strugging to lower my electric usage.

macman

How do you heat your water? It's that and space heating that burns fuel, not your fridge or laptop.

Yolina

sniggings wrote: »

the TV is new and a Plasma but it's not on a lot and I do turn it off when not watching, does standby cost a lot? some say yes sme say no, it's on standby during the day but not at night?

If it's new then standby should be very low consumption due to EU regulations (something like 0.2W or thereabouts). But do check in the user guide, it will be stated there somewhere When on, and depending on size, plasmas can eat a reasonable amount of leccy though.

You said freesat but which box is it? Sky boxes are fairly bad when it comes to standby - the more recent ones have 2 standby options - one with amber light which still uses a fair bit and one with red light which uses practically nothing but it won't record when on "red" standby.

I am mostly at home and my usage is under 5kWh a day. I've always turned things off at the socket when not using them (all kitchen things, computer peripherals, AV stuff - everything really) and so I have very little on 24/7: the 15 year old fridge and freezer, the modem and router, the timer for the HW/heating and I think that's pretty much it
I work from home so I usually have the laptop on all day. All my bulbs are energy saving ones (mostly LEDs now)

I have gas for HW, heating and hob

GlynD

Sniggings, well done for trying to reduce your costs but I would advise you don't get too obsessive about this. Switch off unused lights and things on standby and keep a careful eye on what you do use but don't go overboard. You're not going to save enough to bring you out of whatever situation you're in.

DragonQ

sniggings wrote: »

is 9 units of electric a lot for 24 hours? I'm trying to get my costs down but apart from sitting in the dark I can't seen to lower my useage lower than 9 units.

No heating, cooker on for an hour, TV for 4 hours, fridge, pc, 1 light 17w and freesat, I just can not see how that is 9 units in 24 hours?

I use ~7 kWh per day and around half of that is from stuff that is on all the time (server, internet equipment, HTPC on standby, fridge-freezer, boiler). Maybe 0.5-1 kWh is from cooking and the rest is basically general use items (TV & A/V equipment, PCs, kettle, toaster, microwave).

I think you will really struggle to reduce your usage further without doing things that will actually cost you more (e.g. buying more efficient appliances or getting take-aways instead of cooking)! Even if only 1/3 of your usage is from always-on equipment, consider that 3 kWh over 24 hours means an average usage of 125 W. A fridge-freezer could easily use say 50 W (especially if it's more than a few years old), random small things like chargers (and in my case, my boiler) use ~5 W each, modems and routers use maybe 10 W each. These small things aren't going to cut your bill. I bet your plasma TV is the biggest electricity eater, but then why have one if you're not going to use it? On some weekend days I have mine on for 8-10 hours, I'm sure that bumps up the electricity bill slightly but I bought the TV to enjoy it.

sniggings

macman wrote: »

How do you heat your water? It's that and space heating that burns fuel, not your fridge or laptop.

My water is heated with Gas, I guess it has some electric though.

sniggings

GlynD wrote: »

Sniggings, well done for trying to reduce your costs but I would advise you don't get too obsessive about this. Switch off unused lights and things on standby and keep a careful eye on what you do use but don't go overboard. You're not going to save enough to bring you out of whatever situation you're in.

yeah good point, a couple of extra units less would help if I could keep it up all month but I'm at the bare min now, so unlikely to keep it up all month when the washer goes on etc

Just had a phone call from a lead for a job so fingers crossed.

sniggings

jeepjunkie wrote: »

You can afford a new plasma telly yet worry about 9 units a day...?

Other issues going on here...

Confused.com

easy tiger, new as in around 3 years old, bought when I was working, now I have been medically retired and not on ESA, I need to reduce either food or electric so I can heat the flat, I can't do all on £71 a week, with CC and water rates, even before I think about heating or food.

[Deleted User]

Your usage is almost exactly the median.
I don't know where it's all going though, you don't seem to be owning up to enough to account for it all. I'm at home all day, and my usage was 2539kWh (6.96kWh/day) last year, which is as near as dammit the mode. Here's what it runs:

Fridge
Freezer
Cooker
CH Pump
Microwave
Washer dryer
Kettle
TV (x2)
PVR
VHS
HiFi
Router
Laptop
Lights (Tungsten everywhere, except lounge and kitchen)
Shower
Bathroom heater (only a few minutes a day)
Bedside clock/radio

Your fridge or freezer could be guzzling it if they're old or faulty perhaps.

sniggings

jack_pott wrote: »

Your usage is almost exactly the median.
I don't know where it's all going though, you don't seem to be owning up to enough to account for it all. I'm at home all day, and my usage was 2539kWh (6.96kWh/day) last year, which is as near as dammit the mode. Here's what it runs:

Fridge
Freezer
Cooker
CH Pump
Microwave
Washer dryer
Kettle
TV (x2)
PVR
VHS
HiFi
Router
Laptop
Lights (Tungsten everywhere, except lounge and kitchen)
Shower
Bathroom heater (only a few minutes a day)
Bedside clock/radio

Your fridge or freezer could be guzzling it if they're old or faulty perhaps.

yeah the fridge/freeze is the only thing I can think of to where it's going, it is very old and the seal has gone on the freezer part but they have stopped making the seals for it, it is not freezing up but there is a noticeable gap in the seal, I can't replace it yet so will have to think of something to fix it, what I'm going to do is empty it (not that there is a lot in it, a few bags of home made soup and some peas), then turn it off and see if that improves my usage, then go from there.

[Deleted User]

I've just replaced a 45 year old fridge with a knackered door seal, but the 2539kWh quoted above came from just before I bought the new one. (I got a big saving when I chucked out a 50yr old cooker with a duff oven stat, though.) The insulation at the bottom of my last freezer was so knackered that it accumulated an inch thick layer of ice on the outside of the cabinet!