Onwards to freedom!

Karmacat

Squirrel, I *love* that you're so conscious about the time vs reward vs commitment of any extra work undertaken, from work at your actual job to a few surveys here and there.  Once you know your priorities, that exercise becomes a lot easier.

And as for the electricity useage research - well, pure research is what usually provides breakthroughs in the scientific world 😀⭐ so you're amongst very good company.  It may not have any consequences - but it may.  And if it does, you'll know about them because of the research.  

PS - it's my loss that I can't follow what you were writing, its not that its boring.  I have a block of some sort about electricity - ohms, amps, volts and all the rest, and how it relates to appliances.  Possibly because I don't have a use for it while I'm doing the research, though I've got ideas for projects.  But life is never calm enough that I can devote enough time to the research *and* the project for everything to make sense.  Sigh 🙄

SuperSecretSquirrel

Time for another long and boring energy post 😁 Relax guys, I only have one more planned after this one 😝

I've monitored the electric meter for a month, we used 211kwh in total - a daily minimum of 4kwh, and a daily maximum of 11kwh. I know not all months are created equal, but since we've not used electric heaters at all yet, and don't really intend on using them much at all this winter, it's hopefully a reasonable average. We'll use less TV, kettle, oven, dryer, etc in the summer months, more dehumidifier and maybe a bit of electric heat in the winter months, it should hopefully balance out. With that in mind I estimate a year's electricity at around 2600kwh.

The current energy price cap is based on an average home using 2900kwh of electricity and 12000kwh of gas. With average prices of 34.0p per kwh and 46.4p per day for electricity, and 10.3p per kwh and 28.5p per day for gas, they arrive at a total annual cost just under £2500.

In the year June 2021 to June 2022 we used 4284kwh of electricity, and approximately 4336kwh of lpg. At current prices that's about £2300 for the year. We didn't pay that much last year, but that's how much we'd expect to pay this year with the same usage levels.

This year we plan to avoid the electric heaters as much as possible, and rely more on the central heating. Based on November electricity use, and a fairly high estimate for lpg, I'm expecting the split to be closer to 2600kwh of electricity, and 7885kwh of lpg between June 2022 and June 2023. At current prices that's about £2200. If my estimates are about right we'll have a warmer house and save £100 a year by favouring central heating over electric heaters in individual rooms.

If we lived in the average area with mains gas we'd be paying about £1950 for the same amount of electricity and gas that I've estimated for this year. That's a £250 annual surcharge that we pay to live semi rurally. Worth every penny 😁

In all seriousness though, we've felt ripped off in the past, assuming we were paying vastly more than the average household with the same level of energy consumption as us. Having crunched the numbers, and considered the infrastructure, it feels much fairer. It has taken massive price increases for me to bother looking at things in detail, but although our energy will cost a lot more than it used to, I think I'll actually begrudge the bills a little less than I did last year.

The electricity monitor is on the washer for a week now. Just the dryer left after that's done, then I'll have my top of the pops top ten electricity burners ready to share. Try to contain your excitement 🤣

PS - KC, I'm not expecting anyone outside my household (or maybe just me even ☺️) to take much interest in my energy ramblings. It's all very much our specifics. The general ideas of monitoring appliances and estimating use so you can spot if anything needs particular attention (maybe replace bulbs/appliances with low energy equivalents), or making informed cooking and heating decisions (for most it's easy, mains gas all the way, no electric heat) might be useful, but the nitty gritty numbers probably aren't. They're useful to me though, so I post them here so I can refer back in the future 😁

savingholmes

Energy ramblings are important at the moment. I can't believe how much I've reduced our usage through more conscious consuming and consideration of alternatives like an electric blanket. Still further to go though.

SuperSecretSquirrel

I think it's definitely a subject worth thinking about SH, and if you can make pain free changes it would be silly not to!

I estimate our household lights cost about £20 a year in total to run. Pre led bulbs we'd be looking at about £360. Our main TV gets an awful lot of use these days, and I estimate it costs us £100 a year in electricity. The one it replaced would have cost us at least £220 for the same amount of viewing time (thats using the most energy efficient setting, which we wouldnt always use). Then there's line drying whenever possible - we have been guilty of throwing everything in the dryer in the past, those days are long gone! I can't quantify that saving yet, but I'm sure it will be very noticeable! All small changes that have little to no impact on daily life but a big impact on the bills.

