Electrical idiot, please help!

boschiba

right, I have been on to Scottish Power today and managed to reduce our dd payment from £260 a month to £244 - still vvvv high.

the chap says that we use £199 of electric a month, and £45 of gas (oven and ch). this is a big draughty old house, but the electric seems very high to me.

please can you tell me in very simple terms the best way to reduce electric costs? hubby says things like computers, tvs etc use very little in standby mode, but I'm not sure - so these are all left on standby all the time at the moment. 2 tower computers and 2 laptops, plus 4 phones on charge, 2 ipods.

I already do stuff like switch off the lights; both freezers are full most of the time, although they are both about 10-12 years old; dishwasher only run when full; washing done at 30 degrees; tumbledrier used only occasionally. no electric fires etc.

he says its all my fault for using the oven too much!!!

Goldensock

Rather than telling us how much you are paying for your DD payments it would be easier to work out if you knew how many kWh's you were using? Do you have any form of electrical heating? If you are leaving everything on standby 'all the time' the amount of electric you are using will soon add up.

You need to sit down & work out what you use & how long you use it for.

Golden

flea72

that doesnt seem right if you are only using electricity to power basic household appliances.

i currently pay £55/m with eon - similar amount of appliances, use the oven for at least an hour most days and for about 8-10hrs one day a week, when i do bulk baking. i too leave everything on standby

the only difference is i charge my laptops and phones and then unplug them, so they arent on charge 24/7 as they are being used - but still i dont think they would cause an electricity bill to be 3 times what i pay

do you have an immersion heater?

F

chris1973

please can you tell me in very simple terms the best way to reduce electric costs?

At basic nuts and bolts level = turn things off and cut down on the use of high energy equipment. If you have kids, give them a football / Bike and point them in the direction of the park for 8 hours at the weekends and school holidays, so you can turn off their collection of Computers, Monitors, TV's Xboxes, PS3's, phone chargers, etc etc.

Mundane things like TVs and Xboxes dont use large amounts of Electricity during occasional use, but multiple existances of them being playing 12 hours a day can mount up to be a significant amount of domestic daytime use. I know a family of 4, who at any one time during the weekends / evenings can have 3 large TV's, 2 Xboxes and a computer + monitor running and that alone is potentially over 1KW of continuous consumption even before lights, white goods etc is taken into account.

You also need to look at what lighting you have. Usually the biggest culprit are those little halogen downlighters that you see finding their way into kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and even hallways. These can be rated at upto 50 watts each and because their beam angles are narrow, inevitably they are fitted in multiples, as many as 6 or 7 in a large room. 7 of these will potentially use upto 350W of Electricity and this is bad news, especially if you have more than one room using them, and they tend to be left on for long periods.

Look at replacing all lighting with Energy Saving versions, even those outdoor PIR floodlights can be replaced with 24W energy saving lamps in the existing fitting.

Appliances which use a lot of power are Tumble Dryers, Washing Machines on long cycles, Immersion Heaters, Halogen Uplighters, Fan Heaters, Convector Heaters, Spa Baths, Electric Showers, Electric Cookers, Deep Fat Fryers, Dishwashers - cut back on using these as much as possible.

victor2

Read your electricity meter on a daily basis for a few weeks, to get an idea of your current average daily usage. Then you can look at changing things and see what sort of difference it makes. If you've got energy saving light bulbs and don't use electricity for heating, then your usage won't vary much over the year, only increasing slightly in the winter due mainly to lights being on for longer.
Do you have an electric shower? If so, how long is it running for each day?
Note down all your electric appliances and how long they are on each day. Your two freezers could be using a fair bit. Consider getting a plug-in monitor (less than £10 off your favourite auction site) if you want to get an idea what each of them uses in a day.

rogerblack

You can spend ages trying to work out what each thing 'should' use.
Or, for about a tenner, buy one of these. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Energenie-Energy-Saving-Power-Meter-/320503970289?pt=UK_ConsumerElectronics_PowerAdaptors_SM&hash=item4a9f8679f1

This will let you over a couple of hours or so, go over every single appliance in your house and work out what amount of power each appliance is using.
The amount of power an appliance use is measured in watts. If it uses a watt for an hour - it's used a watt-hour.

This is quite a small amount of electricity - a unit is a thousand watt-hours, a kilowatt-hour, a kWh.

Over a year (8760 hours) a device using one watt all the time costs you around a pound.
For example, if you've got a clock radio that uses 15W, and replace it with one that uses 3W, then you'll save around 12 quid a year. As many clock radios are about this price, it pays off fast!

In addition, you should at some point turn off every single electrical appliance in your home, and check that your official electricity meter stops indicating (by the disk turning, or the light flashing) any power used.

boschiba

ok I think i will invest in one of those meters - I do find it quite confusing!

we do have quite a lot of those downlighters someone mentioned but thought they were low voltage - will check and keep turning them off.
thanks everyone

victor2

boschiba wrote: »

we do have quite a lot of those downlighters someone mentioned but thought they were low voltage - will check and keep turning them off.
thanks everyone

It's not the voltage that's important, but the wattage. A 20W low voltage bulb will cost just as much as a 20W mains voltage bulb to run.

With your house "idle" take a meter reading, then take a reading an hour later. Do a similar thing in the daylight and in the evening when it's dark. That will give you an idea what your household lighting is costing, but don't let any other heavy user such as an electric oven, interfere with the readings.

rogerblack

boschiba wrote: »

ok I think i will invest in one of those meters - I do find it quite confusing!

we do have quite a lot of those downlighters someone mentioned but thought they were low voltage - will check and keep turning them off.
thanks everyone

They are low voltage - but not low power! The two don't always go together.

Downlighters may be 50Watts each. Say 10 of them is 500W.

500W*5 hours/day = 2500 watt-hours, or 2.5 units.
2.5*30 days = 75 units a month, around a tenner.

Consumerist

I would say that your first priority is to cut down those drafts. A few pounds spent on draft exluders around doors could save you a fortune. If you don't have double-glazing you should consider it, otherwise cling film over all windows will also help a great deal as well as heavy/lined curtains.

A visit to the Energy Saving Trust website may offer more suggestions and point you in the direction of any grants which might be available to you.