how low is your leccy consumption now, this very week..... asking for a friend

Green_hopeful

rlcoach said:

dunstonh said:

Still..AGA, the whole idea of it is mind boggling and you'd have to be millionaire not to care about that kind of usage

I still care about that level of usage despite my worth.   However, it seems largely irrelevant now as Eco 7 rates appear to be heavily discounting the night rate more than ever, making the AGA dirt cheap to run.  As low as 6.9p per KWH. That equates to just £18.83 per week.  That actually makes it comparable to a lot of people's conventional ovens.

We are averaging 21 kWh of electricity a day - what is going on there?

For summer?  if so, you are using way above the average.  So, it suggests you could save energy.  (we were using 18kWh a day in Summer and a bit of investigation using energy monitors allowed us to bring it down to under 10kWh a day)

I think the electric shower might be an issue, but usage seems consistently high and I would expect it to be more lumpy if the shower was the main culprit.

For us, it was:

1. American FF using about 3kWh a day.  So, new one to replace it (Samsung C rated, which is the best you can get in terms of energy at the moment)  and that uses 0.72kWh a day. 
2. Dishwasher using about 2.5kWh a day. Replaced it with energy efficient one using eco programme. It uses barely anything now. It takes 5 hours to wash and dry but doesnt need the high heat.  Short programmes need quicker heat and use far more energy.
   
3. devices on standby.  Individually, not a big saving but across everything together, it was getting upto 100w running. Some settings on the TV (such as ability to turn on using a mobile device) were burning 17w in standby.  Sky mini boxes were heavy in standby (leave the main one on but the mini ones get turned off when not in use now).  About 1.5kWh a day approx.
   
4. We were pretty good with LED lights already but I replaced the older LEDs which were around 11-12w with more modern ones. I also replaced the al cheapo ones from Amazon with Philips LEDs.    The cheapo ones were beginning to fail after 4 years, almost one after the other.  The Philips ones are more expensive but their luminance is greater at a lower wattage.  i.e. the 6w cheapo ones were less bright than the Philips 2w ones.  Philips should last logner.
5. External lighting turned off and only used when necessary.   We had dusk/dawn lighting and significant outside lighting on a timer. That is now turned off and only put on when necessary.  We still have to keep the stable block lit but I replaced lighting with LEDs there, and I still have a number of fluorescent tubes to replace.
6. Microwave was using 37w just sitting there.  Now off at the plug.

I am still finding the tumble drier is a big use.  Around 1.7kWh a day.  We are currently testing programmes to see which actually  works and uses less energy (some programmes are next to useless whilst some are overkill).  We have a tapo P110 smart plug in that to monitor the differences.

None of our heating is on electric, and we have a 10 acre site with stables, electric horse walkers and an office that runs three computers all day and more and we were using 2kWh a day less than you.  So, you need to identify what is eating your electricity. Its all a learning process.    TP Link Tapo plugs made the job a lot easier.

Thanks so much for this, that is such a helpful list and nice to see you had similar usage and even similar problems and managed to bring it down to much better levels. Funnily enough I have got the TP Link plugs which I currently have connected to the fridge freezers at the moment, and will then move on to other potential problem areas.

I don't think I have any halogen lights, but I never considered I might have less energy efficient ones. We have SO MANY GU10 bulbs, I think I will just swap out all the old ones for the amazon ones.

I am going to walk my way through the list, and chip away until we have sensible energy bills.

An easy win is to put a side light in the kitchen. We had 16 halogen lights which couldn’t take low energy bulbs without switching the fittings. In the meantime we got a lamp that took a LED bulb. Massive savings.  We also have lamps in the hall that have one LED on a timer rather than the 5 bulb ceiling lights. Saves turning on the ceiling lights. 

Miser1964

I replaced stair and hall lights with motion-detecting units with 12W LED. Much safer as the area is always well lit but economic as the lights go off after a few mins

HertsLad

RelievedSheff said:

HertsLad said:

Deleted_User said:

HertsLad said:

My grid-based electricity consumption this week was zero. The thought of using power hungry appliances such an AGA is beyond my comprehension. I managed to get my essential power needs down to 0,15kwh per day, just for a low energy fridge, supplied by a few solar panels and batteries. Is it justified to have anything else running overnight, besides a fridge? I turned off my room lighting, freezer, Ring video doorbell. wifi router, and everything else. 

But we all know that you're a special sausage.  And very well done to you for it.

