Just got a smart meter and have been obsessing at it. What’s your consumption and how many people in the house?

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OneLeg1277@reddit

This is very high imo. That gas reading is shockingly high!!!

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EatingPork@reddit (OP)

What?! Unused lights are always off, heating is off, hot water is on from 9-11am and then 8-10pm…

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OneLeg1277@reddit

Hmmm. Maybe contact your supplier and see if there’s a better tariff?? I’m with octopus and averaging about £1-2 a day.

I just went back and checked around Christmas time when the house was busier and with the heating on and the most I ever used in a day was £8. That’s with all the cooking (gas hob) & electric oven.

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EatingPork@reddit (OP)

It might be because of the underfloor heating we got whilst renovating the haus 🫢🫠

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OneLeg1277@reddit

Ahh! That might be doing it! Do a little trial and error and see what happens.

Try not to get too worked up about it though, I have to not look at my smart meter because I get too obsessed with it 🫣

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EatingPork@reddit (OP)

The thing is, pretty sure the heating has been off since February or something! Yeah I keep on hiding it behind the toaster and my family keep on moving it in plain view lol

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SingleMaltLife@reddit

Yeah I was thinking the same! £2,000 a year for gas. My gas bill for 2 people, for hot water and hob gas is less than £50 a month. Which would be approx £1.66 a day.

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PanicStil@reddit

Even that’s high no? Family of 4 and ours is under 90p a day.

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Splodge89@reddit

They were talking average including the winter. At this time of year I’d expect less than £1 a day in gas.

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PanicStil@reddit

Over all of 2025 we averaged £1.70 a day for 4 people.

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Far_Scallion_97@reddit

Last I checked was about £250 a month but we have heated floors that eats away at the bill

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EatingPork@reddit (OP)

We have heated floors too, could it be that then? It’s not… on though ?

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No_Quality_6874@reddit

What the fuck are you doing in that house

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EatingPork@reddit (OP)

Things….things that need to be done…important things that need to be done …

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EarnestHolly@reddit

Are you running a gas-powered bitcoin mining operation? How is it so much

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EatingPork@reddit (OP)

Because the straight of hummus is shut, we’ve been supplying our whole borough!

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ReflexArch@reddit

Mate it's May. How is it £8 when you have basically done nothing?

That gas looks very high to me. £5.66 and you only cooked a meal? That is either broken or you forgot to mention your heating is on and/or you and your partner have insanely long hot showers.

Smart meter can get depressing in a cold dark winter I found. "Oh look, burning money again".

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EatingPork@reddit (OP)

I literally woke up today and the reading was £1 :/ will need to see what’s wrong

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Subject-Low-4923@reddit

I turned mine to face the wall about 4 days after I got it installed and it’s done wonders for my mental health.

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Leaky_Taps@reddit

You don't have to use the display, doesn't even need to be on or plugged in.

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Milam1996@reddit

Because then you have to do manual metering

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You have to do manual regardless if your IHD is plugged in or not. The IHD is just a visual representation of your consumption. We don't have one now, but when we used to, I still had to submit manual readings.

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nathderbyshire@reddit

Not if everything is working properly. The meters on wall go to a communication hub above the electric meter which has a WAN connection - wide area network.

The IHD sits on an internal HAN network - home area network only you have access too, the supplier can't see or do anything with the IHD. Updates get pushed to the comms hub which then forwards that to your IHD when needed.

You have a WAN and HAN connection with your internet, it's exactly the same but smart meters use a different protocol.

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ElBisonBonasus@reddit

Octopus bills me correctly, I can see half hourly consumption, still when I tried to submit a manual reading, after a few months, they said I couldn't have used 7MWh of electricity in 2 months. They were right, it wasn't two months, their "readings" was wrong. The next bill was fine.

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AGiantThing@reddit

I don't think that's the case, the meter sends the readings. That is just a display and can be unplugged and put in a draw. At least with my supplier

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Milam1996@reddit

Learn something new everyday.

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SpunkSacks@reddit

I worked out how much power every single last thing was using and the costs.

And the cost of gas for heating one room vs the whole house. Or just using the gas fire. Turning the thermostat a few degrees didn’t save a lot of money in my home.

So I just thought, fuck it! And live how I want to live.

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PCGamingScrump@reddit

Used 31.96kWh of electric which cost me £3.51 and used 29.20KwH of gas which cost me £1.98. Family of 3 charged my car between 12-6am

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Icy_Pear1694@reddit

I know it was cold yesterday but that has usage is mad, I had the heating on half the day and I used £2.83 in a 4 bed detached house.

