Cost per hour

SuperExcelMan

Hi

is there a handy guide anywhere that shows cost per hour of household electrical items to prove to people that some of their suggestions are bonkers?

These are all Facebook suggestions I have seen recently:

Charge your iPhone in your car because it’s free (it’s not!)

Turn off your router every night (I calculate the savings at around 1p per day)

Use your washing machine at night (lady was on a single tariff) (guaranteed to save zero, and is dangerous)

I’m thinking of a sticky guide of “TV costs 1p an hour, electric shower is £2.00 an hour”

Is there one out there? 

Thanks

Ultrasonic

How much energy is used by a TV will depend if it on or in standby mode... Switching modern OLED TVs fully off is bad for them as it can prevent anti-burn-in cycles from running.

I understand where you're coming from but focusing solely on the power use per hour can be misleading when comparing devices using power 24/7. A kettle uses typically 1.5 kW when on but it is only on or very short periods of time. What 'per hour' cost would you want for that?

There a 8760 hours in a 365 day year, so every 1W of constant power usage uses 8.76 kWh per year, costing £2.45 per year at a typical 28 p/kWh current capped rate. The total energy use from lots of devices using a small amount of energy all the time can add up and so it's not totally inconsequential from an environmental or financial perspective. Although equally nobody should expect huge savings from this.

I wouldn't turn a router off every night but mine allows me to set a schedule for when WiFi is on or not, and it saves about 4W when off. Now having this off roughly 50% of the time will save about 17.5 kWh / £5 per year (at current cap). No it's not a huge amount but there is no downside.

The biggest savings come from finding items that use rather more than you'd expect when powered but doing nothing useful, or from switching lots of things off and the contributions adding up.

Ultrasonic

Here's a fairly recent thread on this subject:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6337760/standby-power-consumption/p1

gefnew

Here is a list of household use.

THE 30 MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICAL ITEMS TO RUN IN THE HOME – AND HOW MUCH THEY COST TO RUN FOR AN HOUR ON AVERAGE, ACCORDING TO UTILITA

1. Electric shower £1.66p

2. Heating (average house being 729 sq ft – 7 watts per sq ft) 92p

3. Electric heater 65p

4. Fan assisted oven 46p

5. Kettle 43p

6. Hairdryer 41p

7. Tumble dryer 37p

8. Dishwasher 37p

9. Toaster 22p

10. Iron 19p

11. Coffee machine 15p

12. Microwave 15p

13. Vacuum cleaner 13p

14. Food processor 6p

15. Computer 4p

16. Fridge freezer 4p

17. Slow cooker 3p

18. Playstation 2p

19. Xbox 2p

20. Old style incandescent lightbulb 2p

21. Laptop 1p

22. Bathroom towel heater 1p

23. Ceiling fan 1p

24. Pedestal fan 1p

25. TV 0.7p

26. Straighteners 0.5p

27. Electric shaver 0.3p

28. Games console on standby 0.2p

29. LED lightbulb 0.1p

30. Mobile phone charger 0.1p

Ultrasonic

gefnew said:

Here is a list of household use.

THE 30 MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICAL ITEMS TO RUN IN THE HOME – AND HOW MUCH THEY COST TO RUN FOR AN HOUR ON AVERAGE, ACCORDING TO UTILITA

1. Electric shower £1.66p

Just this first item shows the issue here. An electric shower will typically use at least 7.5 kW when on (and can be over 10 kW). Run continuously for an hour this would use 7.5 kWh, costing £2.10 if we assumed a typical capped cost of 28 p/kWh. Nobody typically uses a shower for an hour though, so the 'cost per shower' that is rather more important will be a lot less than this - the shorter the shower the smaller the cost. A 5 minute shower would cost 17.5 p for example (excluding the water). 

Somebody gaming with a console/PC might use an instantaneous power of 300 W. The 'cost per hour' would be 8.4p and so in the table above it would look tiny compared to the shower, but game for 2 hours and the cost is the same a the 5 minute shower.

My point is it is very important to consider how long something is done for, not just the power usage when something is on.

Edit: I suspect the Utilita data is using a cheaper assumed electricity unit cost, and published data like this becoming out of date as prices rise is another issue.

QrizB

gefnew said:

Here is a list of household use.

