Energy saving tips

Mstty

This was surprisingly good for the mirror and will help most on their journey to saving energy.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/shocktober-50-ways-cut-your-27785557.amp

Robin9

I like my hard boiled egg (well 2) for breakfast.  Used to boil for 4 mins  but now 3 and let in stay in the hot water for the last minute.

Mstty

Robin9 said:

I like my hard boiled egg (well 2) for breakfast.  Used to boil for 4 mins  but now 3 and let in stay in the hot water for the last minute.

I prefer the bring to the boil and simmer for 1 minute, take off the heat put lid on saucepan leave for 8/10/12 mins depending how you like your egg.

Very efficient we do 6-10 at a time and refrigerate for sandwiches/salads/mains.

Ally_E.

Well that's better than my method of bringing to boil and simmering for 11min 🙈

borderline

I stopped using the vacuum cleaner .. back to the broom

JohnPo

Actually having read the article some really sensible suggestions and a much longer list of ideas than I have seen elsewhere including the main part of the MSE site.

Effician

If people were to approach energy saving more like a canny shopper they would realise how far they can stretch the kWh budget, but to do this they would have to know what their appliances/gadgets & heating actually cost to use in their individual situation.

A canny shopper will know the cost of goods compared to other stores , cost per kilo or litre, very rarely buy stuff & let it go to waste etc,etc, but when it comes to energy it seems few people use a similar approach when in reality it's not that far removed from everyday shopping but only works if you know the cost of each item.

k_man

Effician said:

If people were to approach energy saving more like a canny shopper they would realise how far they can stretch the kWh budget, but to do this they would have to know what their appliances/gadgets & heating actually cost to use in their individual situation.

A canny shopper will know the cost of goods compared to other stores , cost per kilo or litre, very rarely buy stuff & let it go to waste etc,etc, but when it comes to energy it seems few people use a similar approach when in reality it's not that far removed from everyday shopping but only works if you know the cost of each item.

That is a good point.
Like shoppers blindly following, shop at store X it is cheaper.
When, as we all know, it depends on which products you buy.
With energy (and many other things), people want simple 2 mins hacks (hate that term) to save money, rather than doing a bit of ground work.

So rather than:
Turn off these 10 gadgets.
It should be

Measure the usage of your gadgets and make a decision.

That said, these tips can be useful, when taken as guidance/suggestions rather than must dos.

wild666

I already turn everything off at the wall socket except the fridge, freezer and router and it's saved me 35% on the electric bill. I lowered the temperatures on my boiler to 50 degrees for water and 53 degrees for heating and lowered the thermostat to 17 degrees. I did it last September after Avro went under and haven't changed the settings since. 
Before I did this my electric was 2400 kWh and the gas around 3200 kWh per year, it's now 1400 kWh E and 1050 kWh G. 

Xbigman

I've given this some thought. Its not about what you turn off, its about what you turn on. You should start with everything off.

Stage one. Do an energy audit.
Get an energy monitor plug and dig out the manuals for all your appliances. Start a spreadsheet page and list everything in your household that uses energy. You might have to be creative with things like the cooker if its wired in directly. Turn off everything in the household including fridge and freezer then take a meter reading. Cook a meal and take another meter reading then turn everything back on. That will give you a good idea of cooking costs. You should now have a long list of exactly what uses energy in your household.

Stage two. Do an energy budget.
Work out how much you can afford per year. Take off the standing charges. Now set aside half that amount for heating. Divide what's left by 52. Divide that figure by the cost per kwh. That figure is how many kwh's you can use in a week. It needs to be done weekly because some things IE washing machine, are used on a weekly basis. Whatever that figure comes out as is it. That's what you can use. 

