Free npower home energy monitor

Barnetbear

Roddy - On the face of it, you're right. However, believe it or not some people are unaware of what can push their bill up, and this sort of gadget can alert them to things like over-filling the kettle (although I use a gas kettle that whistles, it's great and reminds me of my er rather unexciting childhood!!) and how much juice something uses on standby. The thing with standby is we all used to get told to leave things on standby because switching them on from cold can damage the circuit of an item like a TV and shorten its life. After all, light bulbs tend to blow when you switch them on, not usually suddenly blowing out mid-illumination.
But now they tell us standby is bad! If it shortens my TV's life and I have to fork out £500 for another one, then I'd rather have left it on standby as that's unlikely to cost as much in a few years.

I suspect we all make these energy savings to save money and then the suppliers will in any case put the price of energy up even more to compensate for their loss of income by us using more energy efficient products. These could be the last few years of anything like real savings to be made. I hope the manufacturers do bring out more practical and cheap solar panels that work with an overcast sky, that's got to be what we really need to be 50% self-sufficient in each home, that throughout the world is the only thing that will really reduce carbon footprints.

Barnetbear

Up and running in less than 5 mins, easy, good unit, easy to use and live with. Nice green glow display, very swish! I can see I'm running a tight ship here energy wise, which my bills reflect. Nevertheless, with inflationary pressures, I fear electric and gas bills will rise, I'm already putting money aside to pay for a solar panel sooner or later, although with inflation as it is and savings rates appallingly low, going to need to rely heavily on solar panel technology prices coming down in price - as most things do once they get more mass produced.

chalkysoil

And I just read that the VAT on electricity, gas & oil is going up from 5% to 6% in January. I missed that before in the budget blurb

jenniewb

Barnetbear wrote: »

I suspect we all make these energy savings to save money and then the suppliers will in any case put the price of energy up even more to compensate for their loss of income by us using more energy efficient products.

Exactly my fear!

roddydogs

chalkysoil wrote: »

And I just read that the VAT on electricity, gas & oil is going up from 5% to 6% in January. I missed that before in the budget blurb

No it aint

Barnetbear

jenniewb wrote: »

Exactly my fear!

I think the best scenario is we get the same bill but for less usage. I can't imagine why any power companies would long term want to help reduce what revenue they make from us.

chalkysoil wrote: »

And I just read that the VAT on electricity, gas & oil is going up from 5% to 6% in January. I missed that before in the budget blurb

Link, pls? I can't find it in the press and the report is too tedious to read http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/junebudget_easyread.htm

JasonLVC

Its not going up to 6% in january.

Insurance Premium Tax (the tax you pay on top of your car/home insurance - and which is not VAT) is going up from 5% to 6% from January 2010.....but electric and gas will still be at 5% (reduced rate of VAT).

jordanb84

not got mines yet

Barnetbear

jordanb84 wrote: »

not got mines yet

Well, I never thought I'd get mine, I heard the anecdote "9 and a half weeks" from the Npower telephonist and chuckled. But lo, it came to pass! And pretty much to the day it took 9 1/2 weeks! If you are an NPower customer, login to your account and click the order box for free energy monitor if it isn't greyed out because it's on order already. Take care upon installation to not misunderstand what wire you need to put the monitor cable on, be careful not to unscrew anything that could be hazardous. If in doubt, call a qualified person as electric shocks ain't fun (I've had a few in the distant past and been very lucky so far. Or in the words of the mystic, allegedly "It was not your time!" :rotfl: ).

JasonLVC wrote: »

Its not going up to 6% in january.

Insurance Premium Tax (the tax you pay on top of your car/home insurance - and which is not VAT) is going up from 5% to 6% from January 2010.....but electric and gas will still be at 5% (reduced rate of VAT).

Thanks.

Another tip: Making any sort of a cup of coffee using the electric kettle? You don't need boiling water. If the water you're using does not need to be boiled first for hygiene reasons (mostly it won't !) then switch the kettle off just before it starts to boil. Over a year that's quite a saving on the electricity. Some rumours (most probably will remain unproven) also suggest coffee made with boiling water is a serious health risk. Many instant coffee labels will say hot water rather than boiling water, anyway.

Also might be of interest http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3027/How-healthy-cup-coffee.html

chalkysoil

JasonLVC wrote: »

Its not going up to 6% in january.

Insurance Premium Tax (the tax you pay on top of your car/home insurance - and which is not VAT) is going up from 5% to 6% from January 2010.....but electric and gas will still be at 5% (reduced rate of VAT).

Thanks all, good news then, I read it in an email promoting change your energy company... since deleted and I can't remember which company it was. My mistake to not check up on what I read.