Could someone help me understand our usage with Solar?

The individual measures don’t necessarily add together as each is an estimation (apart from any reading direct from your meter).

You don’t list any charge going into your battery and so in a general sense, perhaps that’s where you can initially look.

As long as your monitor for your solar and battery are fitted correctly, the total should work out. One other thing to check is if your energy usage is from a reading or if an estimate is being used 

Hey ​@cardy5,

Welcome to the community! 

You’ve gotten a great response from BPLightlog, who has a wealth of experience with setups like yours! Have you had a chance to look over their reply? If you have any questions or need some extra help, we’re here to share and provide advice!

Thank you for the replies.

We are really struggling to work out why our electricity usage is so high

Last year we used 10,188 kwh and 1550 from solar panels.

We live in a bungalow with a self contained annex for my parents.   We also have a summerhouse which my son lives in (bedroom and bathroom only)   Total in the property is six adults.  Two kitchens

My husband and I are not sure if this is about right for what we have or if this is excessive.  I have looked at the averages for the UK and that would be around 4300 for us and 1800 for the annex and say 1000 for the summerhouse, we are still way over.

Yesterday our daily usage was 23.29 kwh.    We have tried turning everything off and we have monitored it but we just cant see what is eating the electricity.

Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated, as it seems I am just going to work to pay for electricity :( 

Hi ​@cardy5 , can I ask where you are seeing your figures for energy usage and are you sure they are actual rather than estimates?

That being said, your usage for 6 adults and 2 kitchens would probably be more than an average I would think.

Did you check figures for your battery being charged? Those weren’t in your initial list. Of course solar at the minute will be a lot lower than ‘normal’ with the winter skies and wet weather.

You can get some reasonable estimates looking at your everyday appliance usage (cooker, heating(?), water heating, kettle, etc). Particularly looking at appliances that use the most power.

If I look at our electric usage yesterday (which was a cold and overcast day), it was around 50kWh but that is for everything and we are 4 adults (but only 1 kitchen). You might want to check your tariff too making sure it’s your best option for your typical usage.

The figures are from my ovo app and taken from our Smart Meter, no estimated.

Battery didn’t charge much yesterday but we did get a little bit from Solars.

Hi ​@cardy5, yes, indeed I see what you mean about the high usage, although by the very nature of averages some people will come in above the notional “average” usage.  I take it the usage is the combined usage (i.e. through one meter used for billing purposes) for all six people and for all three habitations.
 

By “last year” you have in mind 2025, rather than the last 12 months, I think. And that consumption is based on actual kWh usage, not on estimates, and not calculated by using £ billing? Do you have the figures for, say, the two or three previous years as further comparators, even if the mix of people or indeed the living accommodation wasn’t exactly the same? 

Could you see a clear pattern of diminution in your combined usage over the 6 or 7 summery months as opposed to the 5 or 6 more wintry months? Electric heating (space and water) would most likely be a (the?) major component especially noticeable in winter, assuming no other really high demand stuff like an EV.
 

Are you confident that your battery is being charged by a combination of your panels (when household demand is low) and off-peak grid charging: it depends what tariff you’re on, but time of charging might make a difference to the £ purchase price even if it didn’t impact on the actual number of kWh bought..  Similarly, are you getting the best balance between battery contribution (and of course panel generation) towards your household usage as opposed to the overheads involved in re-charging or possibly constantly topping up your household storage battery?

It would also be great to independently meter the annexe and the summerhouse, just for your own information to get a better handle on overall consumption…such meters are relatively inexpensive and although not generally acceptably precise for billing purposes for instance, the three I’ve had for over a decade have proved to be pretty accurate.

There are others on this forum who are experts on solar/battery combinations, such as for example @BPLightlog, so have no fear, I’m sure you’ll get some concrete clarification rather than the starting point of my somewhat vague take on things. all the very best, and don’t work too hard! 
 

EDIT Apologies ​@BPLightlog ​@cardy5, I posted before I saw your above two posts…slow typing I’m afraid!