Crazy Energy Bill

Happy_Sloth

QrizB said:

FreeBear said:

My first thought was immersion heater or electric underfloor heating. Electric towel radiators will also eat up a fair bit of energy if left on 24/7...

I've read  the OP's other threads and they have a 4/5-bed Victorian semi (or end-of-terrace) with solid brick walls, basement, draughts, damp and poor insulation. That's a lot of house to heat.

@Happy_Sloth you said in one of your other threads that you've recently fitted central heating. Is that mains gas or something else? A breakdown of your bills and energy use would be really helpful to everyone in this thread.

Hi there, 

Yes we live in a 6 bedroom Semi Detached Victorian House.

it is huge... i love it... it was a bargain but i was perhaps a little nieve.. the hearts on my eye's made me buy it! when the reality is i probably should have bought something cheaper to run.  

My mum thinks im mad... but i still love this house! 
 
It does have solid brick walls and a basement and has naturally little/no insulation which is why we've been trying to focus the spend on improving the heating situation. 

This year we have managed to replace the last of the original rotten wood windows for double glazing (We did do the worst ones a few years ago) and we are mid way though a total re-render (which is a story in it's self) because we had really bad damp problems and i don't think the water trapped on the brick was helping to keep it warm/dry.  

We also got central heating fitted, as it wasn't always in the house in every room.  So we replaced the boiler and had radiators added to the rooms that didn't have them already.... 

My goodness this house has been a trial! 

Im under know illusions that this house will ever be cheap to heat! but it's the electric that scares me, for only 3 people i don't know why we use to much! 

Ok so Quick rundown of the situation...  We run on Mains Gas and Electric nothing fancy or unusual. 

Heating... 

Gas Central Heating, with a conventional boiler.  18 radiators in total ....

We do have very old electric fires in the 2 living rooms but we never use them.  

Mostly we only use 3 radiators in the hall, 1 in sons bedroom, 2 in the living rooms depending which of the 2 rooms we are using.

I don't know if matters but 2 hall radiators and 2 in the living rooms are 10 ft radiators so they are monsters.. about 30 years old.  I've tried to get them replaced and it's going to cost a fortune to buy them that big as they arn't standard sizes.  I'd hate to think of how the heck i would drain them.  

Here's snips from my bills. 

i'll admit im not great at reading these things.... i think thats £615 Electric,  £149 Gas Total £803

£803 / 5 months =  £160 a month ish...  but they are mostly summer months so the heating won't have been on that much.  in the winter the usage is closer to the £300 a month.  

As you can see from the top part we part we average paying about £300 a month .. it's currently set at £205. 

Thats because we had so much credit ($796 in September) we have just submitted a meter reading yesterday so we are waiting for the bill to update and then we will probably find we've used most if not all of that credit and we'll have to raise the DD again.. 

We came off the fix tariff at the end of October so we are expecting a big jump.  

Quick Calc .... if this is done right (I don't trust me you shouldn't either)  

The same Bill ... if it had been at "Todays Price"  (Current Cap)  

Gas =  £196.24 (4p per KWH) + 32.76p standing charge = £229
Electric = £782.88p (21p per KWH) + £27.14 standing charge = £810.02 

Total  = £1039.02 / 5 months = £207.80 per month..  (I estimate £300 per month in the winter)  

Im correct in thinking we are using alot of electric?! it seems alot?! but i don't know how it compares to other families. 

Happy_Sloth

tim_p said:

how are you heating the office and the hall?

Radiators off the central heating. 

brook_heather

Happy_Sloth said:

• Computers -  3 PC's (My husbands in particular is eating electric) with 2 people working from home on big over powered gaming PC's and my husband using his for most of the day while he's unwell. But with WFH we have no choice, the 3 PC's are on for most of the day, my son uses his all day for work, they play's games in the evening.  This seems to be 99% of where the electric go's, honestly i was surprised by this... i didn't think they ate as much as they do.. my alone husbands seems to cost about £2 a day to run on it's own which is staggering! that's £60 of the bill on it's own. 

Please post the idle power consumption of the PCs - I have a gaming PC (i5 9500/GTX1060/16GB/SSD+HDD) and it uses 40W at idle which would cost about 20p for 24 hours - when gaming it will use 160W.  Make sure each PC has the balanced power plan selected rather than high performance as that will run the cpu at maximum speed all of the time.  To cost £2 a day the PC would have to be using 400W all the time and be turned on for 24 hours a day?

