Cost of living reporting

QrizB

This particular line from the Watt Logic article:

The years since these changes have seen end user electricity costs rise steadily, while wholesale prices have shown no such trend.

... is objectively not correct. BEIS's own data on wholesale electricity prices (Annex M, here) shows an increase in wholesale electricity prices, at 2019 prices, from 2.3p/kWh in 2002 to 6p/kWh in 2018. BEIS haven't updated their data since 2019 (and I'm assuming the 2019 data point is a projection).

If I plot the prices from that table and get Excel to fit a straight line, I get a slope of about 0.15p/kWh/yr.

Martyn1981

For anyone wanting to save vast amounts of money, then the advice from a money saving expert in the Sun is to unplug your games console as they add about £1,500 to your leccy bill just from standby - £4.20 per day / 15kWh on standby. And the stand by from the telly is £132 pa.

Or to be clear, that's what you would have seen before they revised the article on the 9th. Hope folk saw it after the revisions or there won't be a games console left in any Sun houses. Not sure how people stand a chance with so much poor advice being published, but I suppose the beauty of the interweb is that revisions can be made.

I’m a money-saving expert – these are the appliances that use the most power when they’re switched OFF

2nd_time_buyer

Martyn1981 said:

For anyone wanting to save vast amounts of money, then the advice from a money saving expert in the Sun is to unplug your games console as they add about £1,500 to your leccy bill just from standby - £4.20 per day / 15kWh on standby. And the stand by from the telly is £132 pa.

Or to be clear, that's what you would have seen before they revised the article on the 9th. Hope folk saw it after the revisions or there won't be a games console left in any Sun houses. Not sure how people stand a chance with so much poor advice being published, but I suppose the beauty of the interweb is that revisions can be made.

I’m a money-saving expert – these are the appliances that use the most power when they’re switched OFF

It is pretty frightening that it got through editorial - I would have thought it would fail the sniff test. It seems that reporting of finances/pensions/economics things are pretty accurate so I don't think it is a numeracy issue - more a science issue. I guess very few people in government and media have science/engineering qualifications.    

Martyn1981

2nd_time_buyer said:

Martyn1981 said:

For anyone wanting to save vast amounts of money, then the advice from a money saving expert in the Sun is to unplug your games console as they add about £1,500 to your leccy bill just from standby - £4.20 per day / 15kWh on standby. And the stand by from the telly is £132 pa.

Or to be clear, that's what you would have seen before they revised the article on the 9th. Hope folk saw it after the revisions or there won't be a games console left in any Sun houses. Not sure how people stand a chance with so much poor advice being published, but I suppose the beauty of the interweb is that revisions can be made.

I’m a money-saving expert – these are the appliances that use the most power when they’re switched OFF

It is pretty frightening that it got through editorial - I would have thought it would fail the sniff test. It seems that reporting of finances/pensions/economics things are pretty accurate so I don't think it is a numeracy issue - more a science issue. I guess very few people in government and media have science/engineering qualifications.    

I'm still surprised at the standby kettle, perhaps those are ones with LED's to show they are switched on at the mains. But even then I can't follow their maths as they suggest standby uses 0.3kWh, presumably per day(?) so 12.5W. Sounds odd to me, but maybe it's correct for some/a kettle(?) but then how is that £5pa, since 0.3kWh x 365 x 28p/kWh = £30.66.

Don't get me wrong, I love it when good advice goes out to help people, especially when the cost of living / leccy is so high, but this article was terrible, and now it's just weird.

Good news though is that standby consumption has dropped massively over the years. Some TV's and monitors now use around 1W or less. Still a waste, maybe £2.50pa, but no longer horrific.

JKenH

QrizB said:

This particular line from the Watt Logic article:

The years since these changes have seen end user electricity costs rise steadily, while wholesale prices have shown no such trend.

... is objectively not correct. BEIS's own data on wholesale electricity prices (Annex M, here) shows an increase in wholesale electricity prices, at 2019 prices, from 2.3p/kWh in 2002 to 6p/kWh in 2018. BEIS haven't updated their data since 2019 (and I'm assuming the 2019 data point is a projection).

If I plot the prices from that table and get Excel to fit a straight line, I get a slope of about 0.15p/kWh/yr.

Unfortunately I can’t download the BEIS data on my iPad. I don’t have any data pre 2009 but these are the 2009 - 2019 year averages /MWh from Electric Insights.

2009 £41.56

2010 £42.89

2011 £46.72

2012 £46.57

2013 £51.11

2014 £43.06

2015 £41.49

2016 £39.91

2017 £44.01

2018 £57.20

2019 £41.94

2020 was unusual because of COVID and 2021 because of the spike in gas prices. How one deals with 2018 (which does appear to be an outlier) statistically will have a massive impact on the trend as will substituting estimated/projected figures for 2019 actual. 

I would be interested to know why it spiked in 2018 and came down again in 2019.

JKenH

Martyn1981 said:

2nd_time_buyer said:

Martyn1981 said:

For anyone wanting to save vast amounts of money, then the advice from a money saving expert in the Sun is to unplug your games console as they add about £1,500 to your leccy bill just from standby - £4.20 per day / 15kWh on standby. And the stand by from the telly is £132 pa.

