Electron thieves / leeches

[AE-NMidlands]

Recent mention of the insidious drains on stored power reminds me that I haven't scrutinised our use recently either.
Apart from switching off lights when a room is not occupied and not leaving many devices on standby we don't really do much to drive down use, which is 5.8 +/- 0.5 kWhr/day across the year - and has crept up from 5.1 in 2014.

Time to do a re-evaluation. I suspect that every new wireless router that we get consumes more power than the predecessor as the current BTHub6 always feels quite warm. They advertise ever-better reach, which I assume means more power consumed.

I have a plug-and-socket meter that I bought from the old place, but to measure lots of things like the kitchen heat-recovering extract fan would mean breaking into the circuit and putting in a temporary plug and socket. Anyone know of better non-contact ways to do it? Is there a meter which will clip round a twin-and-earth cable?

I have no idea how much power the central heating controller / programmable thermostat / solar tubes controller and associated pumps take, for example.
We might run down our stock of frozen soft fruit and switch off the small chest freezer as one action. I have read that digital radios use more than analogue ones, so one gets left in a room where it is hardly ever used and only switched on and reprogrammed when there is a particular need. The other is my bedside radio, so maybe I ought to be looking at swapping that one out.

Any other suggestions for culprits or monitoring methods?
A

[Stig]

Fridge freezers. My old one took 20W even when the compressor wasn't running -and it seemed to run ~75% of the time! I reckon this was a big chunk of my background energy use. The new one will probably pay for itself in 4 years - and that's with free electricity during most days from my solar panels!

You can't get a reading by clipping a meter around a twin and earth cable - you'd need to clip it just round the live (or neutral) so that's a bit invasive. I had a smart meter fitted a few months ago and the real-time display (30sec. update) is very useful for these sorts of investigations.

[Stinsy]

I'd suggest an old fridge/freezer as the first place to look. You can swap the broadband provider's router for your own. The proliferation of devices from a few tens to hundreds makes this process a lot more difficult!

[Joeboy]

At our house old fridges and freeers were culprits although the main culprit turned out to be a Yamaha soundbar. Traced them all through a plug in line meter. Beyond that I'd maybe shut down circuits at the CU having ran extension reels to critical gear first from other circuits.

[Stinsy]

My aquarium and its various pumps/heaters uses a surprising amount of power. Not much I can do about it except control the time when the heaters are on to coincide with cheap rate power and the hope of solar.