To everyone who thinks they have a Meter problem...

Madfish

Like a lot of people on this forum I have questioned the amount I seem to be putting on my pre pay electric meter the last few months (approx £90 per month). I know rates have increased a lot but it still seemed high.

Like most posters I looked at what was running and figured it cant be that much, I then found this on argos website:

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?storeId=10001&catalogId=1500001151&langId=-1&searchTerms=owl&Submit=GO+%3E

I 've had it running now for a day or 2 and it's very impressive, it gives a real time update of how much you are currently spending once you have entered the unit rate into it, I was very surprised how much the little things add up, we currently spend on average during the day approx 10-12p per hour and more when cooking, but we have found that just turning off the odd light here and there (even low energy ones) can drop the rate by a big amount, also for everyone who leaves ther PC/laptop on all day it may be worth turning off as it equates to about 4p per hour, not a lot I know but consider that 15 hours a day 365 days a year and it's £200 +

Fire_Fox

Helpful calculations, thanks.

Cardew

Madfish wrote: »

I was very surprised how much the little things add up, we currently spend on average during the day approx 10-12p per hour and more when cooking, but we have found that just turning off the odd light here and there (even low energy ones) can drop the rate by a big amount, also for everyone who leaves ther PC/laptop on all day it may be worth turning off as it equates to about 4p per hour, not a lot I know but consider that 15 hours a day 365 days a year and it's £200 +

That I am afraid is totally misleading.

Most desktop PC's and monitor use around 150w to 200w. Laptops use typically 30w.

So assuming you pay 12p for a kWh it will cost 1.5p to 2.4p an hour for a desktop if you are silly enough to not have power management* activated.

A laptop will cost 0.3p an hour.

*You can easily set your PC to switch to standby after a set period if no key is pressed, say, 10 mins.

A large energy saving bulb will cost about 0.1p an hour to run.

maggie21

Hiya,

I am on a tariff with Southern Electric which gives me something like this free. Its called Better Plan. If you reduce your energy consumption you get a payment (I think it's £10 if you reduce 15% and £20 if you reduce 20%) You also get £10 if you go onto paperless billing and you get discount on energy efficent appliances, theres loads of other benefits as well, but I mainly joined for this monitor.

I'm not sure if you have to pay by direct debit though. Although, you get a discount for paying this way too.

Madfish

So assuming you pay 12p for a kWh it will cost 1.5p to 2.4p an hour

Thats about £130 per year then at 2.4p, and most current PC's have 300w supplies, not all but most...

also Southern electric are currently charging 15.7p per unit on prepay. Not totally misleading just different strokes......

Cardew

Madfish wrote: »

Thats about £130 per year then at 2.4p, and most current PC's have 300w supplies, not all but most...

...

Mine has 750w and I suspect the vast majority of PCs have 500w or bigger.

However what has the size of a PC power supply got to do with consumption?

A family car might have 150 brake horse power, but most of the time it will be using a fraction of that power - 30bhp at 70mph.

My PC and monitor uses about 150 -160 watts when working, I have it set so it switches to standby if it is not used for 10 mins where it uses a couple of watts. All versions of an Operating System have that facility.

I suggest that if you are interested in money-saving you would be better off to change from a silly tariff charging 15.7p/kWh to an internet tariff and pay around 10p/kWh.