Show energy usage by month as a % of UK average on the online account

If you look at the Direct Debit calculator, you’ll see in Cost view what I think is some sort of standardized variation through the year. I compiled te graph below from my own DD figures, so they may not be the same for everyone. For a start, mine is an all-electric household; it’s quite normal for gas-heated houses to show very low usage in the summer. The figures have been adjusted for days/month; otherwise, February normally shows lower usage than March even though the daily usage will in general be higher. 

My sine wave doesn’t fit very well, so I think these must be observations of some sort; it would be nice to know where they come from. For example, do they apply across the whole UK? Or the whole of Britain? Are the same calculations applied for users in Caithness and Cornwall? It may be that the difference is insignificant, of course. 
  

It has not always been there,

But you can see weekly comparison with similar homes on the Energy Insights. Perhaps start to record the weekly figures in a spreadsheet. 

Hello Firedog, thanks for that, I had not noticed the D/D calculator.

My point was also that if there is a problem, such as a slow increase in usage, consumers don’t have a basic set of numbers to compare with as time goes on. By definition if there is an issue then individual averages with start to shift and hide the issue.

All energy companies have this information in a easily readable form and it would be a really simple project to have a page on customer’s accounts that shows a rolling graph that compares their usage with a regional average over say three years.

And, what a marketing tool to be able to actually demonstrate how they are helping to drive down usage and bills.

ColinW

What I (and others) use a fair bit now are data feeds from third party (authorised and approved) apps. One in particular gives a comparison view either daily during a week, daily based on a day (so say comparing recent Mondays), monthly or yearly. 
I am rather interested in factual info and so I look at this most days. This gives you an idea of some of these. 
 

That's for that, I will take a look.

CW

The government provide some summary data, for example this includes domestic electricity consumption by quarter.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1147118/ET_5.2_MAR_23.xlsx

As a test, i have made one of my regular FOI requests just asking for  monthly rather than quarterly for now.

They may say they are only given quarterly data or give some other reason for not supplying it. 

I will post what they come back and then ask for further data if it looks like they will release it. 

I managed to find some monthly data from the ONS:  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1147121/ET_5.5_MAR_23.xlsx (Excel workbook, 270kB). 

I took the figures for the past five years (2018-2022), reduced each month’s figure to a percentage of the annual usage, then took the average of those five years. This was the result:
  

Perhaps this is something like what @Colin W was looking for.

The government provide some summary data, for example this includes domestic electricity consumption by quarter.

I managed to find some monthly data from the ONS:  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1147121/ET_5.5_MAR_23.xlsx (Excel workbook, 270kB). 

I took the figures for the past five years (2018-2022), reduced each month’s figure to a percentage of the annual usage, then took the average of those five years. This was the result:
  

Perhaps this is something like what @Colin W was looking for.

 

Also splits out by England/Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland so some very high level regional info.

Be interesting to see how my FOI request is answered and if they simply sign post this data set. 

Just for fun, I added the equivalent figures derived from OVO’s DD calculator for comparison:
  

Some of the differences are quite marked, so I’m still wondering what OVO base their calculations on.

… and for the more visually-oriented:
  

The source is the dataset referred to earlier, from Energy Trends and Prices statistical release: 28 February 2023 - GOV.UK, using averages for the years 2018-2022.

In an unrelated note, this comment to the dataset is remarkable: