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

Malkytheheed

MWT 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)

he could be using 300-400W on the PC and then the AC costs on top of that.

If it is warm enough to heat the room and the surrounding area then it may be worth putting an energy monitor on the PC to get a feeling for the real use. 300W 24/7 would be over 7kWh a day on its own...

I know this is an old post but I put an energy usage monitor on my gaming PC (fairly high spec) and it uses 250w in windows and 600w!!! when actually gaming. The graphics card alone draws 300w. Its really suprising. 

MariaAH

@username unfortunately I do need to be on camera for Zoom/Teams calls and for an hour or two at a time. 

Good news is I now have a TP monitor on the iMac so will be able to get some numbers. I am not working today but turned it on to do some quick tests this morning. 

iMac has been “sleeping” for about 7 hours and is currently drawing less than 3w which is less than I expected.

Seemed to idle with screen on around 40-45w. Opening up Google workspace, Google Drive Excel etc it was drawing 55-60w. Opening up Zoom with me on camera it went up to 80-85w.

Tomorrow will be a real test as I am working all day and have a Zoom call for 1 hour with 4 others. 

MariaAH

Malkytheheed said:

MWT 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)

he could be using 300-400W on the PC and then the AC costs on top of that.

If it is warm enough to heat the room and the surrounding area then it may be worth putting an energy monitor on the PC to get a feeling for the real use. 300W 24/7 would be over 7kWh a day on its own...

I know this is an old post but I put an energy usage monitor on my gaming PC (fairly high spec) and it uses 250w in windows and 600w!!! when actually gaming. The graphics card alone draws 300w. Its really suprising. 

Wow! Yes it all is an eye opener!

xeny

Malkytheheed said:

I know this is an old post but I put an energy usage monitor on my gaming PC (fairly high spec) and it uses 250w in windows and 600w!!! when actually gaming. The graphics card alone draws 300w. Its really suprising. 

Check the processor is idling properly. I'm typing this on a 12 core Xeon PC with 32 GB of RAM and admittedly a relatively small Nvidia GPU and just typing and web browsing the PC excluding monitor is using 45W.

Another thing for anyone with a PC to check is that Wake on LAN is disabled in the UEFI/BIOS - it adds another couple of watts to the switch off power draw.

deano2099

MariaAH said:

So from Oct 1st, this is an increase of £5693 in our annual energy bill from where it was at March 2021. We do not have £5693 per annum spare to absorb these breathtaking increases. How many people would!

This is the tricky bit and potentially where lots of us will be looking next. Your figures work out at an extra £440 a month, so £147 each for the three adults. I'd imagine you probably* do each have that much disposable income a month. It's just... not pleasant. That might well be the bulk of your disposable income and lifestyle changes may mean more giving up hobbies, holidays and such. Where it's tricky is in situations like you just mentioned, redundancies and so on, good news that hubby has managed to secure another job - for those where that isn't the case it starts to get much more unpleasant. And if prices continue to rise it'll be even more so.

*I don't know your situation and it's certainly possible you personally don't, but I think the reality is that for most of us in a similar position we can find the money, but it will involve giving up other things we've taken for granted.

But yeah, when you can get the house empty, try turning off all the circuits at the breaker, and then switch them on one at a time for ten minutes, and see if/where the usage spikes, that should help you narrow things down. If it's a lights or sockets circuit, do the same thing but with each socket/light. If you reach a situation where the usage is going up even though all the visible sockets/lights are off, then you know there's some issue on that specific circuit, and can then get an electrician to look at that specific thing.
(Honestly my experience is that unless you can do that work to narrow down the problem and clearly demonstrate it, no tradesperson will look at it because they're not going to do the dull, time consuming task of turning things off and on circuit by circuit, appliance by appliance. Not that you'd want to be paying an electrician to stand around doing that anyway)

MariaAH

deano2099 said:

MariaAH said:

So from Oct 1st, this is an increase of £5693 in our annual energy bill from where it was at March 2021. We do not have £5693 per annum spare to absorb these breathtaking increases. How many people would!

This is the tricky bit and potentially where lots of us will be looking next. Your figures work out at an extra £440 a month, so £147 each for the three adults. I'd imagine you probably* do each have that much disposable income a month. It's just... not pleasant. That might well be the bulk of your disposable income and lifestyle changes may mean more giving up hobbies, holidays and such. Where it's tricky is in situations like you just mentioned, redundancies and so on, good news that hubby has managed to secure another job - for those where that isn't the case it starts to get much more unpleasant. And if prices continue to rise it'll be even more so.

