current once plugged in.
I had old wiring, house wired in early 70s, so it was a possibility...
i isolated everything, breakers on 1 by 1 to the different spurs. Didnt seem to have leakage current, but something else happened...

3. The old fridge/freezer came on and was using a lot of power, and seems to be on all the time...So if your fridge freezer is a no name brand and is more than 7 years old then its cheaper to replace with a modern more efficient one.The fridge compressor could be damaged making it work much harder to do the same amount of heat removal work.

Even no name fridge/freezers in 2013 have to at least have an A rating. I recommend a Bosch A+++ rating fridge. V expensive but you will recoup the difference in cost over 5 years of use through electricity savings. (same goes for cooker, tumble dryer, dishwasher, clothes washer)


So get familiar with the power hogs in your gaff. Im not a fan of the dinky 50 euro electronic monitors, preferring instead to get the industrial calibratable equivalent, but if it works for you, then great. However Your biggest and simplest friend ,is your breaker box and meter, and the process of isolating circuits one by one (and looking at the meter all the time).


Here are some tips from an airtricity spokesperson i email conversed with over really high electricity power bills. These call centre help folk are not technical so Ive added some stuff. They wont tell you how much the 'average' home should use as a baseline either. So all you can do is trawl boards.ie for that.

Please feel free to add not so obvious electricity bill reducing tips to this thread.

For your electricity bill reducing Benefit...... ;

From:
Subject: RE: Airtricity Support Request: bill is too high

Dear

Thank you for your email, I have not come across the situation you have described before, so I would not imagine this would be the case. The two main factors that push up the bill if there is an issue is the meter and the appliances in the house. To find out which is the cause, we would recommend doing a meter test.

To perform this you will need to locate the trip switches, you then turn these off ensuring that no electricity is going into the house. You then take a meter reading and leave everything off for a period of 2 – 3 hours and record the meter reading again. If the reading stays the same, the meter is fine and this indicates that it’s the appliances in the house that are pushing the bill up. An electrician maybe required to find out if one of the appliances has a fault. However if the meter has indeed turned over with everything turned off, the issue will then lie with the meter. In this case you will need to contact us and we will request a technician out to look into your meter for you. If this has been clocking the units incorrectly, networks will be able to perform a consumption report and adjust the bills accordingly.

I hope this response has resolved your query, however should you require a call back please let me know.

Regards,


ESERVICES AGENT


hi ***,
thanks for your response. I have of course already done the testing that you have outlined.They are good tests to ensure the meter is not faulty, and to ensure major power users.
To take your test one stage further, where possible ALL devices must be unplugged / physically disconnected. this may include removing spur fuses for cookers / boilers / immersions etc. Then MCBs, then devices are reconnected / enabled one by one. If a spur that has nothing connected / on is causing the meter to go around then, there is current draw / leakage on that spur.
Leakage current is more common than you think and can be caused by faulty wiring, old degraded insulation, as well as straight shorts to earth caused by faulty transformer / motor windings in faulty devices.Even a cursory google search will return the following;

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/general.html

I heard that an electrical wiring problem can lead to electricity "leaking" out of the wires and into the abyss, causing a person to pay for electricity that they don't use. -- Kathie T., 9-08
Yes, this is a possible. Note that on an earlier version of this page, I mistakenly listed this one as a Myth, but an electrician corrected me. When the wiring isn't connected correctly, it is indeed possible for electricity to "leak". The electrician who contacted me had a customer with a $15/mo. leak due to faulty wiring. On another page I have detailed instructions on how to check for this kind of electricity leak.

Besides mis-wiring, you could also have undersized wiring, where the wiring is too thin to handle the load being driven. When that happens the wiring heats up. The extra heat generated represents wasted energy, but more importantly, the extra heat can cause a fire which can burn your house down. If you have a modern home which had an electrical inspection when it was built then it's unlikely that your wiring is inadequate. But if you have an older home or your wiring was never inspected when installed, it's possible that your wiring isn't sufficient for what you're running through it. Unfortunately this isn't the kind of thing you can easily test yourself. That's a job for a competent electrician.


I have identified very high consumption on the fridge/freezer unit so Im replacing that first of all, and then will take it from there.Next step if necessary, bench top multimeter data acquisition on the individual spurs. I am surprised that Airtricity dont have more detailed guidelines on energy consumption, causes etc. I will put my findings up on Boards.ie so that other users can benefit as the information and expertise readily available from suppliers such as Airtricity is insufficient.

Best regards and thanks for your time.

freddyuk

1.Before you go out and buy a new fridge/freezer check the inside temperature. If the thermostat is too low it will try to get the inside temperature too low and never switch off as that temperature cannot be achieved. Simple and cheap possible remedy.

2. An instant hot water tap costs a small fortune to buy. What kWh does it actually consume? Running an immersion is going to be cheaper if you do not heat the whole tank just for a shower and washing up. Set the thermostat lower so the top third of the tank is hot but not the bottom third which is not required. Cost = €0. A simple timer can be installed to come on for 30 minutes each morning = €0.30 per day. If you need more then override button will give you more heat. The tank should lose about 1 degree per hour against losses in the instant tap of 0 but the capital cost of the tap is going to be many times the cost of switching on the immersion in a controlled way.
Do the sums first.

vicwatson

Great post op. Fair play.

Food for thought

ctgarvey

freddyuk wrote: »

1.Before you go out and buy a new fridge/freezer check the inside temperature.

2. An instant hot water tap costs a small fortune to buy.
.

1.Yes a fridge freezer thermostat setting is important and in my case its fine.
Evaporator fan blockage /failureis another potential culprit of increased engergy usage. But it is the running cost of a modern fridge v an old fridge that i was explaining here. ie a highly efficient fridge will pay for itself over 5 years compared to an old 1. 5 years is a long ROI (Return on Investment).

2. instant hot water tap. anything from 70 sterling via ebay to 200 euro from watersave.ie. 3Kw tap for 30s say 10 times a day v 3.5 Kw hot cylinder element for approx 15 minutes a time. Advertised ROI 1 year. I expect 18 months ROI. electric shower so i no longer use the immersion at all.

But every year electricity costs are going up.So those Return on investment times are coming down.