Smart meter- are we switching the right things off to save?

pixiehouse

I went around the house turning off everything that wasnt being used. got rest of family to turn lights off etc and my electric/gas bill went down by £24 a month !! But then new foster girl moved in and doesnt care so its now gone back to £ 88 a month Grrrrrrr

Man_Overboard_2

Cardew wrote: »

That point has indeed been made many times.

Most modern TV's have tiny standby consumption, and by 'modern' I mean the last 10 years.

Many complains on MSE about high electric bills, often start 'I don't leave the TV on Standby' as if they believe it is the major savings measure in the house. If the standby consumption is 1 watt(and many are less) left on 24/7 for 365 days it will cost about £1.

Similarly even modern cold fill washing machines have very low electrical consumption.

In fact if metered the water costs per cycle for washing machine and dishwasher dwarf the cost of electricity.

I am surprised at how many people don't have their PC go to standby or hibernate when not used for xminutes.

Your final sentence seems to me to contradict the drift of the first 4 paragraphs.

An earlier poster suggests that, for vegetable cooking, it is cheaper to heat water in the kettle than to heat it from cold on an electric hob - does he/she have the empty hob on full power whilst also boiling the kettle, or does he/she put the kettle-boiled water onto a stone-cold hob?

I think the OP's original post posed a very good question. Are energy suppliers in business mainly in order to profit from the sale of energy, or is their main purpose to reduce the energy consumption of us all?

hamsmith

The shower tip was good. Didn't think to just turn it off for a few minutes.

hamsmith

Man_Overboard wrote: »

I think the OP's original post posed a very good question. Are energy suppliers in business mainly in order to profit from the sale of energy, or is their main purpose to reduce the energy consumption of us all?

I can see that some feel it is obvious what is guzzling up the electricity. However no. It wasn't and I bet others also haven't thought about it. I knew my shower was 10kw but that translated into real life as ' will work better in the winter' and I knew the microwave was 800w which translated into real life as' cook for less that 750w one'.

That's about it. Now I know the meter isn't too accurate but seeing on a meter that the kettle puts the idle home consumption up to 40p per hour from 3p has made me a little more precise. And tonight I though I would use the already heated tank of water for a bath over paying for a shower.

Thanks for the comment man overboard. I am really asking if the rubbish about standby is all tick boxes on efficiency advice without disturbing the profit making. I am now sure more could be done for a lot of people. I will certainly think about ' if it heats up'. Hairdryer, straightners, etc.

spiro

hamsmith wrote: »

That's about it. Now I know the meter isn't too accurate but seeing on a meter that the kettle puts the idle home consumption up to 40p per hour from 3p has made me a little more precise. And tonight I though I would use the already heated tank of water for a bath over paying for a shower.

If the hot water tank is heated by gas why do you have an electric shower?

Norman_Castle

Most appliances are marked with the rating in watts or Kilowatts. Why would you be shocked that, say, a 2200W kettle uses 100 times the power of two 11W light bulbs?

The ratings are maximums provided to prevent sockets being overloaded. My washing machine is marked 2200 watts but uses between 5 and 2200 watts depending on what it is actually doing at any given time.

hamsmith

spiro wrote: »

If the hot water tank is heated by gas why do you have an electric shower?

Because the hot water tank is tiny and with four sweaty people only being able to shower one person per hour was getting a bit silly. So fitting an electric shower was a cheaper option that fitting a larger tank in this old house as it would have been in a different location.... It was a cheaper option. And means I am not heating the tank in the day at all.

yangptangkipperbang

The problem is that much of the "advice" given out by the energy companies is aimed at keeping UP your use of electricity whilst giving the (false) impression of "helping" you to reduce it.

The big "don't leave things in standby" campaign was a classic example. Most of the standby figures that were being bandied around were for older equipment which did have high standby figures - the favourite "nasty" being the Sky box. As has already been pointed out modern equipment uses very little energy in standby, my TV uses 400W when on, 0.4W in standby - not much point in me switching that off then spending 20mins under a 10kW electric shower !!!
When did you last see an energy company telling you NOT to have a shower ? very much the opposite in fact. Lots of domestic water systems won't cope with a shower from the hot water tank - so the "cheap" answer is to put in an electric shower - "cheap" ?? ...............not very ! (I put a pump in instead!!)

One has to understand the rationale of the energy companies. Their overriding aim is to increase their profits every year. There are two main ways to do this:
1. Increase prices
2. Sell more energy
The consumer's aim is to spend less; so as he can't buy the energy cheaper his only way out is to buy less energy - but this is the exact opposite of what the energy suppliers want/need. Hence: the message is "unplug your phone charger and install an electric shower".
And of course when those nasty Arabs or Russians increase the price of oil/gas they can always hide an increase in there and then blame it all on someone else.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the public have a minimal understanding of what devices consume most energy and just get swept along by the "misinformation" and unplug the 'phone charger - then post on MSE when their bills don't fall.

hamsmith

Throughout lack of education. I would like to see more independent people like debt advisors and green campaigning charities pick up the advice where the electric companies are at.

Same with alcohol drink aware sites. Owned by the companies. Research says you should not give your kids the odd drink under 16 due to the rewiring of the brain yet the drink aware advice to share the odd bit from aged 7 like they do on the continent.

Just surprised me that no one is picking up the energy saving advice and that people who DO understand it better expect others to know the same. i never thought that basically if it heats it is a high usage item. Makes sense now and will help me to continue to pro-actively keep the bills down.

spiro

hamsmith wrote: »

Throughout lack of education. I would like to see more independent people like debt advisors and green campaigning charities pick up the advice where the electric companies are at.

Same with alcohol drink aware sites. Owned by the companies. Research says you should not give your kids the odd drink under 16 due to the rewiring of the brain yet the drink aware advice to share the odd bit from aged 7 like they do on the continent.

Just surprised me that no one is picking up the energy saving advice and that people who DO understand it better expect others to know the same. i never thought that basically if it heats it is a high usage item. Makes sense now and will help me to continue to pro-actively keep the bills down.

So who are these people if not the ones you are talking about? http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/?gclid=CK-RiL7YvrMCFerItAodoBoA5w