MattMattMattUK

Happy_Sloth said:

• Dog Food Freezer. - The freezer i keep dog food in is on it's way out, the seals are shot, is it worth spending £200 now on buying a new one? will it noticeably reduce the electric bill, i assume it will pay for it's self eventually but what about the short/medium term. Is it worth the £200 now?  

It might be using a lot of electricity, it might not be, without figures no one can make a judgement. Would you possibly be better off not using a "Dog Food Freezer" at all and using shelf stable food?

Happy_Sloth said:

• Kitchen Fridge/Freezer - The fridge freezer in the kitchen is a monster. https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/refrigeration/fridge-freezers/haier-cube-series-htf-610dsn7-fridge-freezer-black-stainless-steel-10179188-pdt.html rating f. It's not very old at the time it was rating A so we thought it was good, but now they re-did them it's rating F!  ... We do use the space it's not wasted, but i've been using the electric meter and it seems to eat quite abit of energy. it's there, it's in place i can't really replace it, but it's costing quite abit. 

The ratings were re-worked as pretty much everything was at the top of the scale. On the current scale there is hardly anything near the top and what is there is very expensive, so expensive that you if you were buying just to save energy it would take you years, perhaps decades to recover your initial outlay. Fridges and Freezers are one of the more energy intensive appliances to run, just by the nature of what they do.

Happy_Sloth said:  

• Computers -  3 PC's (My husbands in particular is eating electric) with 2 people working from home on big over powered gaming PC's and my husband using his for most of the day while he's unwell. But with WFH we have no choice, the 3 PC's are on for most of the day, my son uses his all day for work, they play's games in the evening.  This seems to be 99% of where the electric go's, honestly i was surprised by this... i didn't think they ate as much as they do.. my alone husbands seems to cost about £2 a day to run on it's own which is staggering! that's £60 of the bill on it's own.

High end PCs can use a lot of power, my gaming PC has a 1,200 watt PSU for example (although it will never draw that much power), but at full whack, gaming, rendering or processing 4k video it can draw a lot. My laptop by comparison uses close to sod all. My PC could cost me £2 a day to run, my laptop would be unlikely to use more than £0.05 per day. That being said a gaming PC that is not running at full load will drop right down in terms of power draw, not as low as a laptop, but easily down to the 200 watt range, with the benefit (in winter) that a huge amount of the power usage is expelled as waste heat, so not entirely lost. 

Happy_Sloth said:

The issue is my husband hasn't worked for 12 months due to ill health, he's lost 2 very close family members to Covid and i can't envision him being fit to work any time soon

I understand that ill health and grieving can be difficult for some, however it might be time for your husband to look at what he can do for work. If he is able to sit using a computer for 8+ hours a day then he is able to do a lot of jobs, probably half of the jobs in the UK involve sitting in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day. 

If your husband is medically signed off then you could check he is entitled to, but household income might limit any general UC claim. 

You could also head over to the Debt Free Wanabee board and post an SOA to see what costs can be cut, I don't think that is a bad option, but I think reducing your power usage and getting your husband back to work should be the priorities. 

MWT

Happy_Sloth said:

Im correct in thinking we are using alot of electric?! it seems alot?! but i don't know how it compares to other families. 

Yes, you are using a lot of electricity over the period of that bill, around 25kWh a day on average...

... but yes, the PC use may be accounting for some of that, especially if the PC's are perhaps being left running 24/7, perhaps crypto mining over night when not be used for gaming/work?

A decent gaming rig being used for mining could easily be using 5-7kWh a day on its own so worth checking that this is not happening.

I do suspect that your winter gas use is going to be the bigger concern though so perhaps take a meter reading now and see how much has been used since the last bill...?

Happy_Sloth

MWT said:

Happy_Sloth said:

Im correct in thinking we are using alot of electric?! it seems alot?! but i don't know how it compares to other families. 

Yes, you are using a lot of electricity over the period of that bill, around 25kWh a day on average...

... but yes, the PC use may be accounting for some of that, especially if the PC's are perhaps being left running 24/7, perhaps crypto mining over night when not be used for gaming/work?

A decent gaming rig being used for mining could easily be using 5-7kWh a day on its own so worth checking that this is not happening.

I do suspect that your winter gas use is going to be the bigger concern though so perhaps take a meter reading now and see how much has been used since the last bill...?

