Energy - Totally confused

[Deleted User]

Tigsmom said:

Mstty said:

Tigsmom said:

Robin9 said:

@Tigsmom   Your present annual costs of £829 and £1621  suggest you are a very high user of both electricity and gas.  There should be plenty of room to cut your costs -  details of please of your property, heating etc .

We only use heating at 17 degrees for 1 hour a day between November and March so how can we be very high usage? My parents have their heating on all day at 22 degrees most of the year! 

Hi Tigsmom,

You gas usage is actually under the average but I am concern it is roughly 10,000 kWh a year and you say you only heat for one hour a day. Even given that the first hour of heating is the most expensive the boiler will be firing full probably for that full hour (do you know the kWh rating of your boiler) even so might be worth lower the temp on your boiler and checking you are not heating your hot water to a high temp all day.

The electricity is high so do you have high energy gadgets or cook multiple meals in the ove. Wash and dry clothes a lot or have gaming desktop PC's in the house.

Also worth checking your immersion switch is not turn on unless you have no hot water tank and a combi boiler👍

We don’t have the heating, tv on, or anything except husbands laptop when kids are at school. We are a busy house with people coming and going to various sports etc during term time so the oven was used several times a night sometimes but I have just bought an air fryer to try and cut down on that. We used to turn the oven off after cooking and leave the door open to let the heat into the house. 

The oven can consume upwards of 3kW/hour depending on the model.  Air fryer are better for sure if they can be used instead as you have realised.

Tigsmom

chris_n said:

Your highest use is clearly the oven, solar chargers etc will probably never pay for themselves. Use a slow cooker or something for meals during the week so you only cook once, you can leave the slow cooker on for 5 hours for less than the cost of heating your oven.

Thanks, I was wondering how much the slow cooker used as I do use it in winter but not as much as I’d like as the only thing my picky kids will eat from there is sausage casserole. 🙄 I make stew too but a potful feeds me and hubby alone for about 4 days and gets a bit boring by day 3!

[Deleted User]

Our go to methods are : pressure cooker/ slow cooker ( it is a combination appliance - electric), air fryer (electric) with electic oven used increasingly sparely. 
   

Alnat1

How about individual laundry baskets in each kids room? When you empty them to wash, you know what they wore and for how long. Simply fold up/hang up the once worn items and the kids will have no clue that they haven't been washed and ironed.

Rather than individual towels, get all the same so they can't be individually "recognised", do same thing with them.

Tigsmom

Alnat1 said:

How about individual laundry baskets in each kids room? When you empty them to wash, you know what they wore and for how long. Simply fold up/hang up the once worn items and the kids will have no clue that they haven't been washed and ironed.

Rather than individual towels, get all the same so they can't be individually "recognised", do same thing with them.

I like the individual basket idea. We already have household towels but I often wash them all at once (8) put them in the towel rack then 2 days later go for a shower only to find they’ve all been used and are back in the wash basket  When the kids were little they had their own towels with characters on and I only washed them twice a week. 

MWT

DerwentMailman said:

The oven can consume upwards of 3kW/hour depending on the model.  Air fryer are better for sure if they can be used instead as you have realised.

The oven can pull a lot of power when initially heating up, but doesn't pull that continuously...

The air fryer has a lower maximum power rating, but it will usually use that continuously during the cooking time...

So it isn't as simple as just looking at the power rating.

Tigsmom

Robin9 said:

Re DD -  you are turning your back on a big saving (7% ?)

Does your supplier do a monthly variable DD tariff ?   You pay for what you use -   comes with a warning of low(ish) bills at this time of year but Winter ones are likely to be horrendous as you are not building up  buffer  - but overall better that turning your back on DD

I do have a buffer because I save each month in my savings account and use it to pay the bill leaving any excess in the account for the next bill but I will look into direct debit. In the past though, whenever I have paid by direct debit it’s been set a way above my usage and I’ve had to wait months to get it back. If it’s in my account and an emergency happens I can borrow from it until payday and then put it back when I need it. I know this may sound a bit reckless but we don’t have any debt and live within our means by juggling various budgeting accounts to pay whatever needs paying at that time. When energy bills rise we will cut our cloth accordingly. I wish it wasn’t like that, I’ve already changed jobs once this year to increase our income and if necessary I will have to look into a second job.

HampshireH

There's plenty of meals you can do on a hob too. Things like chilli, curry, risotto, spag bol, sausage/chicken pasta, sweet and sour, creamy chicken, stroganoff, hunters chicken, fry up, stir fry, etc etc 

We use our induction hob a lot more that our oven.

Child eats earlier during the week and we heat the pot later when they are in bed. Just add rice/pasta/noodles/mash or whatever to go with it. Saves on the oven costs, can be done in bulk and frozen & dished up at a time to suit anyone. Sunday's are our worst for the oven our elec always peaks due to Sunday roast.

Evan3020

Yes spag bol in 2 saucepans and a steamed jam roly poly (95 minutes on the hob) all for 0,06 units or 0.7 kwhs or less than 5p total.

Tigsmom

HampshireH said:

There's plenty of meals you can do on a hob too. Things like chilli, curry, risotto, spag bol, sausage/chicken pasta, sweet and sour, creamy chicken, stroganoff, hunters chicken, fry up, stir fry, etc etc 

We use our induction hob a lot more that our oven.

Child eats earlier during the week and we heat the pot later when they are in bed. Just add rice/pasta/noodles/mash or whatever to go with it. Saves on the oven costs, can be done in bulk and frozen & dished up at a time to suit anyone. Sunday's are our worst for the oven our elec always peaks due to Sunday roast.

I often cook pasta (although I have to make 2 different sauces) and curry (but only 3 of us will eat that) daughter is practically vegetarian but not quite so when I cook Sunday lunch she has it without chicken. I have tried to only cook things everyone will eat but that ended up with me getting sick of eating everything in tomato based sauces. I much prefer cheese or white sauce. I don’t freeze anything because it doesn’t taste the same when defrosted and reheated (especially pasta). I find it goes watery. Just tried jacket potatoes in the air fryer but they took far too long so I’ll probably do them in the microwave first next time. I cooked a full chicken in 40 minutes though so will definitely be doing more.