MSE Guide: Energy Saving Tips

MSE_Will_L

Hi all,

We have a new Energy Saving Tips guide, and we'd love to hear your feedback.

If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

Thanks for your help,

MSE Will

JanTheGran

Energy saving tips for the kitchen:
-When boiling, you don't need to fully cover the contents of your pan with water. The more water you have, the more energy you use bringing it to the boil.
-When boiling on gas, make sure the flames are not coming up the side of the pan, heating the air and not your pan!.Turn the light down. It may take longer to come to the boil but you'll waste far less energy.
-When boiling on electricity, there is the same problem of wasted energy coming up the side of the pan. Select a pan that fits the size of your rings.

-Always put a lid on your pan. You'll be surprised what a difference it makes.

-Unless you're cooking pastry, you do not need to pre-heat your oven and you can turn it off a couple of minutes before it's finished cooking, although you need experience for the latter.
-Could you transfer that frozen meal into an oven-proof dish and cook it in the microwave?
-Learn how to use your microwave more.

Bluemouse

When you’ve boiled a kettle, put any leftover hot water into a thermos flask so you have something to kickstart the washing up

What_time_is_it

This is like top tips in Viz!

ChrisWood

I think the tips are missing a few. 
Only pour into the kettle the amount of water you need for the cups you are making. Perhaps a little more. It's just a waste of energy heating more water than you need. I have seen people 1/2 - 3/4 fill ad 1.5 ltr kettle for one cup of tea - crazy.
Induction hobs - a lot cheaper to run than conventional gas or electric - and they are super quick and easy to clean as they don't bake on spillages or spit residues. You can buy cheap single place induction hobs cheap and they are great for making soups of stews as well as other cooking.
Showering - as previousy mentioned. Don't run the shower the whole time you are in it. Get in wet yourself down and turn off the shower - lather up your head and arms, shoulders - then rinse off lather - Then lather up torso  and butt - rinse down and so on to get to your pinkies. So you are having 4 or 5 very short showers in effect in pretty much the same time as on single long shower but you are saving energy whilst the shower is off. I know it's nice having a long shower in piping hot water but it now costs a lot !
Wear a woolly hat indoors. Your head loses more heat per area than any part of your body. So preventing it losing heat by putting a woolly hat is helps you keep body heat. Wear one in bed overnight as well and maybe nice thick woolly socks in bed. You'll be surprised how warm you will get.
Don't heat up rooms you only walk through or use occasionally. Unless you a well off  gone are the days when you have the whole house piping hot. Close the doors in bathrooms, kitchens and hallways were possibleand turn the heating off or way down. You don't spend long in them so shy have them warm 24 hours a day ? Kitchens warm up when you are cooking anyway, and same in bathrooms if you are showering. You'll soon get used to it !

QrizB

ChrisWood said:

Induction hobs - a lot cheaper to run than conventional gas or electric ...

There are lots of induction hob fans on the forum and they have advantages but they're not cheaper than mains gas. We had eight pages of discussion (with some strongly held views) less than three weeks ago:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6327425/kettle-on-gas-vs-electric-kettle

k_man

ChrisWood said:

...
Your head loses more heat per area than any part of your body. 

Citation required

https://www.google.com/search?q=most+heat+lost+through+head+myth

Back to tips though, my favourite today:

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/simple-kettle-trick-could-slash-23042976

Another way to save money when using a kettle is to switch it off at the wall.

That will indeed save kettle usage costs....

GingerTim

Wear so many layers that you look like the Marshmallow Man.

Xbigman

The energy saving tips guide is pretty much worthless. Its the same tips you see in every newspaper, on YouTube and on every other internet forum. If I had reduced the temperature in my house by 1 centigrade every time I'd seen it suggested my house would be -34 degrees now and it would cost me a fortune to live in a giant freezer.

Some of the tips in this thread however are more useful.

Here's a tip. Before you write out your shopping list (you do use a shopping list, don't you?) take a hard look in your fridge and see just what you have in there that you never used, or could have used up or that didn't even need to be stored chilled in the first place. I did this and ended up buying a smaller fridge and saved 127 kwh a year on running costs. 
I currently have 2 small freezers bought at different times. For years I've had one of each packet/box/bag of frozen food open and one spare. That's great from a supply perspective but it means 60% of what I'm paying to freeze is food I don't want yet. I've made a list of alternatives I can buy if the supermarket is out of something as well as a list of high use stuff I don't want to run out of so its worth having a spare. Next week I should be able to turn the older, now empty freezer off. That saves another 210 kwh. My new fridge will be paid for in about 16 months.