Good news on PBs this month, a £175 win 😁 My biggest monthly win, equaled only once before back in January 2018. It was sorely needed, and has raised the annual rate of return to 1.2% for me. I'd have earned 1.4% over that time in an easy access account, a difference of £100 for the year. Worth it for the million pound dream factor. Looking forward to starting 2023 with a huge win... I'm not greedy, doesn't have to be 7 figures, 6 would be ok 🤑

Karmacat

That's a great PB win, Squirrel!  And how interesting to see the reduction in consumption from energy saving devices - that's really worthwhile to know about.

savingholmes

Glad you got a win

 
There are savings accounts offering 7% currently so worth exploring 

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks both 🙂

Turns out I technically won my biggest ever prize this month… Back in 2018 I won seven £25 prizes in a single draw. This time I won £100 and £50 and £25. I'm fairly sure this is the first time I've ever had a single prize greater than £25. A silly distinction, but I'm easily amused 🤣

I've been trying to keep my accounts to a minimum recently, but 7% is hard to refuse! I've reduced my 2.75% easy access monthly savings by £300, that can go to the 7% regular saver instead, thanks SH👍

SuperSecretSquirrel

It’s time for my long awaited electricity monitoring summary! I know you’ve all (especially Ed) been waiting with baited breath for this day, and now it has finally arrived - rejoice! 🤣

We have quite a few appliances that haven’t been monitored (heaters, various kitchen appliances, old game consoles, old laptops, fans, a spare vacuum cleaner, various gardening and diy tools) - none of them have been used in the past couple of months, and of the handful of items that might get plugged in at some point this year, the amount they'll get used should be minimal. The heaters have the potential to use a lot of electricity, but they are only there as an emergency option if we have boiler problems, their intended/estimated use is zero hours.

Everything that has a three pin plug on it and has been used in the past couple of months has been monitored. We’ve then estimated the amount of time each appliance is likely to be used throughout the course of a year to arrive at a total kwh per appliance per year estimate. These values should be reasonably accurate.

Then there’s the handful of electricity consumers without three pin plugs that can’t be monitored. They are the kitchen hobs, extractor fans, and all our lighting. The lighting is easy - each bulb has a specified wattage and we can estimate their annual use fairly accurately. The extractor fans have a specified max wattage, but in normal use apparently use less than a quarter of this amount, armed with that knowledge estimating was straightforward. The hobs were trickier. It involved waiting for an empty house, turning all circuits other than the cooker off, waiting for the meter to click over to a new kwh, then seeing how many pans could be brought to the boil then simmered for a certain amount of time before the meter clicked over to the next kwh. It also involved a stopwatch and a video recording of the meter’s impulse indicator light. Yeah, I went a bit far with this one trying to get a reasonable estimate, what can I say, I have a warped idea of what is fun 🤣

Having summed up all these individual estimates blind, I arrived at a total electricity consumption estimate of 2643.6kwh for the year. That’s really close to my earlier 2600kwh estimate for the year (based on November meter readings), so that gives me some confidence that I’m not massively wrong.

So without further ado (drum roll please!) The top electricity consumers in the Squirrel household are…

1. Dryer - 588kwh
2. Oven - 445.7kwh
3. TV - 279.6kwh
4. Hobs - 181.8kwh
5. Washer - 169.3kwh
6. Kettle - 155kwh
7. Dehumidifier - 105.9kwh
8. Freezer - 104.3kwh
9. Router - 73.6kwh
10. Other freezer - 67.8kwh
11. Fridge - 62.6kwh
12. Lighting - 56.7kwh
13. Boiler - 52.4kwh
14. Microwave - 45.1kwh
15. Air fryer - 44.6kwh
16. Other TV - 43kwh

These 16 appliances total an estimated 2475.4kwh per year. The dryer being top of the pops was no surprise, but still, ouch… The main TV gets a lot of use, before we replaced with a more energy efficient model there’s a good chance the old one in regular use would have taken the number one spot 😵 I was surprised at how power hungry the router was, I suppose we could turn it off each night, but in all honesty we probably won’t…

We have a few appliances in the 20-40kwh per year range - slow cooker, laptop, games console, toaster. They total an estimated 107.1kwh per year.

