your daily elec usage?

victor2

picardygirl wrote: »

So its been a week now since we've started being careful with electricity.

Average weekly units used over the last year were 225 kw per week! Last week's useage was 133 kw for the week, so have made some improvement ..... but not enough ! Kids still not grasping the idea of walking out of a room and turning the tv or light off! So still work to be done, but at least we've made some improvement!

That's a dramatic improvement which you have every right to be pleased with. Hopefully you can maintain that.
Making further reductions in electricity usage will be more challenging, but an awful lot of it will be down to common sense and awareness - and educating the kids a bit more without being seen as a dragon!

picardygirl

Seem to have conquered the tv's going on timer of a night with the kids (well there not kids) 15 and 19 ! DS cant seem to manage to turn off whilst he's not in though ...... so xbox, tv etc left on standby all day, unless i turn it off, i go out last every morning, so will make it routine to turn off plugs etc... bit like nagging to not leave wet towels on the beds, been nagging about that for years and nothings changed there

I SO remember when i lived at home with my parents, my dad always telling me to turn lights off.

Still not got the central heating on much though, only for an hour in the morning, dont feel we need it in the evenings just yet Not worried about gas bill though, as am only slightly over the average useage, and thats not bad with the amount the shower is on

good_advice

Morning
I have just been shopping in the 7dayshop online. I have bought 16 AA rechargeable batteries £20. Slowly going rechargeables all round the house as old batteries run out.

An energy saving power meter £9.50. Thought it would be fun, a talking point and education. You can see in Kwh or cost how much the plugged in appliance is costing. Going to start with the kettle as family always over fill it for one mug.

picardy girl - they had an OWL monitor £20.99.

Free postage if you are not in a hurry.

No heating on here still. 20.4C this morning, a bit warmer than yesterday!

Started waring slippers for the cold instead of my push on sandals.

tiger48

intertesting thread. We have an Owl and will be trying to figure out what the heck is chewing power. A few years ago we suffered some huge bills for elec, but were running some hefty pond pumps 24hrs a day.....with those now out of the equation i thought that our usage would be in the sensible realms. Unril i had a check with our supplier a few days back about why they were putting up our DDebit.....

After that conversation i had a quick look at the current deals elsewhere and wrote down our usage over 2 days. We have econ 7 something we inherited and didn't change because of those pumps i mentioned as well as some auxiliary storage htrs.

our daytime usage p/day yesterday was 37units and teh night time was 6 ( switched off the stge htrs to see what 'normal' appliances were drawing). Those 6 units were consumed by: 1pc/moitor that is on24/7, a chest freezer in an outhouse, an indoor freezer and an american style f/freezer, the only other thing i can think of that would have been 'on' would be a router. Have to admit i was a bit shocked!

of the 37'day' units. all of the above were running plus: 1 more pc for a few hrs, lcd tv for a few hrs ( its on or off never standby), 2 sky boxes on or on standby, low volt kit downlighters are on most of teh day, 1x dwasher, 1x wmachine, bit of hoovering, microwave+ elec oven to cook dinner and the kettle a few times. I also had teh aircon on in my office for heat for about 2 hrs in total. Given that econ 7 takes away about 6-7 hrs out of teh 24hrs.....i'm assuming that we used those 37units over a 17-18hr period. So a solid 2kwph plus a bit. Curious to see what's drawing the juice because that seems high to me.

good_advice

Morning tiger
I thing perhaps these American style freezers take a lot to power. They are so big!
3 freezers? Why are you storing all that food?
I have one frost free medium tall freezer. If it gets over full so we are struggling to shut the drawers we know to stop buying food and eat what we have for a few weeks.

Top of the usual list for big fuel eaters are heating and hot water,
Anything that heats up. Kettle and oven included.

I have been working on cutting the fuel bill for quite a wile and now spend about 10 kwh a day. Family of 4 adults.
Your 37 kwh is a lot. Almost 4 times mine!

