Oct price cap increase likely to push energy bill to over £10k... for a family of 4...

markin

ihatetrump said:

MariaAH said:

10) Yes - son uses an air con unit as his bedroom overheats due to gaming PC (but in summer gaming PC helps heat his room and the rest of upstairs)

@MariaAH - You started this post and initially & I felt sympathy feeling as if I'm in a similar position as you (albeit fortunately I'm on an EDF 3 year fix paying 19p per KwH for Elec and 3.7p for Gas until September 24) - it was only until I got to your post on page 3 and came to the aircon comment that I realised that you're far from being an average family of 4. I invested in ceiling fans years ago in all bedrooms - and treat this as a poor man's A/C - works great for us - although I admit it will do little to cool down an overheating gaming pc!

Maybe time to wean your son off the addictive gaming habit or get him his own sub-meter and treat him as a tenant paying his own rent!

3 Fans 55w running 24hr 4kwh So not a great saving really, They all work from home its not a 'gaming habit'.

MariaAH

Mstty said:

@MariaAH aI think this needs pointing as well on your journey to money saving

So 4483 kWh for approx 8400 miles that's 1.9 miles per kW

EV's are like any other car in that if you drive them a certain way they will be less economical.

It is also worth checking tyres are at the correct pressures.

I only bring this up as I don't think you are on an EV tariff(correct me if wrong) so don't get cheap charging overnight for your EV's and you want to cut down costs.

Getting the miles per kWh to 2.5 will save you 1500kwh for 9 months and 2000kWh for the year.

We are not on an EV tariff for 2 reasons 1) we need a Smart Meter to get on an EV tariff and BG say we are not eligible yet and anyway they have supply chain issues 2) even if we had a Smart Meter, BG are not offering that tariff at the moment. 

The Zoe has an ECO mode that we use all of the time, except when on motor way, as this makes the driving as efficient as it can be. It means that on motorway you will struggle to get to 70 mph...you can turn off ECO mode for motorway driving, but we only discovered that last month! Not economical but only use that on motorways, and only if speed of traffic is over 60, otherwise leave ECO mode on. I drive economically and make the most of the regenerative braking (B mode), but my son prefers to use normal D mode.

The numbers don't stack up, but I will get husband to double check tyre pressure, although he has not long done this. 

MariaAH

xzibit said:

This is worrying for electric car owners isn’t it? If you get 4 miles per kWh at best, and soon many people could be paying nearly 60p/kWh if they haven’t managed to fix or get on an EV specific tariff it could cost them more than a petrol car to run. It currently costs me about 8p a mile at the current prices of circa 169.9p. I know luckily the majority would have managed to fix much less than 60p to charge their cars. 

Yes it is a worry. We are low mileage users, so when we switched to EV we knew we would not see the same savings as those with high milage. But I am genuinely horrified that we appear to be getting nowhere near the advertised miles per kWh. And we are not fixed and cannot get on an EV tariff.

MariaAH

ihatetrump said:

MariaAH said:

10) Yes - son uses an air con unit as his bedroom overheats due to gaming PC (but in summer gaming PC helps heat his room and the rest of upstairs)

@MariaAH - You started this post and initially & I felt sympathy feeling as if I'm in a similar position as you (albeit fortunately I'm on an EDF 3 year fix paying 19p per KwH for Elec and 3.7p for Gas until September 24) - it was only until I got to your post on page 3 and came to the aircon comment that I realised that you're far from being an average family of 4. I invested in ceiling fans years ago in all bedrooms - and treat this as a poor man's A/C - works great for us - although I admit it will do little to cool down an overheating gaming pc!

Maybe time to wean your son off the addictive gaming habit or get him his own sub-meter and treat him as a tenant paying his own rent!

Although I refer to it as a Gaming PC, and he does do some gaming, the top spec graphics cards etc are required for his business (software developer, Web3 etc) and it has a watercooling system (which he tells me is economical)...BUT my Tapo energy monitoring plugs have arrived today...so I will find out for sure.

MariaAH

pochase said:

My experience from having electric cars for three years (Leaf 24KWh and Leaf 30KWh  from early  2016 until late  2019) is that best I was able to get out of it was about 4.5 miles driving mainly at 60mph on the highway.

Normal use in town with aircon/heating and especially preheating or pre aircon was more like 3 to 3.5KWh.

Also I never tried to squeeze the last 0.1 miles by driving extremely careful.

Less than 2 miles per KWh sounds really bad and expensive. That soon will be a cost of over 30p per mile. Going from a current price of 8£ per gallon a car better than 26mpg will beat the cost of the electric car. And that does not take into account the higher cost of a EV, or that it will be very costly to replace the battery.

Good luck with the plans for only electric cars soon. Who will be able to afford this? Don't forget that tariffs like Octopus Go are loss makers and they are still testing the market here.

To be honest, the numbers just don't stack up...I can see the mileage of the 2 Zoe's as we had them from new. But looking at the kWh used from the Hypervolt app, we are getting shockingly low miles for our kWh. I am wondering how accurate the Hypervolt app is??

MariaAH

ispookie666 said:

Adding solar panels might bring your consumption levels down to a national average. 

The computer equipment will be likely the culprit. I would not be surprised if he has a switch, server and a few other power hungry devices. 

I do know my Poe switch and server consume 3kw/day  and they are running at the lowest. 

Son and daughter have gone to London for the day and Gaming PC and air con are off. So will compare today to a day when he is at home working (software developer) and gaming with the air con on...

