The 50% Electricity Challenge - Everyone welcome!

fletch3163

fletch3163 wrote: »

Last week............ am on 1326 so that's 118 units from last week. So, am back to my week two average.


This week it's 1444 so that's, hold on, 118 units again this week. Well, at least it's not going up eh!

Sorry everyone, I missed last week. So, this week I'm at 1718. My God!! Over 2 weeks that works out at about 137 units per week:eek: What's going on? Has someone plugged in Blackpool to my lecky supply? Gee Whizz what a shock

wilf55

thanks different_corner am going to have a look now

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

I would like to give this a try too.
I would like to do this with electricity and gas because with certain items it can be interchangeable (such as clothes dryng or boiling small amounts of waterand even some types of cooking).
I recently got a freezer from freecycle so that is probably pushing up my electricity usage and with the recent increases in price, I want to economise more.

So 9 AM on Sunday my electricity is: 28244
My gas is: 01299.936
Not sure what to make of the gas meter. The last three digits (after my decimal point) are in red boxes on the meter. I'm taking them to be tenths, hundredths, and thousandths of a full unit. If anyone knows different, please say so.
I will take 9 am on Sunday as my week start.

I need to take gas readings as well because I cook with gas and my central heating is gas (though I never use the heating). My clothes drying is by airing cupboard (gas) or by an electric (low wattage) clothes horse type thingy.
I will use everything as normal on week one but from the start of week 2 I intend to do the following:- unplug or switch off the mobile charger when not in use, switch off (from the wall socket) my TV and box, video, and DVD player. Same with music equipment. With the computer, I will switch off the printers, scanner and monitor. I will NOT switch off the PC or BB modem as regular rebooting can sometimes cause problems IMO. Obviously switch lights off when not in use and I am already gradually switching over to low energy bulbs as the old ones blow - the only exceptions being a couple of lamps that I often use for reading.

OK so I've now got the readings for my first week which I will use as the control in the experiment.

As of 9AM my electric was 28306
Gas was 1311.793

So electricity for the week was 62
Gas was .............................. 11.857
I don't expect to reduce fuel usage by 50%. I'm not excessively wasteful or overly frugal but I'm sure there is room for improvement.
If I achieve 20% I will consider that I've done well.

cheekymonkey20

im on an economy 7 meter, but my OH insists that using the dishwasher and washing machine on at night is wrong as we live in a block of 9 apartments and he doesnt want it to be noisy.

I never hear anyones machines so i cant see why he has such a problem, we would save 20p per kwh by doing itthat way but he insists on not putting it on. PLUS he thinks its a load of **** turning things off standby, now i work for an energy company and i am going blue in the face trying to tell him to turn everything off at the plug, and to just turn them back on when we use them but no, that infuriates him... grr men!

Any advise, as i would like to get my usage down from £62pm to £50pm = 20%.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

cheekymonkey20 wrote: »

im on an economy 7 meter, but my OH insists that using the dishwasher and washing machine on at night is wrong as we live in a block of 9 apartments and he doesnt want it to be noisy.

I never hear anyones machines so i cant see why he has such a problem, we would save 20p per kwh by doing itthat way but he insists on not putting it on. PLUS he thinks its a load of **** turning things off standby, now i work for an energy company and i am going blue in the face trying to tell him to turn everything off at the plug, and to just turn them back on when we use them but no, that infuriates him... grr men!

Any advise, as i would like to get my usage down from £62pm to £50pm = 20%.

I'm in a block of 9 flats too (you aren't one of my neighbours are you?) .
I don't have cheap night time electric but my neighbour downstairs once let me know that my machine could be clearly heard late at night. Depends how the flats have been built I suppose. However, probably a more impoprtant issue is the flooding risk. I like to make sure I'm in AND awake in case of the unlikely event of leakage. This has only happened once in 20 years (due to faulty installation by the delivery guys) but that once to often. I also got lucky another time when the machine went wrong. The machine used water pressure to detect when it was full. Unfortunately, the plastic y piece in the circuit split and caused reduced water pressure (poor design IMO). I say I was lucky because I was working in the kitchen near the washing machine when it happened. I still continued to use it for a while before getting it fixed but I would just turn the dial manually when there was enough water in it. Flooding your meighbours (or yourselves) could be more costly than the electric bill. Even with insurance there is likely to be an excess.
I suppose setting the machine for a light "freshen up" wash at the lowest temperature for lightly soiled stuff would help but I imagine you already do that.

TurnaroundSue

Yippee:j had my FREE electricity monitor through today from the Dail Mail offer (never thought it would be received as ordered it ages ago) so cannot wait for hubby to come home and set it up - how sad is that?:rotfl:

pandapaws

Helloooooooooo!

Got my monitor a couple of days ago too Sue. It does look a bit complicated, doesn't it? I'm just as sad - I was actually excited when I realised that it was the monitor rather than a Christmas pressie in the post!

Ok, sorry I've not been too good at keeping things up to date lately, but just spent the past hour updating all the readings (using this sodding work PC which is as slow as treacle), so everyone can check their own and let me know if I've boo-booed anywhere.

Cheekymonkey - another problem with putting things on overnight is fire risk. I know it's unlikely, but it can happen - my last two dishwashers have almost gone on fire, first time because the water inlet valve broke but the heater continued to heat the food that had dripped onto it and we came home (just in time) to a house full of smoke, second time, new dishwasher, a pump or something went and we got another load of smoke out of it. I do still put things on overnight but I'm a lot more wary about it now and make sure that the dishwasher has filled with water before I'll go up to bed rather than just switching it on and disappearing.

I've got all my meter readings at home, I just need to get the bit of paper to the computer and find the time to list them all. I've not been doing particularly well at a glance, but keeping trying. Maybe once I get the owl up and running it'll give us a bit of motivation.

Welcome to the people who have joined in recently, I will try and update just as often as I can but if you don't get any response immediately, keep posting and I'll get to it eventually! Good luck!

SarahNeedle1872

Ok, a teeny bit early, but a two week result..

Day rate 1110
Night rate 1053

Must get ahold of SP though, can't sign onto my account!

pandapaws

SarahNeedle1872 wrote: »

Ok, a teeny bit early, but a two week result..

Day rate 1110
Night rate 1053

Must get ahold of SP though, can't sign onto my account!

Sarah, have I totally lost the plot with the figures? Just updated your row on the first post and it doesn't make sense. Think one of us has had minor brain failure (probably me), or you've been lighting up the whole street over Christmas!

TurnaroundSue

My readings for the week are: Electricity - 185 for 9 days usage (forgot to record at usual time) and 22 for gas (again 9 days usage). My electricity works out higher per day than I have been using, but due to the fact that we are all home and more food has been cooked than usual, I suppose it is to be expected.

Am currently paying £59 to the electricity company and owe them £81, and they wanted to increase my payment to £85 per month from January:eek: . I told them that I wasn't paying that much and as prices should come down in the next 12 months as they were all robbing us blind, I was only prepared to increase it to £70. Hopefully with the help of my new gadget and watching what electricity I use and a decrease in electricity costs, they should be owing us this time next year:D