Or to be clear, that's what you would have seen before they revised the article on the 9th. Hope folk saw it after the revisions or there won't be a games console left in any Sun houses. Not sure how people stand a chance with so much poor advice being published, but I suppose the beauty of the interweb is that revisions can be made.

I’m a money-saving expert – these are the appliances that use the most power when they’re switched OFF

It is pretty frightening that it got through editorial - I would have thought it would fail the sniff test. It seems that reporting of finances/pensions/economics things are pretty accurate so I don't think it is a numeracy issue - more a science issue. I guess very few people in government and media have science/engineering qualifications.    

I'm still surprised at the standby kettle, perhaps those are ones with LED's to show they are switched on at the mains. But even then I can't follow their maths as they suggest standby uses 0.3kWh, presumably per day(?) so 12.5W. Sounds odd to me, but maybe it's correct for some/a kettle(?) but then how is that £5pa, since 0.3kWh x 365 x 28p/kWh = £30.66.

Don't get me wrong, I love it when good advice goes out to help people, especially when the cost of living / leccy is so high, but this article was terrible, and now it's just weird.

Good news though is that standby consumption has dropped massively over the years. Some TV's and monitors now use around 1W or less. Still a waste, maybe £2.50pa, but no longer horrific.

For some devices like my plasma TV and the AV amplifiers I have switching off at the button on the front doesn’t kill the power drain whereas switching bff at the mains does. I managed to find over 100 watts of savings by switching devices off at the plug. 

QrizB

That's interesting. Here are the corresponding prices from BEIS (in 2019 prices):

JKenH said:

2009 £41.56 - £46

2010 £42.89 - £51

2011 £46.72 - £56

2012 £46.57 - £52

2013 £51.11 - £58

2014 £43.06 - £47

2015 £41.49 - £45

2016 £39.91 - £44

2017 £44.01 - £55

2018 £57.20 - £60

2019 £41.94 - £49

... although, again, I'm doubtful about BEIS's figure for 2019.
Here's my chart of the BEIS data going back to 2002. You can see a big spike in 2008 (it made news at the time but most peo;le seem to have forgotten about it now).

You could possibly say that chart shows a big rise (almost a doubling) in wholesale prices from 2001-2010 but since then they've been flat, in real terms, until the latest spike?

QrizB

One other point from the Watt Logic article - if the oldest (and, one would imagine, most expensive) ROs are now 20 years old, it won't be too long before they stop being paid? I'll have to look for some data on that. I've not yet seen a RO version of the CfD dashboard but I guess there must be something out there.

Edit: the oficial website (in all its 2007-web glory) is here:
https://renewablesandchp.ofgem.gov.uk

Finding anything will take a bit of work.

Second edit:
According to the Ofgem RO FAQ, ROs are normally paid for 20 years.

And this guide confirms that (see section 5.19 and following).

Magnitio

Martyn1981 said:

2nd_time_buyer said:

Martyn1981 said:

For anyone wanting to save vast amounts of money, then the advice from a money saving expert in the Sun is to unplug your games console as they add about £1,500 to your leccy bill just from standby - £4.20 per day / 15kWh on standby. And the stand by from the telly is £132 pa.

Or to be clear, that's what you would have seen before they revised the article on the 9th. Hope folk saw it after the revisions or there won't be a games console left in any Sun houses. Not sure how people stand a chance with so much poor advice being published, but I suppose the beauty of the interweb is that revisions can be made.

I’m a money-saving expert – these are the appliances that use the most power when they’re switched OFF

It is pretty frightening that it got through editorial - I would have thought it would fail the sniff test. It seems that reporting of finances/pensions/economics things are pretty accurate so I don't think it is a numeracy issue - more a science issue. I guess very few people in government and media have science/engineering qualifications.    

I'm still surprised at the standby kettle, perhaps those are ones with LED's to show they are switched on at the mains. But even then I can't follow their maths as they suggest standby uses 0.3kWh, presumably per day(?) so 12.5W. Sounds odd to me, but maybe it's correct for some/a kettle(?) but then how is that £5pa, since 0.3kWh x 365 x 28p/kWh = £30.66.

Don't get me wrong, I love it when good advice goes out to help people, especially when the cost of living / leccy is so high, but this article was terrible, and now it's just weird.

Good news though is that standby consumption has dropped massively over the years. Some TV's and monitors now use around 1W or less. Still a waste, maybe £2.50pa, but no longer horrific.

A lot of TV's are now down to .25W or less, which is trivial. So, don't worry about the hot-tubs, power-showers, tumble-dryers or washing at 60 degrees, just make sure you turn your TV off at the wall!

Martyn1981

I'm not sure if this is genuine, or someone who read the original Sun story, but we are back to £2 per day for kettle and toaster on standby. Seriously, that's two articles, so am I missing something, are there 'smart' toasters akin to Red Dwarf, trying to wipe us out financially. So forget holidays, if you don't unplug these, then they add ~£700 pa to your leccy bill, before actual usage?

And I don't like water wastage, and always good to fix a dripping tap, but £130pa. This is extremely specific:

On average, if a dripping tap is left to drip, it adds just under £11 per month to energy bills.

That's not far off our consumption element of our water bill (ignoring the standing charge), and Wales is not cheap for water.

Appliances to switch off before going on holiday - kettle and toaster could cost over £14