Then we have a few in the 5-20kwh per year range - extractor fans, mobile phones, another laptop, a small tv, a vacuum cleaner, and the clothes iron. They total an estimated 51.8kwh per year. The iron has a reasonably high wattage, but it doesn’t see an awful lot of use, so it’s consumption is surprisingly low.

Finally, we have a fair amount of appliances that are estimated to use less than 5kwh each per year - another games console, another laptop, a power bank, two stereos, an air freshener, hand held vacuum cleaner, tablet, streaming device, electric toothbrushes, window vac, nightlight, camp lights, and an alarm clock. They total an estimated 9.3kwh per year.

It’s clear that it’s really not worth us sweating the small stuff. The top 10 appliances account for over 80% of our electricity consumption, so more air drying and less roast dinners would make a far bigger difference to our bills than obsessing over vampire phone chargers and the like (as an aside, a fast charger with no device connected uses less than 1w - my monitor couldn’t tell if it was drawing any power at all).

As if this post isn’t already long enough for most people to just scroll right past, I’ll add one more observation. I categorised all our electricity consuming devices as Food, Laundry, Technology/Entertainment, and Comfort/Hygiene (I know there’s some overlap, but laundry deserved its own category). Summing up the estimates for the appliances in each category tells us we spend most of our electricity bill on what I’d say are essentials (storing and preparing food, cleaning clothes, bedding, towels, and ourselves, and keeping the house clean and comfortably habitable). Very little goes on frivolous entertainment and modern electronics - our main TV is a big headline item, but other than that the Technology/Entertainment category is pretty low consumption.

1. Food - 1164.5kwh
2. Laundry - 762.3kwh
3. Technology/Entertainment - 481.1kwh
4. Comfort/Hygiene - 235.7kwh

So, what have I learned from all this? A few interesting nuggets like the router uses way more than I expected it to, and the iron uses way less than I expected it to, but mainly I’ve realised that it’s all about the big beasts - that top ten, and honestly, there’s very little we can do about them. We’ve tried the clothes on a rack in front of a dehumidifier now and it was really rubbish, so if line drying isn’t an option due to the weather we won’t be shying away from the dryer. We could eat less roast dinners, but we probably won’t. We already use the air fryer / slow cooker / microwave instead of the oven / hobs when it makes sense to do so. We won’t reduce how often we do laundry. The number of cups of tea and coffee is very unlikely to reduce.. I think we’re pretty much at the point where our electricity consumption is what it is. We won’t be trying to reduce it much at all, but at least we know that we’re pretty much as low as it goes without making sacrifices we don’t really want to (unless we really have to), so have a good figure for future bill estimations as and when the cap changes.

Unfortunately I can’t really get this scientific with the LPG, so I suppose I’ll have to go back to using this diary to talk about financials instead of energy monitoring now 🤣

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all! 🎄

Karmacat

Great post Squirrel!  Like you, I'm shocked at how much the router is: years ago, I used to switch mine off every day, and I often had difficulty in getting online again (I was with Virgin Media at the time, in a different house).  When I rang them, they said that routers weren't supposed to ever be switched off, "and they only cost pennies anyway".  Hmmm.  

Anyway ... Happy Christmas!  And A Happy New Year!  🎄✨🌈🍾🌼

South_coast

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

The hobs were trickier. It involved waiting for an empty house, turning all circuits other than the cooker off, waiting for the meter to click over to a new kwh, then seeing how many pans could be brought to the boil then simmered for a certain amount of time before the meter clicked over to the next kwh. It also involved a stopwatch and a video recording of the meter’s impulse indicator light. Yeah, I went a bit far with this one 

Yes. Yes you did. But I love it 🤣!

I'm eagerly awaiting the big reveal of the next obsession, but in the meantime have a fabulous Christmas to all the SSS household 🎄