Beware £500 electricity bill, dont end up like me act now.

mum1964

On Saturday morning I recived a correctly read electricity bill for £490.14, Checked the readings everything was correct. Once I calmed down I became logical and reasonable. Both hubby and I had worked for East Midlands Electricity albeit 10years ago.
Hubby is an electrician so we do have a lot of lights. He is always seeing new lights that customers have bought and we end up getting them as well.

OUR AVERAGE DAILY CONSUMPTION WAS 39.99 UNITS A DAY.

SO I WAS ON A MISSION. I WAS A WOMAN POSSESED.

I stormed around the house armed with a clipboard and wrote down everthing that was switched on, it was frightening. our household consists of hubby, me and 2 boys (12,13)

On standby we had 5 tv's,5 dvd players, 2 games units. 6 mobile phone chargers all plugged in without phones attached EEEK. 4 printers, 3 computers, a laptop. 4 radio alarms, 6 stero units, 2 cordless drills, a hard drvie, lamps were switched on, under cupboard lighting was switched on, etc etc etc.

Asked hubby about these things and got the standard electricans reply that they use hardly anything. Well yes alone they probalbly dont I replied but when you put them all together they BL***Y WELL DO.

After a very serious chat with all in the house, I gave them 2 options reduce this amount, or we cancel christmas.

My mission started at 11am on the 28/8/06 I read the meter every day at that time. (SAD BUT IF IT SAVES ME DOSH WHO CARES)
so far our compsumption is as follows
day 1 Day units 14.3 Night 3.5
day 2 Day units 10.7 Night 2.7
day 3 Day units 10.5 Night 2.8

Am I a happy bunny. We have not really noticed it, we have just started to be a bit more aware of what we are doing.
LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE REGARDS TO ALL

grade15

don't just think about ur purse? think about what ur doing to the environment..
energy company pollute and ur household is wasting energy..
well at least ur pulling ur socks up now!! :dance:

sarymclary

ts_aly2000 wrote:

Ahhhh, you need one of these

Here's a link to a great review of the Maplin product given above, and I'm definitely inspired to purchase one:
http://www.ciao.co.uk/plug_in_power_and_energy_monitor__Review_5569897

They retail at around £25, but I'm bidding on some on Ebay that are cheaper.

hawk

Ha ha ha ha that monitor has to be a joke, I mean it needs power aswell so its another thing plugged in.

Cardew

sarymclary wrote:

Here's a link to a great review of the Maplin product given above, and I'm definitely inspired to purchase one:
http://www.ciao.co.uk/plug_in_power_and_energy_monitor__Review_5569897

They retail at around £25, but I'm bidding on some on Ebay that are cheaper.

Comprehensive review although This quote from it is strange:

The device had probably paid for itself by now. Curiosity had taken hold. I left it permanently connected to the kettle. It takes 0.2 units of electricity to boil my kettle, Roughly 1 unit of electricity a day (25p!) Over a year .... 100 pounds! Just as much tea but only filling it to the permanent marker on the side nearly halves the power I use. Don't stick it on your your freezer, fridge and tumble drier - they use scary amounts of electricity.

1 unit of electricity costs 25p? No way! £100 also wrong.

As a matter of curiosity I tried my kettle. Filling it to the brim with 3.5 pints(2lt) with cold water from the tap used 0.14 kWh. So if anyone needed to boil 10 litres(17.5 pints) of cold water a day it would cost approx £20 a year at 8p a kWh.

Also modern efficient fridges and freezers are not scary in the amounts of electricity they use. They are when the compressor is running but that only comes on some of the time.

System

Mum1964, it must be an 'electrician thing'. MrJudi is also an electrician. I have security lighting up everywhere. I can go into my kitchen on any evening several times a night and find the security lighting at the back of my house has illuminated the whole of my garden as a cat has tripped it. Its only recently the fan out of his shed broke down as it was running day in day out morning noon and night in winter as well as summer. When i questioned the wisdom in this he would say what he always says 'they cost pennies to run'.

I have often though about pulling the fuse in the main fuse box more than once.

coraastbury

My friend is just as bad, you go around to her house and every light in the whole house is on even though there is nobody in there. The kitchen has 3 halogen bulbs all 50 watts each and this is on constantly. The worse is that they leave their garage light on day and night because the light switch is at the front of the garage and they can't get past the bikes etc to switch it on and off when they go in there. This is a fluresant strip light(sp)!!!!

Whenever I go round there I turn lights off after myself but then find them turned on again. The worse is when they come around our house and leave the lights on in ours!!! :eek:

Cardew

Judi wrote:

Mum1964, it must be an 'electrician thing'. MrJudi is also an electrician. I have security lighting up everywhere. I can go into my kitchen on any evening several times a night and find the security lighting at the back of my house has illuminated the whole of my garden as a cat has tripped it. Its only recently the fan out of his shed broke down as it was running day in day out morning noon and night in winter as well as summer. When i questioned the wisdom in this he would say what he always says 'they cost pennies to run'.

I have often though about pulling the fuse in the main fuse box more than once.

In one sense I am with ‘Mr’ Mum1964 and ‘Mr’Judi on this! Some things do cost pennies to run and it frankly doesn’t make much sense(to me) to switch off some standby items, particularly with timers, at the mains.

It seems to me that some people really have no idea of running costs and think a TV uses as much as a tumble dryer;)

To get an idea of costs, a device rated at 1 watt will cost approx 6p a month to run.

Now the wattage rating of electronic devices on standby vary widely.
TVs can vary from 0.3 watts upwards, with modern sets much better than older sets. I doubt any set less than 15 years old uses more than 10 watts. So 2p to 60p a month.

The much criticised(and with justification) Sky box has a heavy standby consumption of 14-15 watts – so even this uses less than £1 a month.
Timers on cookers, microwaves, washing machines etc rarely more than a couple of watts.

Now a post like this always seems to get the ‘green police’ into a rage and demand we save the world by switching off at the wall – they normally use their absolutely essential computer(which also uses electricity) to write their missive;)

Let me be quite clear, if anyone wants to switch off any device at the plug, that is absolutely their perogative. However for those who do not wish to, the purpose of this post is to put costs into perspective and people can make up their own mind armed with facts.

My main TV, a 32” 6 year old Sony, is rated a 0.6 watts on standby. If anyone thinks I am going to clamber over or move furniture several times a day to save 3p to 4p a month – I ain’t!