Please help solve an argument!!

Magentasue

And halogen spotlights, of course.:rolleyes:

Sirbendy

yep. When our Mwave gave up the ghost, one of the "qualifiers" for replacement must be "no clock or silly display, and no standby power usage". I've now got a £30 2 dial "ping" microwave..nice and basic, zero power when not on.

Washing machines - we have an A rated, modern Indesit (WIB111 or something like that). It uses 10 watts just sat in "soft off". As long as it's on at the mains, it's costing money. So off it goes. Poor show.

We cheat...each room has it's equipment on a multi-way strip. When it's not in use/overnight, flicking one switch kills the room dead. Some phone chargers are OK to leave plugged in with no drain..mine drops off my usage meter as soon as it's got no load.

As soon as I've unpacked my solar/battery setup again phones will be charged by that instead.

Our rule is "no standby - if it's not used, off it goes at the wall.". Was costing £5 a week on our prepay meter..we'll see what happens now we've moved to a new place, but I'm not expecting more.

Joyful

One thing you can do is get an energy monitor that attaches to the meter cables. You can then go round the house switching things off and seeing how much the consumption drops. It will also show if you have something power hungry still left on that you were unaware of.

Cardew

Joyful wrote: »

One thing you can do is get an energy monitor that attaches to the meter cables. You can then go round the house switching things off and seeing how much the consumption drops. It will also show if you have something power hungry still left on that you were unaware of.

For the OP's puposes, you are far better getting a £6.99 power meter from Lidl that checks the consumption of all plug in appliances.

The Owl type meter you are referring to isn't suited to find out if an appliance is using a watt or two when switched off.

It will also prove to people that standby consumption is not the problem loads of people seem to think it is. Most TV's on standby cost pence per year.

By all means switch items off if you wish, but so many posts on MSE seem to assume that all they need to do is switch appliances off standby and they have solved their problems of high consumption.

Magentasue

I think there's a lot more to this one than a few things on standby - two people, averaging 16kwh over 17 hours. Expect it's a combination of medium rated things - ps3 and toys, spotlights, electric shower etc