EssexHebridean

macman said:

EssexHebridean said:

macman said:

Cavity walls have been around since the 1920. Cavity wall insulation became mandatory in the 1990's. So this 1980's house should have at least the former.
I'll pass on the leccy side, as there are simply too many variables, but the gaming PC and aircon have to be the first subjects to investigate.
I would start with the gas, as there is simply nothing to explain the high consumption on that, since it is only used for heating and hot water. Setting it as high as 21C is wasteful, but, unless it's left on all night in winter, or the insulation terrible, it should still not be using that much.
Given the scope of the potential saving here, I would ask the supplier to do a meter test. 
The possibility of both meters being erroneous is vanishingly small, so I still think the leccy usage is down to the factors above.
Bear in mind that the OP has not yet given us 12m usage figures. 7m is better than nothing, but not conclusive.

Not if that is the required temperature for warmth of the inhabitants after all usual "put a jumper on" type advice has been followed, it's not. Comments like this just feel judgemental - people are having a tough enough time right now without that! 

Would you be happier if I said that 'setting it as high as 21C is expensive' then? Anecdotally, dropping the CH by 1C takes 10% off your heating consumption, so I make no apologies for mentioning it. 
If you're in the Hebrides, isn't a room temp of 21C almost sub-tropical?

That would be far better wording, yep - and factual, too!

The majority of heating in the Hebrides is electrically based - aside from open fires which thankfully most properties also have. Friends who use the same storage heaters that we have have to have them permanently set to an output temperature of 26C purely to get an even vaguely cosy living area in their old stone-built cottage - and they are far from the most exposed property in the place, too!  As for "actual room temperature" - I shouldn't imagine there will be anyone heating properties to that level there this winter - even if there was before which is unlikely! The costs up there were already high and will now be eyewatering at best, and literally not affordable for many more. 

macman

xzibit said:

michaels said:

Mstty said:

MariaAH said:

I have done lots of number crunching today, and with the help of our EV charger hypervolt app, have worked out that approx 1/3 of our electricity kWh is charging EV - based on the 9 months usage, I would estimate that EV charging usage would be approx 4453kWh per annum, approx £1,246 per annum. Even taken this into account, remaining electricity usage still very high.

Interestingly, the month when my son and daughter were in LA for almost 3 weeks (March) the electricity usage was at its highest - that has me totally baffled as no gaming PC nor air con etc?!

Given that 1kwh of charge is approx 4 miles have you done over 16000 miles in 9 months not sure you said you did that much mileage earlier in the post hence why I ask.

Lastly find that crypto mining machine 🤣🤣🤣

The Tapo will help and threaten everyone with an individual bill

It might be 4 miles per kwh from the battery (although that is pretty good, normally only achieved in summer tbh) but from the plug will be about 10% more due to charging (in)efficiency.

This is worrying for electric car owners isn’t it? If you get 4 miles per kWh at best, and soon many people could be paying nearly 60p/kWh if they haven’t managed to fix or get on an EV specific tariff it could cost them more than a petrol car to run. It currently costs me about 8p a mile at the current prices of circa 169.9p. I know luckily the majority would have managed to fix much less than 60p to charge their cars. 

You are ignoring the other savings on an electric car other than the fuel cost. No VED, huge BIK tax savings if it's run as a company car, lower servicing costs, no Congestion Charge fees.
Obviously these will be reduced or removed once fuel duty and VED revenues fall further, so it's a case of making hay while the sun shines.

macman

MariaAH said:

xzibit said:

This is worrying for electric car owners isn’t it? If you get 4 miles per kWh at best, and soon many people could be paying nearly 60p/kWh if they haven’t managed to fix or get on an EV specific tariff it could cost them more than a petrol car to run. It currently costs me about 8p a mile at the current prices of circa 169.9p. I know luckily the majority would have managed to fix much less than 60p to charge their cars. 

Yes it is a worry. We are low mileage users, so when we switched to EV we knew we would not see the same savings as those with high milage. But I am genuinely horrified that we appear to be getting nowhere near the advertised miles per kWh. And we are not fixed and cannot get on an EV tariff.

What do you mean by the 'advertised miles per kWh'? can you not view the actual figure from the software in the battery management display?

macman

MariaAH said:

ihatetrump said:

MariaAH said:

10) Yes - son uses an air con unit as his bedroom overheats due to gaming PC (but in summer gaming PC helps heat his room and the rest of upstairs)

@MariaAH - You started this post and initially & I felt sympathy feeling as if I'm in a similar position as you (albeit fortunately I'm on an EDF 3 year fix paying 19p per KwH for Elec and 3.7p for Gas until September 24) - it was only until I got to your post on page 3 and came to the aircon comment that I realised that you're far from being an average family of 4. I invested in ceiling fans years ago in all bedrooms - and treat this as a poor man's A/C - works great for us - although I admit it will do little to cool down an overheating gaming pc!

Maybe time to wean your son off the addictive gaming habit or get him his own sub-meter and treat him as a tenant paying his own rent!

Although I refer to it as a Gaming PC, and he does do some gaming, the top spec graphics cards etc are required for his business (software developer, Web3 etc) and it has a watercooling system (which he tells me is economical)...BUT my Tapo energy monitoring plugs have arrived today...so I will find out for sure.

Sorry to repeat myself, but if that is the case, all this is deductible as a business expense. You just need to quantify the cost.