For the past 7 weeks, we’ve averaged 8.11 kWh per day for electric. At October prices this works out at about £3.20 per day including standing charge. Household of 3 adults, 2 of whom work from home most days. We often use 2 separate living rooms in the evening. Home and water heated via gas.
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I’m not too sure how accurate IHDs are, but that usage over 8 hours suggests that some sort of heating was being used, either to heat the home, to cook food, or to heat water.
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What is your actual usage in kWh between midnight and 8 am? Does your IHD agree with your actual tariff?
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So your gas cost is the significant figure within your household?
Gas usage over past 7 weeks has averaged 12.5 kWh/day, which translates to approx. £3.50/day at current (Oct 2022) prices, including standing charge.
But haven’t yet put on central heating. We usually put it on in November and use it through to April.
Over past 12 months our gas usage was about 12,700 kWh (average 34.8 kWh day). At current prices this would be £9.44/day on average across the year!
The home is a 4-bed 1920’s build and has partial flat roof extension on ground floor, so is not very well insulated.
The EPG for gas is ~10.4 p/kWh with a standing charge of ~27p. Are you on a more expensive fixed tariff?
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I entered the gas standing charge and unit rate in the wrong way round in my spreadsheet 
Correction -
My average daily gas cost by combining last 7 weeks of use with current rates = £1.56
My average daily gas cost by combining last 12 months of use with current rates = £4.23
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Heating and cooker are gas, so it can’t be that. I’m wondering if our fridge and freezer are stupidly inefficient.
Thanks I need to check this. Bulb website is crap and isn’t showing me anything useful other than monthly direct debit cost.
I need to investigate further what is going on, because I’m convinced these electric costs are inaccurate - I hope so anyway!
Based on your comments, they certainly sound higher than one might expect.
I’ve learned so much about how we’re using our energy since installing smart meters in August. The whole “phantom load” was a concept new to me. It certainly had me scouring the house for inefficient or unnecessary usage.
I’ve concluded that switching video equipment off at the mains is marginal given the consumption when not in use (a few pence at worst) and the Broadband is best not fiddled with 
.
Freezer and fridge are pretty efficient on the scale. I maybe could buy an even greener model, but then the tail is wagging the dog. The one concession I’ve taken which wasn’t cheap is replacing the Victorian tumble-dryer with a condenser which makes much better use of the hot air exhaust. It means the front garden doesn’t get heated from now on. 
I’ve swapped out those little light bulbs in the kitchen etc for LED. Cheap upgrade.
Anyway, keep us posted. 
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Now this explains why I see fewer networks at night in my neighbourhood than during day. I could sometimes do a scan to check how many networks are available and the night numbers always got me surprised.
My wifi router is on 24/7. I can not afford to turn it off and now that I have many smart devices, this will mever happen.
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Quite. And the energy it’s consuming is surely negligible. 
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My router is on 24/7, the running cost is indeed negligible. It has to be on all the time, my Wife WFH. We also need it on to control our heating and lighting and as we have no landline, it keeps us connected to WhatsApp for the bulk of our calls.
I’ve consciously over the last 2 years, replaced a lot of our electrical equipment with the most energy efficient items available. A heat pump tumble dryer, new flat panel TV, dishwasher and fridge freezer. All these items are using significantly less energy than the items they replaced.
We’re fortunate too that the heating is still off, it’s currently very mild where we live even at night where the temperature has been above 12 degrees Celsius for weeks.
I read something elsewhere where there appeared to be a belief that those who pay by monthly variable direct debit, pay more for their energy by clearing their balance every month.
There clearly must be a reason for that belief to have come from somewhere, but I as far as I’m aware, I’m not paying extra for effectively choosing to pay as I go. Indeed I’m not paying anything at all for electricity at the moment because we don’t use £66 worth of electric a month.
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I wonder how it will impact customer support. Octopus can take 2 weeks to answer emails at the moment (Twitter DM is usually quicker but even that is nowhere near as quick as it used to be).
I’ve had a broken SMETS1 electricity meter since the middle of July (completely dead but the comms hub still works, so gas data is still getting transmitted). Still waiting for SMETS2 replacements.
I imagine they’d retain a lot of, if not all, Bulb’s team as a means to quickly expand their own team with qualified agents able to support the big increase in customer numbers.
Will probably have a bunch of growing pains for a while though. It’s a huge influx.
Depends a little on what’s causing the 2 week lead time I guess.
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Yup, 3.1 million + 1.5 million [or 1.7 depending on where you get the figures] is a big number. R-
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That’s interesting.
Until recently I was with London Power (which is a brand operated by Octopus). I used email support late Sept / early October and responses were within 1-3 days. I’ve since switched over to a regular Octopus account, but haven’t yet needed to contact support since my switch.
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I suppose with the ongoing crisis and the government support and all the other stuff going on all suppliers will be behind their usual response times. I’ve had the same with British Gas. Been waiting weeks for a reply ended up calling