The 50% Electricity Challenge - Everyone welcome!

Burlesque_Babe

I realised today I can turn off my electric radio alarm clock for 3 days a week. Can't see it affecting the reading much, but might as well!

biscotte

tyllwyd wrote: »

My understanding is that the 'units' that the electricity companies charge you for are 1 kWh, so one unit is one kWh. (I think it is a bit more complicated for gas.)

My electricity provider charges about 12p per unit, and I think most will be somewhere around that, but it does depend on what tariff you are on and whether the standing charge is included in the price per unit.

My guess is like the others said, when you read the meter you've included the fractions of units by mistake so you should ignore the last one or two digits.

Mmm, if that's right then my leccy bill will be huge!!! I checked again and there are no fractions of units:eek:

I'm not in the UK so don't know how the charge per unit will compare to the 12p you're quoting (although in France I used to pay only 7 euro cents a kWh, so just 4-5p, and everyone moans about the price of electricity there!).

I'll just keep an eye on it and see how things go ad try and find out the price somehow!

jenchin66

My local B & Q are giving 2 free energy saving lightbulbs away if you take in 2 ordinary bulbs

pandapaws

jenchin66 wrote: »

My local B & Q are giving 2 free energy saving lightbulbs away if you take in 2 ordinary bulbs

So buy 2 of the cheapest bulbs they sell and swop them on the way out for energy-savers!;) I've decided that I'm not going to use them at all in the house after all the research I've done into illnesses they cause. I'll keep them outside, just in case!

Biscotte, hope you manage to work out the unit pricing thingy, 2000 units would just be scary - about £200 a week if you were in the UK! I'm sure it's just some dodgy foreign meter. I hope so!

I also sent off for the Daily Mail meter but not heard anything. Which reminds me, I've still not used the individual appliance monitor that I've got. Must get it out and see how it works.

hayley11

pandapaws wrote: »

So buy 2 of the cheapest bulbs they sell and swop them on the way out for energy-savers!;) I've decided that I'm not going to use them at all in the house after all the research I've done into illnesses they cause. I'll keep them outside, just in case!

What causes illnesses? Energy saving lightbulbs? :eek: Am I being thick? I usually am :rotfl:

pandapaws

hayley11 wrote: »

What causes illnesses? Energy saving lightbulbs? :eek: Am I being thick? I usually am :rotfl:

My mum sent me a couple of articles she'd cut out of the Daily [STRIKE]Scaremonger[/STRIKE] Mail, I'm not sure how much of it to believe, but they've been linked to skin cancer, eye conditions, blindness, migraines and goodness knows all what else. I had one in a nightlight above my 3yr old's bed, but have removed it and replaced it with a normal 7watt cooker bulb - rather safe than sorry.

Try Googling energy saving lightbulbs health or illnesses or something like that - there's a lot of info out there that isn't too favourable towards them!

Sue-UU

Burlesque_Babe wrote: »

I realised today I can turn off my electric radio alarm clock for 3 days a week. Can't see it affecting the reading much, but might as well!

That coupled with other, seemingly minor power users, can still go together and take a few pounds off, especially over the course of a year! See if you have anything similar that you don't need. I've been doing that for the last few months and it does show. When you think about it, it has to!!!

Sue

nickynoo08

A quick question for you all.
What would be cheaper/more energy efficient? Having the heating on low for 2/3 hrs on an evening or turning thermostat up a bit and only having it on for an hr? My OH thinks the latter of the 2 and keeps cranking up the temp. Must admit this morn we tried it and only had to have heating on for 40mins and house stayed toasty for ages. What do you think?

tyllwyd

nickynoo08 wrote: »

A quick question for you all.
What would be cheaper/more energy efficient? Having the heating on low for 2/3 hrs on an evening or turning thermostat up a bit and only having it on for an hr? My OH thinks the latter of the 2 and keeps cranking up the temp. Must admit this morn we tried it and only had to have heating on for 40mins and house stayed toasty for ages. What do you think?

My guess is that it would depend on how well insulated your house is, and how hot/cold you would be prepared for it to get.

If you imagined a straight line, with a wavey line going through it (look for an illustration of a sine wave!), if the straight line is your ideal temperature, your husband would turn up the heat and let it get cold, giving a big fluctation up and down, but you would have a smaller wave sticking closer to the ideal temperature. So if the power was only on while the temperature was heating up, it would depend whether it was on longer in your husband's long bursts or in your shorter but more frequent bursts (Does that make sense - I am willing to stand corrected if someone disagrees!) The danger would be that if you crank the heat up you would spend longer with the average temperature hotter than ideal, and you wouldn't put up with the cold periods to balance it.

But if you really want to know, why not test it out? Over a couple of months, say, you could have one week his way and one week yours and see what happens!

biscotte

I am feeling reassured this morning -

Rang the electicity people and (once we got the language barrier sorted) asked about rates and how they billed us. Well, since 16th May to today (178 days the lady said) we've used 478.45 CHF of electricity (about £230). Sounds much more reasonable. Looks like we pay about 11 rappen per kWh - about 7p - but there might be a discount thing involved but I don't understand german enough to work it out. Night time is even cheaper, about 4p per kWh.

The bad news I found out was that we have no choice of provider until 2014 for domestic customers! I don't think the price will go up too much as the majority of electricity here is hydro or nuclear so not so dependant on the oil price