Lol, me too - bought mine at 628 each too - up 1% to 1041 after the purchase of a further 8% of the Barking CCGT!

 

Just done a test a few minutes a go. I turned everything in the flat off. All heaters, boilers, lights, fridge, tv, computers, etc, etc. The ONLY thing on was the alarm clocks and a few quad plug points were left live (i.e. computer on standby). At that rate each revolution of the black mark took 4 minutes 30 seconds. I then turned on one hall light. The rate of each revolution of the black mark increased to once every 1 minute 15 seconds. I then turned on most of the lights, the shower and all the hobs and the oven and it was faster than once every second. The thing was flying round!!

This just didn't seem normal - how fast should these things spin with just your normal lights, fridge, tv, computer on??

I just counted 38 second for one revolution with this computer on, one livingroom stand alone light, one 28" tv, the fridge and said alarm clocks, etc.

 

Your meter should state on it what 1rpm corresponds to in terms of kWh's (or perhaps how many rpm = 1kWh).

Not hard to work out ballpark figures for wattage of your appliances - ie, 60W lights x 15, 1 PC at 300W, etc etc.

 

I live in a small two bedroom ground floor flat and am on economy 7 tariff. I have a direct debt set up for £21.00 monthly. The flat has four night storage heaters and i use three of them. All the light bulbs are of the energy saving type. When i use the washing machine i use it before 7.30 am because it's cheaper to do it that way. Geoff.

 

What is your method of heating & how water heating??

if electric, go and check your tank stat pronto tonto.

ours had failed, and so the tank was being kept at 80+ constantly it sent our normally low leccy bill to a 400+ whopper

best way to check, is to turn the stat down, and see if it clicks on or off, turn it off and see if the tank cools, it may take a day or to, although having baths helps, then when you notice cold water coming through, turn the stat up, if after 24 hrs its still cold ... stat buggered.... if however the water never cools down with the stat turned to off, agin it s buggered

new one is about 20 notes

Mart

 

three bed semi... all electric... used to cost me £25 a month, and i was always in credit!!!

 

It says that 166.6 revolutions = 1 KWH

According to my mega bill I used 1119KWH in 27 days and a futher 2689KWH in 58 days.

This averages at 44.8 KWH per day and based on £0.087p my electricity costs me £3.89 per day before the standard charge. When I used to pay be the electric cards a £5 card would last a week usually! Something must be wrong!!!

Based on my 27 day reading where I used 1119 KWH I would have had 186425.4 revolutions of my meter in 38880 minutes which works out at 4.8 revolutions per minute. In other words on average my metre completes one full spin every 12.5 seconds to generate such a bill.

To replicate one spin every 12.5s I had to turn on the following equipment:

* Two cordless phone base stations
* One alarm clock (not making sound)
* 2 100W hall lights
* 1 60W bathroom light
* 1 40W kitchen strip light
* 1 normal toaster (for 2 bits of bread)
* 1 5 foot high fridge/freezer
* 1 28" CRT tele
* 1 400W computer and 19" LCD monitor + power to cable modem
* 1 100W living room bulb
* 2 40W living room lamps

On this basis if I ran all that equipment 24/7 I'd generate an annual bill of around £1500. As I see it the only high drain device there is the toaster. All heaters and water heaters were off during this experiment. Is that a reasonable annual bill to expect to pay to run that equipment and that equipment only for a year?

I just tried this - I ran:

* 1 400W computer with monitor and modem
* 1 Alarm
* 2 phone base stations
* 1 2200W kettle

Everything else was off and prior to turning the kettle on the disk was crawling round with just the other stuff. To run that one 2200W kettle increased the speed to one revolution per 9.5 seconds. Thus to run my kettle and kettle alone for one day would cost £4.74p.

An online search tells me that a 2200W appliance would use 2200 joules of energy per second. According to www.onlineconversion.com..... 2 200 joule = 0.000 611 111 kilowatt hour. There are 86400s in a 24 hour period and to run a kettle for that time would use 86400x2200 = 190080000 joules which is 52.8KWH. At £0.087 per KWH to run my kettle for a 24 hour period should cost.......£4.50. This suggests I'm utterly f*cked and have somehow used that energy GULP

 

Theres no way your bill should be 400 quid, I use 20 hydraponic HID lights in my loft-converted-to-greenhouse to grow the herb and my bill is a lowly 40 quid

 

That sounds about right then....

1 rev in 9.5s = 378 revolutions in 1 hour

378 revs = 2.28kWh....PC won't be drawing 400W even although 400W PSU.

Your meter is fine.

 

PS Why did you calculate the joules required?

Did you not know that a 2.2kW device uses 2.2kWh

 

No I didn't smarty pants but I learned that on my travels through the internet.

I have now identified the culprit My above experiment confirmed the meter is correct. Earlier in the night I noticed the water heater was on 'boost' and turned it off as part of my 'turning everything off' experiment. Its an old thing that you turn to 'start' and it counts down whilst boosting for 2 hours and then switches off. Only problem is the thing doesn't appear to be counting down and thus stays on all the time. So, for the last 3-4 months I've had my boiler element running 24/7 and it is probably in the region of 3000-4000W Great

It seems likely, on the basis that I've never touched the thing, that my new flatmate has turned it on at some point but I can't prove that so we'll just have to suck it up and split the bill. No more vtec for me for a few months to try and offset that whopping bill

 

Ouch.

Demand in the rental market in Edinburgh is high once again, and as such, rentable income is rising. That may help in your sudden "current review" of your flatmate's rent charge

 

PPS Hope you phone them up and apologise for dissing them

 

There is a note on my account so I'll phone them and tell them what I have discovered and pay the bill over the phone. That'll break my heart! £400 for 4 months leccy - brutal!

 

Lol yes I'm sure they've been going round letting grannies off they're leccy bills. The power companies are good old salts really, lord bless they're souls...... .


P.S This was quite a cool thread - sorted garcon de saxo out a treat

P.P.S. Bugger this also means I need to get a life grr, doh!