Stage Three. Spend the budget.
Now back to the spreadsheet. Set up a page with the days of the week down the side and columns for devices across the top with totals for each day as the last column. Have a grand total for the week at the bottom. Start choosing what you want turned on and add it to the spreadsheet. Once your budget is reached you stop. At that point you might have stuff you still need to do. Well that's where the big choices need to be made because you need to cut out something in order to make room, or you need a bigger budget. If the bigger budget is not an option then cutting back on something is the only choice. Do you really need a shower on the weekend. Can you get by with 3 washing loads a week instead of 5. Can you downsize the fridge, turn off the freezer or eat mostly sandwiches. These can be tough choices. 
If you don't already do it set up a spreadsheet page and keep regular meter readings. Probably best weekly now.
With the heating its a bit trickier because you don't know which months will be the coldest. If you have records of monthly meter reading already you can approximate the spread of usage over the winter. If not I'd say try 25% of the heating budget in each of Dec, Jan and Feb. 10% each in Nov and March and 5% split over Oct and April. Nothing May to Sept. Adjust as needed through the winter. 
Hopefully this will give those who need to cut back a lot some idea of how it could be done.


I tried doing an energy audit myself, although not quite as organised as I'm suggesting above. I had meter readings so I knew I had used 1561 kwh of electric in the last financial year. I'd been ill for part of the year and it had sneaked up a little. I started the audit with the fridge freezer and freezers. The two under the counter freezers I had used 210 kwh each and the fridge freezer used 217 kwh. Total 637 kwh out of my total usage of 1561. Yep, 41% of my usage. I would have one box/packet/bag of frozen open and one spare. Very organized and I never ran out of anything. But with the open stuff averaging half full it meant that two thirds of what I was freezing was stuff I didn't want yet. Madness. Well organized madness maybe, but still madness. One of the freezers had to go. I ran down the spare stuff and turned one off once it was empty. Now I just organize it more carefully. I have run out of a few items of frozen veg but I've simply substituted for whatever veg I actually did have on hand.
The fridge freezer (the freezer compartment was no bigger than a big microwave) was also a wake up call. I opened it up on a Monday morning to do my shopping list and realised that most of what was in there didn't need chilling (Jar of pickle, orange squash, etc) and the fridge was way too big for me. I found a tiny table top fridge (a proper fridge not a beer cooler thing) for £94 and bought that. It uses 100 kwh per year. My total usage for fridge/freezers had gone from 637 to 310. The little fridge would pay for itself in about 15 months. That's a pretty good % saving for a low user like myself.

This is why I suggested on another thread that a freezer is not an essential. If you need to cut a couple of hundred kwh out of you budget your freezer could be a candidate. Obviously I have the budget for a freezer, but if you don't it can go. I have heard and read how people claim their freezer saves them money because either they load it up with special offers or it reduces food waste as they freeze leftovers. To deal with the food waste issue first. This might be true if you already do that. Exactly what value this gives is up for individuals to decide but I would suggest more creative use of leftovers the next day could replace freezing. Its harder for single people like myself as pack sizes (of things other than ready meals obviously) tend to create a lot of left overs. But it should still be possible to minimise waste if I had to. The concept of loading up freezers with special offers to save money I dispute. You save money on shopping by having a meal plan and buying exactly what you need for the meal plan. If you do that and you can load up on frozen items you would buy anyway then ok. But I don't believe you would save enough to cover the running cost. If you just buy what's on offer then you tend to buy dearer items that are on offer and then those items dictate what meals you eat because its what you have on hand, and the real saving is non existent. I'm sure there are those that would claim differently but I'd like to see the figures that proves I'm wrong, and then its likely to be odd individuals and not the average.
Similarly could you down grade your fridge. Have a look at what's in there. How much of it actually needs to be chilled to below 5c. Could you downsize? If you live away from a decent sized supermarket it might be no, but if you live near a supermarket even a family might be able to cut back and be more organised and work around a small fridge. In all these decisions it is cost vrs reward. If you really don't have the money and something has to go, it could be this. 

Whatever you do and whatever you cut back on, good luck.


Darren

Astria

Robin9 said:

I like my hard boiled egg (well 2) for breakfast.  Used to boil for 4 mins  but now 3 and let in stay in the hot water for the last minute.

I don't use any hot water, I put 3 eggs in the air fryer set for 8 minutes and walk away. It beeps when they are done. Leave them on the side for a few minutes to cool down (and finish cooking inside) then munch 2 of them for breakfast and have one for afternoon snack.