Get the whole house involved in energy saving👍

Mstty

Thanks to this forum and the energy crisis I started on a crusade for reducing energy use (we are electricity only but that doesn't matter energy can be reduce whatever energy you use)

The first few months monthly energy used was reducing nicely but the big leaps came when everyone in the house embraced energy saving. 

I recommend getting kids involved if you have them and small rewards for them being energy efficient

brewerdave

Laudable - but isn't part of your weekly saving down to warmer days and lighter evenings ??

Alnat1

April was above average for temperatures and May so far has been under. Mstty probably hasn't had the heating on in either month.

Northern_Wanderer

I was doing quite well with not having the heating on, that is until it got cold and cloudy here and I got a cold. So I'm back up to 20.5C rather than 18C

My leccy usage has been 25KWH hours less than previous Aprils but was still the biggest electric bill ever.....perhaps I didn't use the oven so much.....

QrizB

Interesting, Mstty! Here's mine (I do heat my water with gas, which is another 7kWh/day on average):

matelodave

These are my records for the past eleven years - I do my best but I am flogging against overwhelming odds when it comes to persuading my wife to be a bit more frugal. Being all electric it is really noticeable how much our consumption increased when we've had cold winters and when we've been away on holiday. However having the records does mean that we can pretty well work out our consumption profile and forecast out monthly consumption and costs.

brewerdave

matelodave said:

These are my records for the past eleven years - I do my best but I am flogging against overwhelming odds when it comes to persuading my wife to be a bit more frugal. Being all electric it is really noticeable how much our consumption increased when we've had cold winters and when we've been away on holiday. However having the records does mean that we can pretty well work out our consumption profile and forecast out monthly consumption and costs.

I feel your pain ! It's a constant battle over the thermostat in the Winter and I'm forever closing the back door after another trip out into the garden!

FreeBear

brewerdave said: I feel your pain ! It's a constant battle over the thermostat in the Winter and I'm forever closing the back door after another trip out into the garden!

When I switched my boiler control over to a smarter system, I left the old thermostat in place. Heating is controlled by a black box hidden up and password protected. But if anyone wants to fiddle with the thermostat, they are more than welcome - Not that it will do anything.

Mstty

@brewerdave heating has been off since 11th April so no these are real life savings, cut backs we have made to save energy as a household and not to do with lighter evenings over the 5 week period shown.

@Alnat1 as above so the reductions in energy use have nothing to do with heating.

So over the five weeks we gradually reduced the time the Heatpump heated the hot water once a day down to 45 mins and about 1-1.5kWh a day. We batched cooked food and used the microwave more to heat things up and turned things off at the plug. Everyone chipped in on energy saving ideas like when we used the oven we used it to capacity. Lots more little tweaks which we see working all year round for a baseline saving every month of the year.

If we had done nothing we estimate from our 11th April week we would be using 11.5 kWh a day and we are down to a manageable and not too life changing 7kWh a day. Just a bit more thought and this equates to savings of 31.5 kWh a week in the April to September period hopefully.

We estimate in winter the baseline will move to 8.5kWh a day to take into account led light use, kettle on a but more and the oven on a bit more. Still a saving of 24.5 kWh a week.

Take the summer and anticipated winter figures excluding heating but including hot water we get a baseline down from 11.5kWh to 8kWh so for the year that's saving 1277.5 kWh or £373.54

This was really to show what can happen when you think about energy use but don't have to change you life too much to made a big saving over the year.

Just for info no solar panels but seriously considering it.

Mrs_F_2017

@QrizB any tips on how you get your electric so low? We’re also gas water and no heating currently. 

We are running an ancient fridge currently whilst our kitchen is being refurbished. And old plasma TV but we’re pretty careful with how often we watch that! 

Mstty

Mrs_F_2017 said:

@QrizB any tips on how you get your electric so low? We’re also gas water and no heating currently. 

We are running an ancient fridge currently whilst our kitchen is being refurbished. And old plasma TV but we’re pretty careful with how often we watch that! 

He has solar panels listed in his signature👍

Would be interested to know the full figures taking solar out though @qrizB