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vitriolicheart@reddit

The amount of arguments one of those damn things caused in our house is ridiculous so now ours is now unplugged.

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mrfatchance@reddit

I bet OP lives in a new build

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Ok-Grape-3628@reddit

2 bedroom house about £2 electric a day and about 50p gas right now and nothing really on gas as it only does my heating and hot water. I also work from home and have 4 fish tanks. I wouldn’t be able to get to £8 in electric usage if I tried.

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asuka_rice@reddit

Start getting solar and watch yourself reduce Grid electricity usage to save ££££.

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bishibashi@reddit

Unplugged mine and stuck it in a drawer after seeing how high I could get electricity to go by putting the oven, kettle, toaster and iron all on at once. 4 person household, 5 beds but rooms are pretty small and house well insulated for an old one, £140 a month keeps me ticking over.

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Togger82@reddit

That seems very high for this time of year. I live in a 3 bed detached, 2 adults, 2 kids and yesterday's combined usage was £2.41.

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tombatch10@reddit

I live alone, but I WFH on a pretty power-hungry PC, and I can still get in at under £2 a day.

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daniluvsuall@reddit

We use about 20mWh a yeah in a house of two, but it’s a large detached house with no fossil fuels two EVs etc Solar and batteries were spending about £60 a month at the moment

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Similar-Factor@reddit

Brother in February my fucking flat was hitting 7£ an hour with the heating on. Shitty electric boilers. It’s literally cheaper to run plug in space heaters.

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Artistic_Western_623@reddit

Beyond an initial look at your consumption, they are best left in drawers and forgotten about.

I mean, you're going to use what you're going to use, and you're going to pay.

It's like phone notifications when you pay with contactless. 'bitch, don't remind me!'.

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NotMyRealName981@reddit

I have one of those displays. It's currently showing 289 Watts electricity consumption. It's also showing 235 Watts gas consumption, thanks to my boiler being an ancient model with a pilot light, designed when gas was cheap. I hope that the boiler is well enough designed to direct some of the heat from the pilot light into the house, rather than venting all that energy out of the flue, but I doubt it.

I like the display so much that I have a Raspberry Pi permanently monitoring it via a camera, and using OCR to read the numbers and store them in a database. It's a shame the display doesn't have a more modern way of programmatically extracting the data though.

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sammycorgi@reddit

You can get a sparky (or do it yourself if you can) to install a CT clamp + meter fpr your incoming supply and get your power and energy readings that way. There are tutorials online.

Not sure what you can do for gas unfortunately.

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yearsofpractice@reddit

I own a four bedroom, draughty Victorian terrace. My family do not understand the idea that energy costs money.

I have simply stopped looking at our energy bills. It’s probably for the best.

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DefinitelyNotEmu@reddit

My electric provider were unable to answer me when I asked what the power consumption of the smart meter itself is.

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papercut2008uk@reddit

Barely anything, The meters are about 1w power draw, which will barely be noticed on a bill.

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papercut2008uk@reddit

£3.50-£7 a day, £7 would be in winter when we have the heating on.

There are 3 of us living here.

£8 a day is pretty high for this time of the year.

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CrazyMike419@reddit

Why is your gas costing more than me is what I'm thinking. Me and wife are incredibly shite with energy and our gas usage isnt close to that. Something's wrong.

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Some_Masterpiece6639@reddit

That is very high, we are a 3 person household and only use £2-3 a day. We are with Scottish power and utilise the 8 power saving slots we have selected for washing and drying clothes and using any high energy appliances (electric shower, cooking etc) which gives us 50% off.

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MuseviaAvena6a@reddit

I turned mine to face the wall almost 3 days (as I remember)days after I got it installed.

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BCBUK@reddit

I’m living alone in a one bed apartment (modern construction inside a listed building), and at the moment my average daily use is 5-7kwh (£1.50-£2) with the biggest single user my immersion boiler for me to have a shower. During winter when heating is on, and need more lights etc; it can climb to 20-25kwh per day when very cold (£6 per day or so).

All taken from the Octopus app connected to the pink tile thing I use instead of a smart meter display

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o_sooperstar_o@reddit

The good thing about that particular display monitor is that it tends to freeze after some time if you leave it plugged in. I ended up unplugging it.

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