Actually, to be fair, unless the OPs friend has solar panels, my figure of 0.15kwh per day is not very helpful. Any day when the sun is shining, I use a lot more energy running all kinds of appliances in the afternoon. I estimate that if I turned off the solar and went back to electricity from eon, I'd probably use about 1kwh per day or 7kwh for a week. 

Our fridge freezer in the kitchen uses more than 1kWh per day 

(The freezer in the garage is more economical but even still about another 0.6kWh per day!)

My under-worktop 'normal' fridge and freezer would use about 1.5kwh per day. So I decided to look for a fridge with the lowest energy consumption I could find, and make do without the freezer. My motivation is not only to keep my mains electricity to zero but try to get the standing charge refunded and stopped. If I was using anything like 10 or 20kwh per day, my incentive would be to reduce it at all costs. Here are some other appliances I make do without, in addition to the freezer - (1) no TV. I gave up the licence about 15 years ago and no longer have any interest in TV. I regard it as an addiction. (2) no electric iron. I bought a Victorian cast iron instead, to heat on the gas stove because gas energy is still cheaper than electricity. (3) no use of my washing machine or dishwasher. I do it all by hand - it's good exercise for a start. If I was still working and had the pressure of getting ready for work every day, with far less free time, I doubt if any of these steps would be possible.Everyone's situation is different.

rlcoach

Green_hopeful said:

An easy win is to put a side light in the kitchen. We had 16 halogen lights which couldn’t take low energy bulbs without switching the fittings. In the meantime we got a lamp that took a LED bulb. Massive savings.  We also have lamps in the hall that have one LED on a timer rather than the 5 bulb ceiling lights. Saves turning on the ceiling lights. 

I am going to look into doing this. It seems madness to have the place floodlit. Having a couple of side lights, or just something lighting the worktops, would make it much more flexible. Half of the time people are just watching TV in the TV bit, so less lightning would save quite a bit of energy.

rlcoach

Miser1964 said:

I replaced stair and hall lights with motion-detecting units with 12W LED. Much safer as the area is always well lit but economic as the lights go off after a few mins

I like this idea! Saves nagging people to switch the lights off.

Miser1964

rlcoach said:

 Having a couple of side lights, or just something lighting the worktops, would make it much more flexible. 

Motion detecting under-cabinet battery-operated LED lights work well for me. They come on and give sufficient light to make a cuppa, the battery is recharged by USB. 

Leew89

Averaging 4.875 kWh for electricity in September so far (2.31 kWh for gas just for info).

12 year old three bed semi. Two adults and two young children.

Leon_W

Back of fag packet calculations for our summer use.

From the beginning of May to today's date we have averaged 6kwh per day Electricity and about the same for Gas.

2 of us in a 3 bed detached old cottage. I expect these to change somewhat as we've retired our old Rayburn this week from heating hot water and just use it to cook.  Got a nice new combi for hot water on demand and running the heating. I'm hoping this is considerably more efficient than using the Rayburn for central heating come winter !

Freebird52

ossie48 said:

Something I've addressed to dig into my annual 6000kwh usage...my PC is a gaming PC, large graphics card, processor and fans pumping cool air in and hot air out. I can't measure but this box is probably chugging along at 100/ 150w according to research and thats not at full load (It has a 750w power supply) 

Its used 99% of the time for web browsing - I'm retired so it can very from 4-12 hours a day. Its off now, I had a 7w intel mini PC spare from my wifes home working and that's now connected....no noise, no heat. Obviously I'm going to miss the gaming PC heating the lounge but I'm expecting to see at least 1-2 Kw taken off that daily bill. 

I'm also hoping the air fryer will pay for itself. 

Octupus have just projected my monthly direct debits at £230 - I can cope with that, down from £270 but up from £130 12 months back. 

I have a reasonably powerful PC. Whilst browsing it consumes 84watts. Under heavy load it consumes 250watts.

I have it set so that it dynamically adjusts core voltage/and therefore power, based upon load. Its also set adjust fans for virtual silence unless under load.

My 27 inch monitor consumes 15watts. And the router is 8watts.

During the summer months, daily usage is a mean average of 5.7kwh.

During the winter months that increases to a mean average of 8.3kwh. Likely to to increased lighting requirement, CH circulating pump, and oncreased kettle usage.

Peter999_2

We're half way through September and so far we've used 105 kWh of electric.    Over the last 6 months we have been using, on average, 370 kWh.

Therefore we should have used 210 kWh for September and saved 107 kWh.  Using October's 35p per kWh I reckon we've saved £37 worth of electric.   Quite pleased with that seen as I haven't really changed things to our detriment.