Gas vs Electricity - user test results wanted

tomsidebottom

Hmm - does seem like that might be wrong. My energy monitor rests at about 25 W when nothing else is on and the fridge is at rest. It did used to rest at 0 W, which is weird...

Incidentally I don't know whether anyone else has found this, but after I got my energy monitor I used it to hunt down things that were just sapping energy when they were just plugged in. Turns out that anything that used a power supply that was warm to the touch was sapping energy - which is obvious once you think about it for a second as that energy is being transferred into heat. I've since either replaced those products, or I just keep them turned off at the plug when I'm not using them. All of my LED read outs like the oven and the TV standby light only appear to use minuscule amounts of energy so I don't bother turning those off.

Anyway, it must be that different boilers use different amounts of electricity both when in use and when at rest.

I think in terms of accuracy with the energy monitors, yes they're probably inaccurate, but how inaccurate? There's probably a document somewhere relating to the accuracy of those things. I know with sound level meters they're rated i.e. Class 1, Class 2 etc. Class 1 meters are accurate to a certain percentage etc. Also, I doubt that the inaccuracy is a percentage - it's probably more like a fluctuating constant i.e. it's always wrong by about 30 W. I doubt that - during heavy usage - it would read 3 kW when only 2 kW were being used (out by 50%). This would hold with what I've seen of low end sound level meters, which are also very inaccurate at low sound levels, but tend to be very good at high sound levels. I guess just taking two readings on the electricity meter would be the most reliable way - assuming that the resting usage of the boiler is constant.

Jalexa - flat out the boiler runs at 27 kWh (88p per hour), but this only happens for about 4 minutes, which is how long it takes the boiler to get the water temperature up to 75 degrees. After that it fluctuates between 12-16 kWh when it's firing.

prosaver - you forgot to factor in the impact that no central heating would have on the value of your house.

Once you start getting into how your personal bill works and how much you use in each day and in different parts of the year it gets so complicated hey? Do you think they make the billing system so complicated on purpose? j2011 your method sounds like a good idea.

I'm gonna see how my boiler heats my kitchen compared to our gas fire we have in there. Must do some proper work!

j2011

I have a small 6 watt pump that cycles on and off every 15 minutes and I can see the reading rise and fall by 6 watts every 15 minutes on my Eon energy monitor.

I must have the only one in existence that can display a difference of 6 watts when a 6 watt pump switches on and off.

Cardew

j2011 wrote: »

I have a small 6 watt pump that cycles on and off every 15 minutes and I can see the reading rise and fall by 6 watts every 15 minutes on my Eon energy monitor.

I must have the only one in existence that can display a difference of 6 watts when a 6 watt pump switches on and off.

The issue with the monitor is not a failure to read and register 6 watts on top of consumption above, say, 300 watts. However the problem is the inaccuracy at very low levels of consumption. The monitor just measures mush(noise and spikes)

Cardew

tomsidebottom wrote: »

Once you start getting into how your personal bill works and how much you use in each day and in different parts of the year it gets so complicated hey? Do you think they make the billing system so complicated on purpose?

Yes - confusion marketing! Although it is only NPower that vary the gas charges during the year(seasonal weighting/Sculpting)