how to cut electric

moonrakerz

CLAPTON wrote:

wattage meters can be purchased from electrical retailers e.g. maplin for £20-30
basically you plug the meter into the 13 amp socket and the appliance's plug into the meter and it tells you the wattage being used.

The label on the appliance tells you the wattage ! why buy something else ? Especially for £20-£30.

garret1

you can now buy a kettle that measure how much water you need to boil and saves loads of energy. Costs about £35 but saves in the long run. My biggest bug bear is OH filling the kettle to the brim and then letting it cool and reboiling it....well...maybe not my biggest bug bear.

nillhouse

moonrakerz wrote:

It's worth considering how much electricity various types of appliance use.

General rule of thumb - the more heat they produce - the more they cost to run.

Have look at your appliances (or the hand book) and you can easily work out how much they cost to run.
Look for the power rating of the item - xxxW or xkW (thousands of Watts)
a thousand Watts for one hour kWh ( a unit) costs about 7.5P.

I've just had a quick look round about me - a few examples:-

32" CRT TV 125W in use. 3W in Standby. 1P an hour to watch, 1/2P a day in standby.

14" Portable TV:: 60W. 1/2P an hour to watch.

DVD Player. 11W. 1P for 10 hrs (plus the TV !)

Jug Kettle 2500W. 20P an hour. It just took 2mins 10secs to boil a litre of water for my tea ! About a penny a pot.

Tumble Drier. 2500W. Similar to kettle, except it takes a bit longer than the kettle !

Vacuum cleaner. 1000W. 7.5P an hour

Ceramic 4 ring Hob. 5780W. 44P an hour ! That is with all four rings on full. Perhaps 22P in "normal" useage.

Oven Electric (Double). 5583W. Similar to hob

Conventional Light Bulb: 100W. 10hrs for 7.5P
Low Energy Light Bulb:: 20W. 50 hrs for 7.5P ( and they last 8 times as long as a conventional one)

The first thing to do is to fill your house with low energy lamps. They are coming down to reasonable prices now - especially if you buy multi-packs.

Generally the less you use something the more you save - BUT, they say that a modern dishwasher (for example) is a more efficient, and cheaper way, of washing up than doing it by hand !

Could someone who is quite brainy, please work out a bigger list, like this and make it a sticky?

Thanks, great post BTW.:T

CLAPTON

some random observations

1. security lights (those things that come on when a person walks by, or a passing cat, car, fox etc) these are often 500 watts , so cost about 5p per hour. So if and only if they are badly adjusted, so they are on a lot, can cost £5 per month.

2. electric showers, these can be up to 9kw but normally aren't on very long but if you have a large family that like long showers that say add add up to an hour a day, this could cost an amazing £27 per month.

3. wall lights...now individuals light bulbs don't cost a great deal, although low wattage bulbs cost less, but friends have very attractive wall candle light clusters ...4 lots of doubles with 60 watt bulbs in a single room cost about £7 per month

4. similarly those lovely spot lights, individually only 60 w but often there are lots and lots of them.

5. urban myth that it costs more to turn off and on things like computers or fluorence tubes than to run them all the time....not so, turn them off.

6. there is no difference if you switch off at the wall 13 amp sockets than if you un plug: but leaving things on standby can cost you something.

7. tumble dryers...if you have sporty kids and do a lot of washing and drying, tumble drying for an hour and half a day costs you £11 per month.

8. It is a fundamental law of nature that a house with teenagers has every single light on, has every tv, stereo etc on irrespective of whether anyone is in the room.

9. this room i'm sitting in, 6 x 60 w candle lights, 2x 100 w central lights, TV & sky on, dvd&stereo & VCR on standby, and the PC on

southernscouser

ruth_helen wrote:

Hi all, for those of you that have an electric kettle but cook on gas, bin the kettle and buy a gas hob one. Electric kettles cost a bomb to run

Or if you have got an electric kettle only boil the amount of water you need!

Thriftylady

I posted a couple of days ago saying I though it seemed really cheap, and I woke in the middle of the night, realised I had got it all wrong and its £16 per week, not month, and that thats not too cheap at all, haven't been able to get near my computer until now, and have just spent a day and a half thinking that I'd be coming back onto the board to see everyone tearing me apart for being so stupid. So its a relief to see that DFWs are a forgiving lot, and realise that a wee mistake doesn't mean you're an idiot!

Anyway, sorry for getting the wrong end of the stick!

Where I live its not possible to switch electricity supplier, so all these tips on reducing waste are of particular interest to me, which is why the thread caught my eye in the first place.

newleaf

Have you looked at the price comparison sites? Perhaps you need to consider changing your supplier. You can follow a link from the Phones and Utilities page of this website and find lots of information. I've taken the plunge myself this week and changed supplier, it was simple to do - took no more than 10 minutes, all sorted online. Good luck.