How can I save on my electric bill?

bigpaws23

The biggest change to our consumption has been putting a timer on the immersion heater.
Rather than having it 'on' 24/7 it now heats up for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon.
I'm also turning everything off at the wall at night except the fridge and freezer.

I'm still in the early stages of doing my own experimentation, but these two things are now saving us 9 units a day. We were using 21 units a day and now we're on about 12.

It is a case of every little bit that you do adds up.

Changing to energy saver bulbs as the old ones run out, switching things off standby, only heating up the water you need in the kettle etc.
As Cardew says, these don't make for spectacular savings by themselves but once you add up the turning off of the router, turning off the PC, taking the heating down by 1 degree, switching off unused lights etc it makes significant changes to your overall consumption.

It is interesting to start by taking a morning and a nighttime reading and then going around to spot where that electricity is going.
We were getting through 3.5 units between going to bed and getting up which I thought was awful, considering that some people on another thread were reporting just 7 units in a 24 hours period.
Since putting the immersion on a timer and switching things off at the wall, we're using just 0.7 units in a night.................

How much electricity are you using and are you an all-electric household or do you have gas / oil as well?

bigpaws x

skr00ge

Cardew wrote: »

My Ferrari(I wish) has 500 horsepower; that doesn't mean it is using 500 horsepower except when at maximum revs under maximum accleration. A 100hp family car might only use 40 hp or less to cruise at 70mph.

In the same way a PC PSU's power rating is no indication of what it uses in practice.

OK on a round trip between London and Glasgow, I bet you your ferrari will use more fuel (a.k.a. more power) than my fiat panda. Yes you'll be there first but the panda will use less fuel.

Laptops are by design made to use less power than desktop PCs. They have components designed to use less power. Yes certain high spec laptops will use less power than certain desktop PCs but in general, it is true.

The 65Watts of power supply to my laptop I'd guess 30% would be used in charging the battery, e.g. about 44W to run the thing! Taking a 17" TFT screen at random it uses 34W. So do you think your PC will run on the 10W difference? 10W wont get any post pentium up for breakfast.

In general if you want performance you'll have a power PC, if you want portability you'll have a laptop that can run on a battery.

I'm wasting my fingers here aren't I?

Cardew

skr00ge wrote: »

OK on a round trip between London and Glasgow, I bet you your ferrari will use more fuel (a.k.a. more power) than my fiat panda. Yes you'll be there first but the panda will use less fuel.

Laptops are by design made to use less power than desktop PCs. They have components designed to use less power. Yes certain high spec laptops will use less power than certain desktop PCs but in general, it is true.

The 65Watts of power supply to my laptop I'd guess 30% would be used in charging the battery, e.g. about 44W to run the thing! Taking a 17" TFT screen at random it uses 34W. So do you think your PC will run on the 10W difference? 10W wont get any post pentium up for breakfast.

In general if you want performance you'll have a power PC, if you want portability you'll have a laptop that can run on a battery.

I'm wasting my fingers here aren't I?

You are wasting your fingers in the sense you apparently haven't understood the point I was making.

Nobody is disputing that a laptop uses less power than a desk top - mine rarely uses 35W(usually less) despite the PSU being rated at 60W.

My Desktop has a 600W PSU but I have never managed to monitor consumption at even 200W

My point was that to quote a PC PSU rating on a thread discussing power consumption, is about as much use as me stating that my Electric Cooker is rated at 18kW.

I doubt if your 65W laptop has ever drawn that power - or if so it would be fleetingly. Your quoted 250W-450W Desktop PC PSU is even more unrepresentitive of power consumption.

My 18kW cooker does not consume 18kW either! It could if all rings, both ovens and grill, were switched on simultaneously.

The analogy to cars was simply to show that they rarely use all the power available! not that a Ferrari is more economical than a Fiat Panda!

skr00ge

Cardew wrote: »

The analogy to cars was simply to show that they rarely use all the power available! not that a Ferrari is more economical than a Fiat Panda!

That's not an analogy that's tautology.