The PC's are generally switched off at night... i wouldn't know how to start mining haha. 

MattMattMattUK

brook_heather said:

Happy_Sloth said:

• Computers -  3 PC's (My husbands in particular is eating electric) with 2 people working from home on big over powered gaming PC's and my husband using his for most of the day while he's unwell. But with WFH we have no choice, the 3 PC's are on for most of the day, my son uses his all day for work, they play's games in the evening.  This seems to be 99% of where the electric go's, honestly i was surprised by this... i didn't think they ate as much as they do.. my alone husbands seems to cost about £2 a day to run on it's own which is staggering! that's £60 of the bill on it's own. 

Please post the idle power consumption of the PCs - I have a gaming PC (i5 9500/GTX1060/16GB/SSD+HDD) and it uses 40W at idle which would cost about 20p for 24 hours - when gaming it will use 160W.  Make sure each PC has the balanced power plan selected rather than high performance as that will run the cpu at maximum speed all of the time.  To cost £2 a day the PC would have to be using 400W all the time and be turned on for 24 hours a day?

It really depends on the PC, my GPU can draw more than 400W (RTX 3090), when you factor in the other components (i9 12700k, 64GB, M.2 x2, SATA SSD x2, monitor (48W), it can be easy to get high power usage during gaming/editing, yes idle can drop down considerably, but if I was not working and gaming for 8 hours a day I would be able to hit £2 per day. 

Happy_Sloth

MattMattMattUK said:

brook_heather said:

Happy_Sloth said:

• Computers -  3 PC's (My husbands in particular is eating electric) with 2 people working from home on big over powered gaming PC's and my husband using his for most of the day while he's unwell. But with WFH we have no choice, the 3 PC's are on for most of the day, my son uses his all day for work, they play's games in the evening.  This seems to be 99% of where the electric go's, honestly i was surprised by this... i didn't think they ate as much as they do.. my alone husbands seems to cost about £2 a day to run on it's own which is staggering! that's £60 of the bill on it's own. 

Please post the idle power consumption of the PCs - I have a gaming PC (i5 9500/GTX1060/16GB/SSD+HDD) and it uses 40W at idle which would cost about 20p for 24 hours - when gaming it will use 160W.  Make sure each PC has the balanced power plan selected rather than high performance as that will run the cpu at maximum speed all of the time.  To cost £2 a day the PC would have to be using 400W all the time and be turned on for 24 hours a day?

It really depends on the PC, my GPU can draw more than 400W (RTX 3090), when you factor in the other components (i9 12700k, 64GB, M.2 x2, SATA SSD x2, monitor (48W), it can be easy to get high power usage during gaming/editing, yes idle can drop down considerably, but if I was not working and gaming for 8 hours a day I would be able to hit £2 per day. 

its more like 12 hours a day atm  

MattMattMattUK

Happy_Sloth said:

MattMattMattUK said:

brook_heather said:

Happy_Sloth said:

• Computers -  3 PC's (My husbands in particular is eating electric) with 2 people working from home on big over powered gaming PC's and my husband using his for most of the day while he's unwell. But with WFH we have no choice, the 3 PC's are on for most of the day, my son uses his all day for work, they play's games in the evening.  This seems to be 99% of where the electric go's, honestly i was surprised by this... i didn't think they ate as much as they do.. my alone husbands seems to cost about £2 a day to run on it's own which is staggering! that's £60 of the bill on it's own. 

Please post the idle power consumption of the PCs - I have a gaming PC (i5 9500/GTX1060/16GB/SSD+HDD) and it uses 40W at idle which would cost about 20p for 24 hours - when gaming it will use 160W.  Make sure each PC has the balanced power plan selected rather than high performance as that will run the cpu at maximum speed all of the time.  To cost £2 a day the PC would have to be using 400W all the time and be turned on for 24 hours a day?

It really depends on the PC, my GPU can draw more than 400W (RTX 3090), when you factor in the other components (i9 12700k, 64GB, M.2 x2, SATA SSD x2, monitor (48W), it can be easy to get high power usage during gaming/editing, yes idle can drop down considerably, but if I was not working and gaming for 8 hours a day I would be able to hit £2 per day. 

its more like 12 hours a day atm  

Work or gaming? If it is work then fair enough, if your husband is spending 12 hours a day gaming, whilst claiming he cannot work I think he needs a foot up his behind!

molerat

Electric shower ?

Electric cooking range ?

Fish tank / vivarium ?