It struck me the other day that no one has posted that their electricity usage has gone up since a new meter was installed.
Where discussed it has always (IIRC) been an abnormal load and not a faulty meter and I suspect that most have “bedded in” and got used to the new meter.
It’s my turn now - but not with a Linky (and not in France). Did a meter reading as I had a “you haven’t submitted a reading for > 3 months” notification the other day. Entering the 'leccy reading the response was “that seems a little high”.
Looking at the reading history, there was a manual meter reading 3 days ago, since then we seem to have used 243 units, blimey! That equates to a constant 3.75kW load - needless to say I can’t think what. We have high usage due to lots of computers on 24/7 (not to mention a dehumidifier in the garage in the winter), but that is excessive, even for us.
Annoyingly my clamp meter is in France.
New one bought, will go hunting tomorrow if I get the time. Could have done without the distraction. Oh well.
Always a good exercise to carry out. I found the mid position valve on the central heating and hot water was constantly energised where an alternative type would park in an off energy position. Not massive but still permanently live was consuming the same as LED lights in the lounge.
That is pretty standard for Y plan systems - it is arranged to feed half wave rectified AC to the valve motor which is sufficient to hold the motor against resistance but not move it forward. Silly design which seems bound to eventually burn the motor out but there we are.
The redeeming feature of the old motorised CH values is that the motors can be replaced cheaply and easily if you have basic fitting a 13A plug skills!
True, I replaced the one in my CH three times over 20 years or so.
Having said that I’d half expect the motor to burn out, thinking about it, I seem to remember that it was actually the microswitch in them which died each time.
We were lucky with the ancient Honeywells in our London house - the valve bodies just kept on going.
I like to think that my annual draining, running the system full of cleaner for 24 hours before draining again and refilling with a good dose of inhibitor was a factor.
The old Switchmaster valves were better, almost full bore flow not the restricted types we have now and not all use power when at rest. I used to work at the factory that made Switchmaster during my apprenticeship.
Back to the excessive load - all seems “normal” at the minute. About 4 units used in the last five hours. Sadly the meter is completely dumb and can’t even show me the present load which is irritating.
I’d almost wonder if the meter reader mis-read the digits but having calculated roughly what the meter should have read three days ago with normal consumption it would have needed getting at least two digits wrong which seems less likely.
I.e today read x9050, the reading three days ago was x8807 - I would have thought somewhere in the range x8980-x9010 more plausible.
It does seem strange, I take it you have gone through the process of turning everything off and checking the meter doesn’t move, that includes the fridge and freezer etc?
That will wait until I have the clamp meter for instant feedback on current load - otherwise the only option it to turn off a circuit, then wait several hours to see what it does to consumption.
But if the load is normal I can’t go chasing wherever the power is going.
So far today things seems to have been normal which is potentially a bit weird if I really used 240+ kWh in the past three days.
You said that the meter had not been read for an extended time then you did the reading and entered it and then have been looking at it closely ..and the first of your readings ..the one entered differs greatly from what you see as usage .. That seems to me as basically the manual reading you put in was in error ..Now my meter allowed me to put in a revised number as often as I wanted … The only way you would get a solid 3.5 KW would be the immersion heater on full time
The manual reading that I referred to was the energy supplier’s. I considered it might have been erroneous but could not some up with a simple transcription error which fitted plausibly.