Darren

Flash32

It might sound absurd, but baking your own cakes and bread, cooking a roast dinner, etc., can save a lot of cash.  Why?  In almost every case, cooking your own food is far cheaper than eating out or a takeaway, it's more satisfying and nutritious.  But it doesn't stop there.  The waste heat from your oven or hob will keep your kitchen warm and will filter into the rest of the house.  We tried a little experiment a few days ago with the cold easterly wind blowing.  Having baked a couple of loaves of bread in the late afternoon and cooked an evening meal, all of our radiators were stone cold for the rest of the evening.

Now, look at the economics.  Each loaf of bread (900g) costs about 90p in ingredients (we use very high-quality flour - you could do it much cheaper) and at 7p/kWh (gas) both loaves cost around 21p (pessimistic) to cook, so a really nice loaf of bread (far better than the supermarket stuff) costs about £1.05 including the yeast, etc.  The roast dinner cost around £4.50 for the meat and about £1.50 for enough veggies for the meal and for the two of us to have the next day as bubble and squeak with the leftover cold meat.  Add around 30p gas cost to cook the meal and rounding up, say £6.50 for four meals - so around £1.60 per meal - AND - we saved on running the heating that evening.

Also - we waste almost no food.  We don't peel potatoes or carrots - they just get scrubbed and the few peelings we have to make, orange skins, etc., we compost ourselves, our food waste amounts to a few fish and meat bones, but we use our fridge a lot.  Almost nothing goes to waste.  True, this wouldn't suit everyone, but we used to do this while we worked and we've continued into retirement.

So the moral of the story - ditch the takeaways and the deliveries.  Get baking and keep warm!

PS - if you have a wireless central heating thermostat, try relocating it.  Most stats are mounted in the coldest place in the house - usually the entrance hall.  We repositioned ours so that it senses the temperature in the room we most use - and is near the kitchen, where the extra heat comes from.  It's set to 18.5C, so cuts in at 18C, cuts out at 19C.  True we need to dress appropriately, but it's worth it - and even with the latest increase, for a large 3-bed semi, with two freezers (we grow a lot of our own food) and two fridges, our energy bill isn't too bad when we compare to the horror stories we hear on the radio, etc.

wild666

ChrisWood said:

I think the tips are missing a few. 
Only pour into the kettle the amount of water you need for the cups you are making. Perhaps a little more. It's just a waste of energy heating more water than you need. I have seen people 1/2 - 3/4 fill ad 1.5 ltr kettle for one cup of tea - crazy.
Induction hobs - a lot cheaper to run than conventional gas or electric - and they are super quick and easy to clean as they don't bake on spillages or spit residues. You can buy cheap single place induction hobs cheap and they are great for making soups of stews as well as other cooking.
Showering - as previousy mentioned. Don't run the shower the whole time you are in it. Get in wet yourself down and turn off the shower - lather up your head and arms, shoulders - then rinse off lather - Then lather up torso  and butt - rinse down and so on to get to your pinkies. So you are having 4 or 5 very short showers in effect in pretty much the same time as on single long shower but you are saving energy whilst the shower is off. I know it's nice having a long shower in piping hot water but it now costs a lot !
Wear a woolly hat indoors. Your head loses more heat per area than any part of your body. So preventing it losing heat by putting a woolly hat is helps you keep body heat. Wear one in bed overnight as well and maybe nice thick woolly socks in bed. You'll be surprised how warm you will get.
Don't heat up rooms you only walk through or use occasionally. Unless you a well off  gone are the days when you have the whole house piping hot. Close the doors in bathrooms, kitchens and hallways were possibleand turn the heating off or way down. You don't spend long in them so shy have them warm 24 hours a day ? Kitchens warm up when you are cooking anyway, and same in bathrooms if you are showering. You'll soon get used to it !

Many 1.7 litre kettles have a minimum level to fill the kettle too, this is about 500 ml or one pint. I fill a flask and put in a couple of tea bags so I fill the kettle to about 1.3 litres. Induction hobs and cookers are a lot cheaper when it comes to cooking on the induction plates but the ovens on the cookers are not, they are the same as fan ovens. The time it takes me to lather up it would not be worth turning the shower off. 
I do layer up but draw the line at wearing a hat indoors.