strugging to lower my electric usage.

silverwhistle

I use an average of around 7 Kwh a day, but that's with all electric cooking. [I occasionally use more but that's when my solar panels are being generous.]

A couple of observations: if I turn off one of my power blocks in the office I see on my monitor a drop of 53w (over 1 unit a day). That has laptop, printers and extension phone on it, so gets switched off at the mains at the end of the day. I leave the router and my power monitor on
all the time though. No ideas on TVs as I haven't got one.

My new oven is much more efficient than the old although I still try and comnbine usages - batch baking, B&B pudding if it's on low etc. But given you're avoiding capital expenditure at the moment you could still suggest Christmas presents like a slow cooker - which I use a lot - and maybe an LED bulb or two for the ones you use most. Somebody mentioned a George Foreman grill which I recently got from someone having a clearout, but as I haven't used it yet not sure how useful it is!

sniggings

jives11 wrote: »

I think 9 units per day seems on the low side to me, mine is much higher but I'm not comparing like with like.

Things that get hot and things that pump or drive things are the main offenders. You've identified your heating Electrical use, but the washing machine also heats water from cold to the programmes designated temperature, and has a motor and a pump. washing on cooler temperatures is definitely a good idea. When I measured the power consumption of my washing machine 80% was used in the first 10 minutes of the programme to heat the water to 30 degrees. If you can wash on that temperature or even lower, there is a saving.

Other things to consider are household appliances like mowers and hoovers. There seems to have been an RPM war going on and most of these things have huge 1400 Watt motors, so you see an hours vacuuming can have an impact.

I also measured my fridges and freezers (Using a currentcost IAM device) and was surprised at how much they use and actually it appeared to have very little effect if the fridge was full or empty. I got a perfect saw tooth chart spiking every 30 minutes at 100 watts, so thats 50 watts an hour or 1.2 units per day.

I joined this forum as a blog I wrote was referred to earlier regarding tweaking down the power consumption of TV and Sky+, and I'm glad I did, some great advice here

@jives11
this is what I can not understand, 9 units is without the washer going, and yeah I too have it on 30c, I also only use the 30min fast wash.
As you say other stuff uses electric that don't get mentioned.

@silverwhistle
I dread putting my oven on now as my usage shoots up. I've just bought a slow cooker a few weeks ago, not sure how much less it uses though as most stuff need cooking for around 8-10 hours, I think the low setting is around 100w so you are looking at about 1kw usage, not sure how that compares to a oven?

Pincher

The generally assumed medium consumption is
Electricity 3,300kWh,
Gas 16,500kWh

3,300 / 365 = 9.041 kWh a day.

Transcendence from mediocrity requires a masochistic self-deprivation; holiness is therefore a virtue practised by psychopaths.

sniggings

Pincher wrote: »

The generally assumed medium consumption is
Electricity 3,300kWh,
Gas 16,500kWh

3,300 / 365 = 9.041 kWh a day.

Transcendence from mediocrity requires a masochistic self-deprivation; holiness is therefore a virtue practised by psychopaths.

that will be an average tho, it's not easy to build a surplus in the summer when you are on £71 a week, I doubt many people use as many units in the summer as they do in the winter. So it looks like the nine units I'm using is very low considering it's winter.

lstar337

jives11 wrote: »

I think 9 units per day seems on the low side to me, mine is much higher but I'm not comparing like with like.

We have an all electric 2 bed flat, and if you ignore the electric heating (during E7), we use about 5-6kWh/day in summer and 7-9kWh/day in winter.

Nada666

sniggings wrote: »

that will be an average tho, it's not easy to build a surplus in the summer when you are on £71 a week, I doubt many people use as many units in the summer as they do in the winter. So it looks like the nine units I'm using is very low considering it's winter.

That is why most poor people choose to pay by Direct Debit.

[Deleted User]

If your electric cooker is on for an hour and you are using the oven as well as the hobs that will account for quite a lot of the 9 units, bearing in mind that the cooker would consume between 3 and 5 Kw in that hour.

sniggings

Nada666 wrote: »

That is why most poor people choose to pay by Direct Debit.

I have set one up, but they at first wanted to set it at £55 a month, I had to ring back to get it set at £40 as the first person refused to set it that "low" even tho out of the last 10 months only twice has my bill been higher than £40, i guess tho with my heating being gas, I probably use about the same electric all year round?

sniggings

Deleted_User wrote: »

If your electric cooker is on for an hour and you are using the oven as well as the hobs that will account for quite a lot of the 9 units, bearing in mind that the cooker would consume between 3 and 5 Kw in that hour.

oven is electric, hob is gas.

wow 3-5kw in just one hour, is that really true? if so I'll have to stop using it, that would cut my bill in half.

closed

check the thermostat on the fridge and freezer is set correctly, and switching off when it gets down to under 4, -18. that's generally the biggest constant part of peoples consumption (other than electric heating or long showers and tv on 24hrs/day), as it's on 24hrs/day

an led bulb will save a little, but has a relatively high purchase cost.

oven won't use 5kw/hr, especially when the thermostat kicks in, cooking on a gas hob or microwave is cheaper. slow cooker style meals can be done in a pan/pressure cooker, gas hob cooking is far cheaper than electricity

laptop uses hardly anything compared to a pc, maybe 15w on average once the battery is fully charged.