"Not using something big uses less power then whacking the zoinkers out of a really small thing"?

Having a big engine in a car will use more power. Leave your ferrari idling and it will use more power than a fiat panda. You don't need to do anything. Bigger engine, more friction.

A desktop PC doing nothing will use more power than a laptop doing nothing. Less efficient components, more energy lost through heat.

There is almost a direct link between PSU size and PC power consumption since manufacturers would not put in an over specified PSU. It will be just enough to cope will the full demand plus a little overhead. There are sites to do the maths for you. You've heard about the relationship beween the size of a PSU and ...anyway.

Using the power supply wattage as a guide to how much power a PC will use is about as good as the man in the clapham common ferrari is going to get.

Cardew

I will say this once more S L O W L Y and then give up.

It is not in dispute that a laptop uses less power than a desk top

It is also not in dispute that a Ferrari is less economical than a Fiat!

However quoting PSU rating in this thread is pointless!

skr00ge

But since its the only guide to the consumption of power by a PC its the only pratical way to know if one PC will use more power than another PC.

skr00ge

Cardew wrote: »

In the same way a PC PSU's power rating is no indication of what it uses in practice.

From another post by Cardew:
My 19" LCD uses about 25 Watts and general use of my modern desktop PC over a few hours averages out at about a(measured) 130 Watts. My printer on standby has a very low consumption.

So your PC uses about 155W. This is not too far from the nominal 200W I guessed at.

I'll let you know tomorrow how much my laptop uses when I hook it up to the step up voltage converter in the car. But you seem to be using, at the very least, 90W more than the maximum my laptop can. That's more than double. Thats 9 energy saving lightbulbs.

I'd say for mass made PCs the PSU is the only indication of what power the PC is likely to use. Its not a direct relationship and nobody (including me) has said it is a direct relationship.

tr3mor

Cardew was disputing your claim that a PC used 250 - 450W of power. Nothing else. What are you arguing about?

The fact your laptop uses less than a desktop is another matter entirely! But you should probably note that a laptop, with it's batteries and extra components likely uses more energy to make than your average desktop. As well as being more difficult to dispose or recycle.

Also, the Ferrari ANALOGY was simply stating that a Ferrari doesn't use 500HP all of the time, much like a Panda doesn't use its 60HP all of the time, or my desktop doesn't use its 600W all of the time.

:rolleyes:

tr3mor

skr00ge wrote: »

I'd say for mass made PCs the PSU is the only indication of what power the PC is likely to use.

No it's not. I could plug my PSU into an old Celeron or something, with rubbish onboard graphics. It would use a damned sight less power than if I plugged it into a P4 with the latest NVidia card.

The rating on the PSU has no real effect on how much power a computer uses.

Cardew

skr00ge wrote: »

So your PC uses about 155W. This is not too far from the nominal 200W I guessed at.

I'll let you know tomorrow how much my laptop uses when I hook it up to the step up voltage converter in the car. But you seem to be using, at the very least, 90W more than the maximum my laptop can. That's more than double. Thats 9 energy saving lightbulbs.

I'd say for mass made PCs the PSU is the only indication of what power the PC is likely to use. Its not a direct relationship and nobody (including me) has said it is a direct relationship.

For my sins I am a chartered electronic engineer and I really do understand these matters; and I know what all my computers consume as I have the equipment to measure the power consumption both instantaneously and averaged over a period of time.

You seem to have a fixation in trying to prove something that nobody but nobody is disputing; namely that laptops use less power than desktops.

My original point was that quoting typical PC PSU ratings is meaningless in the context of this thread. As I said above my cooker is rated at 18kW - how much use is that?

You are wrong in saying that the PSU rating is an indication of what the PC is likely to use. They are not bespoke PSUs. There is no reason to assume that a PC with a 600W PSU will consume any more power on average than a PC with a 400W PSU.

Some manufacturers fit larger PSUs than other manufacturers on the same spec PC - to 'future proof'.

If you look through this forum you will find a number of people have posted the average consumption for their PC's, laptops and monitors.