Reducing my electricity use?

textbook

I live in a one bedroom flat yet use 9496 KWh for the year, is this too high? I use old 1980s storage heaters and heat my water at night so use more electricity at night. I changed to Ebico green something from British Gas 12 months fixed.


2786 kWh for day


6710 kWh for night


Are these figures too high?


I think it's irrelevant talking about what I am paying as the how many kWh I use gives a clearer picture I think


Does leaving lights on affect it much, kettles? TV? Trying to work out how to reduce my electricity

Robin9

textbook wrote: »

Does leaving lights on affect it much, kettles? TV? Trying to work out how to reduce my electricity

Every little helps - leaving a 100w light on in the kitchen for a couple of hours while you watch TV in another room might cost £10 a year.

cranford

Check of what kind of light bulbs you have and how long you leave them on for.
A 12w LED bulb is the equivalent of a 100w incandescent bulb or a 40w halogen bulb.
Some brand of LED are lower rated ie 12w could be a 75w and warm white is similar in colour to a halogen bulb.
So a 12w LED bulb would run for 83 hour for one unit of electricity, 10 hours for a 100w incandescent and 25 hours for a halogen one.
I have just replaced a 240w halogen uplighter with a 28w LED version at £68 which was my main living room light, saving me £80 a year to run.

matelodave

It's sounds a bit high for a one bedroom flat. We use 7000kwh for a 3 bed bungalow heated by a heat pump.

You could try turning stuff down and off. Do you have a washing machine, dryer or dishwasher - if so do you run them only when full. They cost the same to run half empty as full so saving stuff untill they are full will save you money. Use them at night to maximise your use of off peak leccy.

Baths or showers - you can get through a lot of hot water that's cost you to heat it - reduce the number of showers , don't have baths so deep and only spend 5 minutes in the shower. Make sure you tank is well insulated - fit another jacket over it and perhaps turn the thermostat down a bit. Don't use the boost function if you've got one.

Only boil the kettle with as much water as you need - most people half fill it for one cup of coffee or tea. Turn other stuff off at the wall when it's not being used - don't leave TV's, video recorders, computers and the like on standby.

LED bulbs in the rooms that you use most will also save a bit. I replaced 10x50 watt halogen downlighter bulbs in the kitchen with 10 x 4 watt LED units, saving 460watts = about 6 pence an hour. It doesn't sound much but if you have them on for say two hours a day it would save you £44 a year. Do that in a couple of other rooms and it could easily save you £100 or more a year.

Try reducing the storage heater input and make sure all the output controls are set to zero especially overnight so that they can get a full charge.

Start reading your meters a bit more often - weekly for a while and keep a spreadsheet - you can then see when you are using your leccy and what affects your consumption most.

WhoIsThat

textbook wrote: »

I live in a one bedroom flat yet use 9496 KWh for the year, is this too high? I use old 1980s storage heaters and heat my water at night so use more electricity at night. I changed to Ebico green something from British Gas 12 months fixed.


2786 kWh for day


6710 kWh for night


Are these figures too high?


I think it's irrelevant talking about what I am paying as the how many kWh I use gives a clearer picture I think


Does leaving lights on affect it much, kettles? TV? Trying to work out how to reduce my electricity

The figures are only too high if YOU consider them to be too high, and/or you are struggling to pay the bills.

But I see from your earlier posts that money is not a prime factor, as you appear to have opted for a 12m fixed tariff at £1088.72 that is almost 20% more expensive than the cheapest option (variable) that was indicated to you
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5900017/getting-cheaper-electric-bills

Presumably the security of a fixed rather than a variable tariff was more important to you, despite the extra cost.
And the fact you did not appear to take the cheapest fixed tariff option either, presumably indicates you were happy to spend more for a supplier you were more comfortable with.
(although you had previously ruled out the supplier you eventually chose due to poor telephone response, and found the supplier with the cheaper fixed tariff was better :cool:)

As regards to using electrical items, yes the more you use them, the more your consumption will increase. Some electrical items will use more energy than others, but when you have opted for a tariff with a normal rate of over 20p/kWh, then any reduction in usage will lower the price you ultimately pay.

D_M_E

You heat your hot water overnight - do you actually use a lot of hot water?

Try turning off the immersion heaters completely and, when you want a shower or bath, turn on the immersion heater at the top of the tank for 20 minutes before showering/bathing, then turn it off afterwards, and boil a kettle for small jobs such as washing up.

Turn down the storage heaters by 5 degrees and, over a week or so, slowly increase temp until you find a setting you feel comfortable with, and try wearing a vest and pullover - a few quid spent on these items could save you a few hundred quid on your electric bill.

Smodlet

You could try http://www.wrecc.com/what-uses-watts-in-your-home/ for a list of approximate usages of various appliances or just google "What uses Watts" for several other sites offering the same info.

coffeehound

Consumption does look quite high. My 1-bed flat was using 6600 units per year with heating used freely.

Green_hopeful

We did an energy audit with a energy monitor. We turned off categories of things to see how much they were using. Remember some things like fridges only use energy some of the time so you need to make sure you check when they are running.

We found a freezer in the garage and an American style fridge freezer were using lots. Also our halogen kitchen lights were using 500kWh. They were often left on. We can’t easily switch the bulbs as they will need new fittings so we got a side light with a 2 watt LED bulb. That saves switching the main lights on unless we are cooking.

We got rid of the freezer and fridge. We swapped our other bulbs for LED bulbs from a pound shop and when they are on deal. We have probably spent £40 on bulbs but we have gone from using 27kwh per day to less than 9kwh.

Over a year at about £0.13 a kWh that is a saving of about £850.

We have gas heating so this year we are working to save gas.

wavelets

Green_hopeful wrote: »

We did an energy audit with a energy monitor. We turned off categories of things to see how much they were using. Remember some things like fridges only use energy some of the time so you need to make sure you check when they are running.

We found a freezer in the garage and an American style fridge freezer were using lots. Also our halogen kitchen lights were using 500kWh. They were often left on. We can’t easily switch the bulbs as they will need new fittings so we got a side light with a 2 watt LED bulb. That saves switching the main lights on unless we are cooking.

We got rid of the freezer and fridge. We swapped our other bulbs for LED bulbs from a pound shop and when they are on deal. We have probably spent £40 on bulbs but we have gone from using 27kwh per day to less than 9kwh.

Over a year at about £0.13 a kWh that is a saving of about £850.

We have gas heating so this year we are working to save gas.

Sounds like you would be a prime candidate for Smart Meters :A

Whilst you can get away with DIY energy monitors for electricity, I'm not aware of any similar products for gas.

But a Smart Meter would do it for you.

(You can only have a gas smarter if you alos have an electricity smart meter.)

matelodave

wavelets wrote: »

Sounds like you would be a prime candidate for Smart Meters :A

Whilst you can get away with DIY energy monitors for electricity, I'm not aware of any similar products for gas.

But a Smart Meter would do it for you.

(You can only have a gas smarter if you alos have an electricity smart meter.)

As most people probably only have gas heating and cooking then it's relatively easy to monitor their consumption by reading the meter say daily or weekly for a while to get an idea of when it's being used. There are monitors available that will monitor the gas meter

here's one https://www.loopenergysaver.com/product/dual-fuel/lifetime