Annual electric consumption of 12,000 kWh for only 2 people- What's wrong?

Thanks again everyone - I’m glad you like a puzzle!. Here is a zoom in from the whole graph (ignore the 1W in the time frame).

This has been going on for a long time and I have been trying to get help from our electricity supplier (not OVO!).  I tried the creep test - all OK. I asked for a meter test - they procrastinated for months and finally a man with a cheap fan heater arrived and a clip on monitor (similar to an OWL). He spent about 30 mins or so and said I would hear - four weeks later and no news, so I bought the OWL to check myself.  (The meter “test” was not done at all in the way that government guidance suggests. I have of course tried the customer help line, but their responses (average 1 week response time) show that they haven’t even read my emails! (end of rant).

I hadn’t really realised how high our energy was as I was an expatriate for many years before moving to this house - I was 30 years out of date with UK utility matters! Of course, with the increase in energy I became extremely interested.

Re other questions: The immersion heater has a dedicated wall switch beside the storage cylinder.  I will check now - as has been suggested - that it doesn’t simply bypass this switch.  I think the best way will be to turn off that circuit in the consumer unit.

I guess the other possibility is the pump serving the Underfloor Heating - I’ll check that as well.

Not a daft question - but no, we don’t.  

Over on the E.On Next forum there has been a case where anytime some energy is used the meter records 2kW as a rate of consumption - never more never less.  After looking into all the possibilities, just as has been done here, the unlikely diagnosis was a meter fault.

I would enquire whether another meter can be installed as a check on the first.  This case has some of the same characteristics -  a high base load and peaks of even amplitude.

Very high base load, so its case of working out what it is. I’ve got fish tanks and pond equipment running and my base load is 200W. 

Turn everything off, power the OWL meter via batteries and take it turn to switch back on circuits (fuses) in the fuse board, looking for one which is drawing 800-900W.

Check the OWL readings by turning on the kettle and making sure the use increases by 3kw.  

What MVHR do you have? Some have electric heating elements in them to temper the air.

Other suggestion would be external halogen lights / loft lighting.

I’ve used KASA smart plugs (not all of them have energy monitoring) to check devices.

Far out suggestion would be that there is a connection to your neighbouring property, either unintentional (new build horror), or malicious to cut their energy bills. This would show up as a high load on one circuit, but nothing in your property (on that circuit) turned on.   

Thanks for this - unfortunately my supplier has basically refused to install a check meter. I asked that they do this and take the existing to an independent lab (as they are supposed to do) for testing. This is why I bought the OWL.  Your reasoning seems very good to me - I’ll have another go at them.

“What MVHR do you have? Some have electric heating elements in them to temper the air.

Other suggestion would be external halogen lights / loft lighting.” 

MVHR has no heating elements in. All lights are LEDs (permanently on outside lights are, in any case, forbidden in my dark skies are.

It could be your smart meter but your OWL sensor is also picking up a high kWh so it is not simply the smart meter recording a high usage, you appear to really be using a high kWh?

Could a smart meter be actually drawing a high kWh when under a small load? I doubt it but you could test by turning off all but one circuit and adding a small known load. You could do this when testing each circuit as suggested. 

This is better than the telly !

Thinks outside the box (or house).

Is the house terraced or a semi?    If so,  how well do you oknow the neighbours?

It has happened before that a neighbour manages to tap into one of your circuits and uses it to power so called “ illicit activities”.    900W - could easily be the load for heat lamps being used to raise plants.

Once you find out the circuit that is using the power,  you will then need to find the appliance or device and if all of yours are off and power is still used, you will need to dig deeper.

Thanks. The house is detached and about 30m away from the neighbours. I don’t think they have a cannabis farm, but one never knows! However, when our house was built the same meter was used for the two properties on the site as they were both owned by the same person. There was confusion on completion of the house, but I do think they did separate the supplies! I tested this by turning off our supply and then checking if that had also turned off the supply to the other property - it hadn’t.

Hey @edgood,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community!

This is a really challenging one. Given all the information you’ve provided, I’m really surprised your current supplier won’t install a check meter? Do they allow you to book one if you pay for it?

I’d advise following the suggestion of checking each circuit, also you mentioned underfloor heating… it’s worth looking into whether this might be the issue.

Please do keep us posted, this could really help other customers in a similar boat.