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Results are presented from a monitoring study of the electricity consumption of a sample of UK domestic buildings. Five-minutely average whole house power consumption was recorded for 72 dwellings at five sites over a 2-year monitoring period. The mean annual electricity consumption for the households increased significantly by 4.5% (t=1.9; p<0.05, one-tailed) from the first to the second year of monitoring. New techniques are developed which estimate the electricity consumption of different appliance groups, based on analysis of the five-minutely monitored data. The overall increase in electricity consumption is attributed to a 10.2% increase in the consumption of ‘standby’ appliances (such as televisions and consumer electronics) and a 4.7% increase in the consumption of ‘active’ appliance (such as lighting, kettles and electric showers). The consumption of different energy user groups (low, medium and high …