365 days later

[breezy]

Having just input my 52nd weeks (electricity only) reading into iMeasure, I thought it was a good time to make a few observations.

I've used 1066 kWh (2.92 kWh per day)
My average CO2 is 12Kg per day (electricity only)

Appliances include: Fridge/freezer, electric shower,cold-fill washing machine, condensing tumble dryer, electric oven (small), kettle, toaster, microwave, desktop PC, laptop, broadband "radio", lighting, radio, & small sound system. I do not use a TV, VCR or satellite box.

Although my average daily consumption is less than 3kWh, there are some large "spikes" in the chart below. An extra run in the washing machine, or a run of the tumble dryer is enough to cause this.

The 2 weeks in Jun/Jul represent a period when I was away. The background load was fridge/freezer & two lights on timers. The week in October with low consumption represents the same background load. I'd have expected the Jun/Jul reading to be higher as the weather was warm and the fridge/freezer should have been working harder.

I sometimes get an A rating for 12Kg, other times it's as low as C - is this a bug? Surely the rating shouldn't move around like that?

My ranking in the Navitron group dropped significantly during the summer; I assume that this is because some of the "leading" participants are exporting power in sunny weather, and have negative readings.

I'm also in the Moneysavingexperts carbon club. My ranking there is usually 10th to 12th place; most of the leaders in this group have large households (7 or 8 occupancy) I've noticed.

[Greenbeast]

The energy bands depend on everyone else. For example we only manage A during parts of winter because we tend not to use the heating like the rest of the country does.
So when it gets cold and everyone uses more gas, we get a better rating.

[JohnS]

3 kWh a day is very commendable.  I have to fight to get it below 10 but there are four of us in a fair sized house.

Even when on holiday we averaged 3kWh a day with the fridge/freezer, smoke and burglar alarms and cleaner once a week base load.

I find imeasure very frustrating.  They don't listen to easy to implement suggestions and give nothing to the user other than an annual CO2 figure and a wait for a year to see if it improves.  They have nearly 3 1/2 years of data from me.  All they give is a weekly rating which is too subjective to cold/warm spell, extra washing or dishwasher run, more cooking etc. 

I was an A in the summer because of my solar PV.  Now I am an E which is anything from 10% to 100% above average.  Tells me zilch worthwhile.  I would like to see a minimum of ten bands with equal numbers of users in each band and weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual ratings. 

Rant over.

John

[Ivan]

I gave up with it. I initially tried to input my gas in kWh, but for some reason it defaulted to thermal units. I think it was then corrected, but by that time I was entering in cubic feet or some such - making my gas readings look much lower than they ought to. I gave up when I started generating considerably more than I use. I think a few others had suggested that the system was improved to include microgeneration, but as far as I know it isn't available. We need an 'exported power' column and a 'generated power' column - so that the net CO2 can be calculated as well as a measure of efficiency (for example, I could have 10kW of PV and still leave all the lights/TV on and still come out better than most).