*I don't know your situation and it's certainly possible you personally don't, but I think the reality is that for most of us in a similar position we can find the money, but it will involve giving up other things we've taken for granted.

You make some valid points and everyone's situation is unique and complex. The last holiday we had was in Aug 2019. We have not been away anywhere since then, not even in the UK, in part due to the pandemic and in part due to the cost. I've just had 2 weeks off this Aug but we could not afford to go away (husband's redundancy), so we opted for day trips instead - bought a 'two's together' railcard for £20 instead of £30, and that gave us a third of rail fares for a year. 

We are in a better position than some in that we are unlikely to lose our house (at least I hope not), but will have to seriously cut back on heating this winter (am planning on getting each of us a hot water bottle and a fleece blanket to use on colder evenings!), and we will have to find cheaper meals options (I have turned the oven off at the wall and am using the slow cookers). Yes, most likely we can weather the storm without losing our home, and yes there will have to be significant lifestyle changes...but what really worries me is how those who are in a worse position, including the most vulnerable, are going to cope in comparison...

Mstty

I think you mentioned you bought your daughter an air fryer, the cheapest way is for all to eat together using one cooking device either slow cooker or air fryer.

If you are talking about fleeces and hot water bottles in winter it does sound like you need to go down to this level of detail in your money saving.

That said two EV's do you mind me asking if they are on lease and at least one put through your son's business by the accountant and if he is running a business from hom a decent accountant can claim back that office room proportion of energy bills and more.

MariaAH

Mstty said:

I think you mentioned you bought your daughter an air fryer, the cheapest way is for all to eat together using one cooking device either slow cooker or air fryer.

If you are talking about fleeces and hot water bottles in winter it does sound like you need to go down to this level of detail in your money saving.

That said two EV's do you mind me asking if they are on lease and at least one put through your son's business by the accountant and if he is running a business from hom a decent accountant can claim back that office room proportion of energy bills and more.

Bought the air fryer for the family, but believe I mentioned that daughter uses it a lot. Yes cooking family meals in slow cooker…if kids don’t want to eat at same time as us, it will keep warm for them. I have a number of food intolerances so not always easy to cook a one pot meal for all, hence I have a small slow cooker for me and a larger one for the other 3. Still more economical than the oven.

Yes, EVs are on PCP. Son had a really bad accountant who screwed him over (long story and a tale of caution worthy of its own thread). He has just moved to a competent accountant who will indeed be helping him with the appropriate tax relief. He can claim £6 a week against the business for working from home towards energy (most people who work from home should be able to claim tax relief of this same amount)…amount has not kept up with increase in energy prices, but will be help to many self employed.

As many pointed out, I am still in a better position than some, but genuinely trying to reduce consumption. 

Grateful for all contributions on this thread who have helped with my journey to reduced consumption. And I hope others may have benefited from the thread too.

chris_n

MariaAH said:

Mstty said:

I think you mentioned you bought your daughter an air fryer, the cheapest way is for all to eat together using one cooking device either slow cooker or air fryer.

If you are talking about fleeces and hot water bottles in winter it does sound like you need to go down to this level of detail in your money saving.

That said two EV's do you mind me asking if they are on lease and at least one put through your son's business by the accountant and if he is running a business from hom a decent accountant can claim back that office room proportion of energy bills and more.

Bought the air fryer for the family, but believe I mentioned that daughter uses it a lot. Yes cooking family meals in slow cooker…if kids don’t want to eat at same time as us, it will keep warm for them. I have a number of food intolerances so not always easy to cook a one pot meal for all, hence I have a small slow cooker for me and a larger one for the other 3. Still more economical than the oven.

Yes, EVs are on PCP. Son had a really bad accountant who screwed him over (long story and a tale of caution worthy of its own thread). He has just moved to a competent accountant who will indeed be helping him with the appropriate tax relief. He can claim £6 a week against the business for working from home towards energy (most people who work from home should be able to claim tax relief of this same amount)…amount has not kept up with increase in energy prices, but will be help to many self employed.

As many pointed out, I am still in a better position than some, but genuinely trying to reduce consumption. 

Grateful for all contributions on this thread who have helped with my journey to reduced consumption. And I hope others may have benefited from the thread too.

It's one of the best and most informative threads on here, largely because you keep coming back with updates.

caveman38

I too have enjoyed reading this thread and learned a lot. Without going back and confirming, I keep popping in to find out if you solved the problem of the unaccounted for 2kW - which someone suggested was maybe a  hidden immersion heater.. Was that solved?