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

MariaAH

Flight3287462 said:

What a great thread, though has taken me three sittings to work my way through it.  I will follow updates with interest.

Just made the mistake of going in to my 18 year old daughter's bedroom (just back from Italy) to check what has been left on and it looks like a war zone.  Off to Uni this Sep[tember so hoping for a decent drop in power use.

My 19 year old should be joining the RAF within the next few months so hope for a drop in use then too!

rgsom

MariaAH 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

Your maths are correct based on advertised range, however, that does not appear to represent real life range when you factor in heating in winter, air con in summer, lights etc etc.

My Renault Zoe has 2780 miles from new (Nov 2021)
My son's Renault Zoe has 2600 miles from new (Sept 2021)
My husband had an electric company car from Feb to Jun and used approx 3000 miles
We now share the 2 Renault Zoe's between the 3 of us to save on costs.

So in summary, more like 8400 miles between us in the 9 months. That in itself is a bit of an eye opener that we are not getting anywhere near the advertised range per kWh!!!

Company cars aren’t something I’m familiar with but if hubby is charging a company EV at home how would an employee be compensated? (Assuming he’s not self employed)
Thanks and good luck.

MariaAH

rgsom said:

MariaAH 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

Your maths are correct based on advertised range, however, that does not appear to represent real life range when you factor in heating in winter, air con in summer, lights etc etc.

My Renault Zoe has 2780 miles from new (Nov 2021)
My son's Renault Zoe has 2600 miles from new (Sept 2021)
My husband had an electric company car from Feb to Jun and used approx 3000 miles
We now share the 2 Renault Zoe's between the 3 of us to save on costs.

So in summary, more like 8400 miles between us in the 9 months. That in itself is a bit of an eye opener that we are not getting anywhere near the advertised range per kWh!!!

Company cars aren’t something I’m familiar with but if hubby is charging a company EV at home how would an employee be compensated? (Assuming he’s not self employed)
Thanks and good luck.

He only had the company car for a couple of months, during which time he was able to claim business miles as expenses. But he has a new job now with no company car, so he is using my car or my son’s car. We are trying to manage with 2 cars between the three of us

QrizB

gfunkuk said:

She says she's done her research and distilled is better. I give up!

That's OK, the energy is probably cheaper than divorce!

Coffeekup

MariaAH said:

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.

That tell me it's a high end machine... Which consumes lots of electric.

Magnitio

QrizB said:

gfunkuk said:

Water distiller (which my other half insists on using) 580W x 5 hours a day.

Reverse osmosis would probably cost less to run but give an equivalent result, if you can persuade your OH?

At some point, champagne will be cheaper!

Coffeekup

MariaAH said:

I have some questions that those following this thread may be able to answer:
1. Which devices on standby are likely to use the most energy? 
2. Can you change setting, eg on TV, to reduce standby energy use?
3. Do fully charged devices (laptops. mobile phones) carry in using energy if still plugged in after they are fully charged?
4. Do empty chargers still plugged in (after laptop/phone disconnected) still use energy?
5. Is it worthwhile turning our oven off at the wall when not in use? (rangemaster with induction hob, fan oven, smaller multiuse oven, grill and LED clock)

Thanks

1- sky box's, tv, hi-fi amplifier, PC, fridge freezer, boiler, microwave and or oven (especially if it has a clock).
2- on my one no, but I can have an exo setting with on, but the colour's, contrast etc look washed out.
3- yes

4- yes

5- yes

6- I know you never asked but I see sofas with USB ports in the side.... Just idling away in the background, burning needless energy.

Something's may only use 2-30 kw's but add them all up across 10/20/30 applicances or sockets and multiply that by the hours in a day then per month, money is being burned.

michaels

Coffeekup said:

MariaAH said:

I have some questions that those following this thread may be able to answer:
1. Which devices on standby are likely to use the most energy? 
2. Can you change setting, eg on TV, to reduce standby energy use?
3. Do fully charged devices (laptops. mobile phones) carry in using energy if still plugged in after they are fully charged?
4. Do empty chargers still plugged in (after laptop/phone disconnected) still use energy?
5. Is it worthwhile turning our oven off at the wall when not in use? (rangemaster with induction hob, fan oven, smaller multiuse oven, grill and LED clock)

Thanks

1- sky box's, tv, hi-fi amplifier, PC, fridge freezer, boiler, microwave and or oven (especially if it has a clock).
2- on my one no, but I can have an exo setting with on, but the colour's, contrast etc look washed out.
3- yes

4- yes

5- yes

6- I know you never asked but I see sofas with USB ports in the side.... Just idling away in the background, burning needless energy.

Something's may only use 2-30 kw's but add them all up across 10/20/30 applicances or sockets and multiply that by the hours in a day then per month, money is being burned.

I think you hopefully mean watts.  A 1 watt standby device at 30p per kwh will cost about 2.50 per year.  Just googled and it suggested that a microwave uses 0.5w in standby and a LED TV used 80w per year!  If you are looking at an electricity bill of 3k per annum probably best to start with things that costs £50 plus a year and see if you can save 10% (£5 or more) than things that cost £2 where even if you reduce use by 100% that is your max saving.  If you have 20 things plugged in that each use £2 on standby per annum then unplugging them all every time only saves a max of £40 whereas you could easily save several times that by having each shower for 30s shorter.

Not sure why people have got it into their heads that phone chargers and standby are the big worries when they are basically a rounding error when it comes to electricity bills.

Mstty

Surely we are looking at costing things at circa 60p kWh now for Oct/Jan

Every single watt of standby will be £5.25 a year priced at 60p kWh

"THE GREAT SWITCHOFF" should target anything on standby

Alnat1

Stayed at a friends house this weekend and took my Tapo as we'd been chatting about it.

We measured her plug-in air freshener as 4w, pffft seems nothing.

She has this on constantly, so 4 x 24 x 365 = 35kWh. She has 6 of these, all over the house, 35kWh x 6 = 210kWh. Is that really £126 if we're now saying electricity will be around 60p/kWh or have I messed up somewhere with the maths?