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sinca123
Rank 2
February 25, 2023
Solved

High electricity usage - what could it be?

  • February 25, 2023
  • 62 replies
  • 1676 views

My apartment is on electricity only! why my electricity  heating using 10KW to run in 50 minutes! It cost me 4£ to run for only 50 minutes! 

Best answer by M.isterW

Updated on 18/08/25 by Ben_OVO

If your property runs purely off electricity and not gas, then you may have electric heating / radiators, possibly storage heaters, and maybe an immersion tank to heat the water. A lot of this sort of kit can use a lot of electricity, especially if it’s quite old. If you’d like tips on the most cost efficient ways to use your appliances, it's worth doing a quick Google search of ‘energy saving tips in (your local area). You should find that there will be organisations who will offer this sort of advice, often for free. You may also be able to get this advice from your local council.

 

If you’ve got a smart meter The ‘Usage’ pages of your online account / app are really useful to see what times of the day your electricity usage is highest, which helps you to get an idea of what is causing the higher usage. For the most accurate data you’ll need to have your smart meter set to send us half-hourly meter readings. Below are guides for changing your smart meter reading schedule online, and using the ‘Usage’ pages 👇

 

 

You have something that's heating the water that feeds the radiators, likely an electric boiler. You probably have a hot water cylinder heated by an immersion heater.

 

To reduce the cost of your hot water you can find a tariff that offers cheaper electricity at certain times (normally overnight) and use a timer on your immersion heater.

 

Reducing the cost of your heating is harder because it doesn't look like you have any way of storing the heat. If you can find your boiler and tell us what it is we might be able to suggest some options.

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Abby_OVO
Community Manager
Abby_OVO
Community Manager
December 4, 2025

Hey ​@Wil 

 

Glad to see waltyboy has already stopped by with some helpful advice already, some good points there to take note of, especially factoring in the standing charge. it would be interesting to see what the usage graphs show on your account for these early morning time periods?

 

I know some heat pump models will have capability to have it’s own settings, so although the hot water may not be set to come on until 7, the heat pump could be drawing at that earlier time? If you have the app to accompany your heat pump model, is there any data there that might suggest it being in use at another time?

 

I’ve actually linked below to a few topics which might be helpful here:

 

 

Let us know how you get on.

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Bendog
Rank 12
December 4, 2025

From December 1st - 3rd, from midnight to 7am, I used an average of 1.97kWh. The highest usage was 0.18 kWh and the lowest usage was 0.07 kWh in one half hour period. I have my computer running (monitor turned off overnight), a fridge freezer, a small chest freezer in the garage and a tropical fish tank. In addition, there may be odd things charging on different days. 

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