THE 30 MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICAL ITEMS TO RUN IN THE HOME – AND HOW MUCH THEY COST TO RUN FOR AN HOUR ON AVERAGE, ACCORDING TO UTILITA

Do keep in mind that this article dates from April last year, when electricity was little more than half the price it is now.
For example running a 10kW electric shower for an hour would now cost around £2.80, not £1.66. a 3kW kettle would cost 84p, not 43p.

Ultrasonic

QrizB said:

gefnew said:

Here is a list of household use.

THE 30 MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICAL ITEMS TO RUN IN THE HOME – AND HOW MUCH THEY COST TO RUN FOR AN HOUR ON AVERAGE, ACCORDING TO UTILITA

Do keep in mind that this article dates from April last year, when electricity was little more than half the price it is now.
For example running a 10kW electric shower for an hour would now cost around £2.80, not £1.66. a 3kW kettle would cost 84p, not 43p.

Ha! I was just adding a similar edit to my post above whilst you posted this  .

SuperExcelMan

gefnew said:

Here is a list of household use.

THE 30 MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICAL ITEMS TO RUN IN THE HOME – AND HOW MUCH THEY COST TO RUN FOR AN HOUR ON AVERAGE, ACCORDING TO UTILITA

1. Electric shower £1.66p

2. Heating (average house being 729 sq ft – 7 watts per sq ft) 92p

3. Electric heater 65p

4. Fan assisted oven 46p

5. Kettle 43p

6. Hairdryer 41p

7. Tumble dryer 37p

8. Dishwasher 37p

9. Toaster 22p

10. Iron 19p

11. Coffee machine 15p

12. Microwave 15p

13. Vacuum cleaner 13p

14. Food processor 6p

15. Computer 4p

16. Fridge freezer 4p

17. Slow cooker 3p

18. Playstation 2p

19. Xbox 2p

20. Old style incandescent lightbulb 2p

21. Laptop 1p

22. Bathroom towel heater 1p

23. Ceiling fan 1p

24. Pedestal fan 1p

25. TV 0.7p

26. Straighteners 0.5p

27. Electric shaver 0.3p

28. Games console on standby 0.2p

29. LED lightbulb 0.1p

30. Mobile phone charger 0.1p

That’s the kind of thing I wanted, thank you. Would be good if the price was up to date (or you key in your unit price). Maybe MSE will do some useful tool on here 

Ultrasonic

SuperExcelMan said:

gefnew said:

Here is a list of household use.

THE 30 MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICAL ITEMS TO RUN IN THE HOME – AND HOW MUCH THEY COST TO RUN FOR AN HOUR ON AVERAGE, ACCORDING TO UTILITA

1. Electric shower £1.66p

2. Heating (average house being 729 sq ft – 7 watts per sq ft) 92p

3. Electric heater 65p

4. Fan assisted oven 46p

5. Kettle 43p

6. Hairdryer 41p

7. Tumble dryer 37p

8. Dishwasher 37p

9. Toaster 22p

10. Iron 19p

11. Coffee machine 15p

12. Microwave 15p

13. Vacuum cleaner 13p

14. Food processor 6p

15. Computer 4p

16. Fridge freezer 4p

17. Slow cooker 3p

18. Playstation 2p

19. Xbox 2p

20. Old style incandescent lightbulb 2p

21. Laptop 1p

22. Bathroom towel heater 1p

23. Ceiling fan 1p

24. Pedestal fan 1p

25. TV 0.7p

26. Straighteners 0.5p

27. Electric shaver 0.3p

28. Games console on standby 0.2p

29. LED lightbulb 0.1p

30. Mobile phone charger 0.1p

That’s the kind of thing I wanted, thank you. Would be good if the price was up to date (or you key in your unit price). Maybe MSE will do some useful tool on here 

Please take my comments into account and be very careful about sharing potentially misleading information on Facebook or elsewhere.

Alnat1

Kettle says 43p per hour but it only takes 2 mins to boil. Some people will read that and not have a cuppa all day!

markin

Alnat1 said:

Kettle says 43p per hour but it only takes 2 mins to boil. Some people will read that and not have a cuppa all day!

And too many will read that and start having 1hr long showers as its only £1.66, probably the same that think the price cap and DD's are all you can eat.