One of my better idea's was to buy a slow cooker and use it several times a week.

joseph1972

i had a change of meter a couple of years ago to one of those digital ones and my weekly useage has gone from £10 per week to £15 i use british gas for both as when i go on comparison sites and put my actual monthly useage they are the cheapest by far

just gone on the monitor system and through the week i use around £1.50/£180 a day
on weekend with washing machine and tumbe dryer it goes to £3 a day

for the month of september i used 1432.88kwh
i have a three bedroom mid town house and the only thing thats on 24/7 is the pc there are 2 adults and 2 children in the household i think i use way to much i try to turn everything off when not in use but it just keeps going up and up

GooliesOfFire

My electricity usage: 2500kWh a year.. so almost 7kWh a day



Me, wife, 2 kids, gas heating (inc. water), energy saving light bulbs, A and A+ rated appliances (no dishwasher, no tumble dryer), usual stuff - LED TV, PCs etc.

Main high bill suspects are the TV that is on all day long and PC that is on pretty much the same except when I'm at work or in bed.

I also use 9500kWh of gas every year.

joseph1972

wow i have all the energy rated stuff i have noticed since the monitor came in how much the shower takes even when we turn on the hot water soon as the boiler fires up so does the monitor
i wonder if my meter is set at some ridiculous rate perhaps
is there a charge for british gas to come and check my meter as i think £71 a onth dd for electric alone is taking the pith!

tiger48

@ good advice.
3 freezers does seem like overkill doesnt it! we bought the american one when we moved here 12 yrs ago, great idea but the freezer part isnt big enough, so we had a second freezer.....we added a 3rd when i opened a bulk trade account and basically we buy stuffg that's on offer from commercial suppliers.
the thing is that we're a hhold of 2 adults and a teen, and although we're naughty with a few items that are 24/7 -( i hate swithcing off my office pc because of teh boot up time) we're pretty good around turning things off 'properly' and not using standby, or having lights etc on unnecesarily.....annoyingly the wmachine cant be used overnight on econ7 as it is next to my daughters bedroom, and teh dwasher would similarly disturb my wife.
i think we need to buy one of those meters that measures what a single appliance is using and see where teh problem lies.

i don't know if digital type elec meters can ever go wrong? as i said before, we used to have huge usage diue to massive pond pumps and got used to paying a cple of hundred quid a mth for the provilige, but now they're not on i would have expected our bills to be far less. we dont use immersion, nor elec showers........

victor2

tiger48 wrote: »

of the 37'day' units. all of the above were running plus: 1 more pc for a few hrs, lcd tv for a few hrs ( its on or off never standby), 2 sky boxes on or on standby, low volt kit downlighters are on most of teh day, 1x dwasher, 1x wmachine, bit of hoovering, microwave+ elec oven to cook dinner and the kettle a few times. I also had teh aircon on in my office for heat for about 2 hrs in total. Given that econ 7 takes away about 6-7 hrs out of teh 24hrs.....i'm assuming that we used those 37units over a 17-18hr period. So a solid 2kwph plus a bit. Curious to see what's drawing the juice because that seems high to me.

Out of those, I'd look at your downlighters and the wattage of each bulb. Doesn't matter if they're low voltage, it's the watts that count. Ten 20W downlighters on for 12 hours is 2.4kWh, for example.
Your A/C probably draws quite a bit of power too. Run it for an hour and see what your meter records. Compare that to an hour without the A/C running (but everything else the same) to get an idea what the A/C may be using.

tiger48 wrote: »

the thing is that we're a hhold of 2 adults and a teen, and although we're naughty with a few items that are 24/7 -( i hate swithcing off my office pc because of teh boot up time) we're pretty good around turning things off 'properly' and not using standby...

i think we need to buy one of those meters that measures what a single appliance is using and see where teh problem lies.

Look at hibernating your PC when you're not actually using it. Boot up time from that is pretty rapid and the monitor would hopefully drop into power saving mode when the computer is off - or use a "powerdown" adapter to completely power down the monitor (and other auxilliary items) when the computer is off.

The monitors that plug into a single socket are quite useful, but don't forget they can't measure what larger items such as electric showers and cookers, which have a dedicated power circuit and no socket, are using.