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

Peter999_2

I'm really loving reading this thread.    As you can imagine we've had a family meeting so I could explain to my teenage daughter about really cutting our electric/gas usage but not going too far to make life harder.

Fortunately like most of the teenagers we know she wants to save the world and stop wasting energy so it was a bit of an easy sell.

Anyway, we were using an average of 17-18 kWh a day over the last few months.  I thought that was ok until I read this thread and seen just how much people have got their usage down to, I honestly thought we did pretty good energy wise.

I started making the changes on the last day of August so have had two days of the "rationing".   Incredibly we've used between 7kWh and 8kWh for those two days and that includes the washing machine doing a load yesterday and then the drier.

I used to have a server running 24 hours a day which was my plex server amongst doing other things.   It is a very efficient server (so quite slow but fine for what I use it for).   It uses 50w so about £19 a month from October (was £4.65 earlier this year) which is just not affordable anymore - I could subscrib to 2 streaming services for that.      I looked into Virtual Server hosting and found one that is costing me £1.78 a month instead and I'm now running plex and other stuff on that, it took a bit of setting up but works fine.    This now means I save £17 a month and also I was looking at buying a new server which I will not now need to do so it's saved me hundreds of pounds that a new one would have cost.

I'm keeping my downstairs 3 camera CCTV which will cost £2.70 a month to run.  Fortunately I have 3 outdoor CCTV cameras which use small solar panels so it doesn't cost anything for them.   Instead of saving the video onto the server I now use the cloud instead which doesn't cost me anything.

maxmycardagain

I'm keeping my downstairs 3 camera CCTV which will cost £2.70 a month to run.  Fortunately I have 3 outdoor CCTV cameras which use small solar panels so it doesn't cost anything for them.   Instead of saving the video onto the server I now use the cloud instead which doesn't cost me anything.

im interested in CCTV, any details?

need 2 or 3 outdoor cameras

Ally_E.

We use around 6kW/h a day, working from home 2 adults. I use 2 laptops for work and he uses a PC with 2 monitors that turns into gaming PC after hours. Electric oven that we use whenever we feel like it, gas hob. Our kettle uses 0.1kW/h per 2 cups.

We used to use 9kW/h a day and retired old fridge and freezer and we're able to shave off 3kW/h per day. 

Spies

@Peter999_2 what service are you using for your virtual server? 

Peter999_2

Hi, the camera's I use are Reolink's.    They are not pan and tilt but that hasn't seemed to be a problem.

The camera's I have (I've had them since late 2018) seem to have been discontinued and replaced with the following:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reolink-Rechargeable-Security-Weatherproof-Detection/dp/B07QQNRWK2/ref=sr_1_5?crid=OTMC0J0YYBII&keywords=reolink&qid=1662202585&sprefix=,aps,2112&sr=8-5&th=1

The good thing is that they have gone down in price and are currently on offer for 63.99 on amazon (mine were £90).

They work on motion sensing and save the videos to a micro SD card and upload them to the cloud using WiFi (the cloud is free for 7 days storage which is great).     You can connect to them using Android - you can use a PC as well but I don't find it anywhere near as good as the Android app.

Hope this helps.

Peter999_2

Spies said:

@Peter999_2 what service are you using for your virtual server? 

Hi, I am using time4vps which has servers based in Lithuania.  The link is here:

https://www.time4vps.com/linux-vps/#annually

I paid for a years service so it's half price at 24.95euro.  This works out to £1.78 a month using a fee-free credit card.

You only get 20GB storage with that so I have connected it to a 1TB OneDrive cloud drive (fortunately my friend lets me have one of his six Microsoft 365 accounts so I don't pay for it (I fix all his IT/tech problems in return.)

Pyrodave

I live in a 2 bed 1990s semi, 2 adults plus 1 teen

Usage is always around 8-9 KWh per day
Recent changes including getting an air fryer instead of using oven (not had oven on since April)
All LED smart bulbs
No tumbling drying over summer of course
 I have been using about 2KWh per day/night on air conditioning lately though Which wouldn’t be the norm for everyone
 

I use the Loop energy app which brings all your hourly energy history into your phone if you have a smart meter. It’s free and you just give it your meter serial numbers off your bill and it does the rest 

Switched everything off for a week a while ago when we were away and still used 3.6 KWh so that must be fridge mainly arrggh 

Robgmun

maxmycardagain said:

Robgmun said:

We were using 18-20khw per day. After making multiple changes we got it down to 8khw per day. We can't cut it down anymore unless we switch off the CCTV, Fridges and the Wifi Router. And my wife isn't keen on doing any of those 3 things

Those 3 cant be heavy users surely?

The FF is on a thermostat so is on/off at will, the wifi isnt needed when your asleep (unless your CCTV needs it?)

our fridge/freezer and wifi are left on (wifi off from now on) whats the kw rating on the CCTV cos im looking at a system to fit now

To be fair, the baseline power consumption overnight with just these 3 is about 0.2-0.25kwh per hour. Right now the biggest item consuming the most power is the washing machine, we used to be quite wasteful and tended to put anything i wore once into the basket because I'm very sweaty. From now on i'll only change my T-Shirt unless it starts to actually smell. We're going to try to make only one cycle every two days, from what it was which was daily

The wife has sworn off using the electric fan oven anymore unless it's a special occasion (like Xmas dinner). Apart from the washing machine i can't see what else we can cut without drastically reducing the quality of life in our house

Mstty

Robgmun said:

maxmycardagain said:

Robgmun said:

We were using 18-20khw per day. After making multiple changes we got it down to 8khw per day. We can't cut it down anymore unless we switch off the CCTV, Fridges and the Wifi Router. And my wife isn't keen on doing any of those 3 things

Those 3 cant be heavy users surely?

The FF is on a thermostat so is on/off at will, the wifi isnt needed when your asleep (unless your CCTV needs it?)

our fridge/freezer and wifi are left on (wifi off from now on) whats the kw rating on the CCTV cos im looking at a system to fit now

To be fair, the baseline power consumption overnight with just these 3 is about 0.2-0.25kwh per hour. Right now the biggest item consuming the most power is the washing machine, we used to be quite wasteful and tended to put anything i wore once into the basket because I'm very sweaty. From now on i'll only change my T-Shirt unless it starts to actually smell. We're going to try to make only one cycle every two days, from what it was which was daily

The wife has sworn off using the electric fan oven anymore unless it's a special occasion (like Xmas dinner). Apart from the washing machine i can't see what else we can cut without drastically reducing the quality of life in our house

Is there a either an eco or failing that a quicker wash at lower temp 30oC you can try?

Robgmun

Mstty said:

Robgmun said:

maxmycardagain said:

Robgmun said:

We were using 18-20khw per day. After making multiple changes we got it down to 8khw per day. We can't cut it down anymore unless we switch off the CCTV, Fridges and the Wifi Router. And my wife isn't keen on doing any of those 3 things

Those 3 cant be heavy users surely?

The FF is on a thermostat so is on/off at will, the wifi isnt needed when your asleep (unless your CCTV needs it?)

our fridge/freezer and wifi are left on (wifi off from now on) whats the kw rating on the CCTV cos im looking at a system to fit now

To be fair, the baseline power consumption overnight with just these 3 is about 0.2-0.25kwh per hour. Right now the biggest item consuming the most power is the washing machine, we used to be quite wasteful and tended to put anything i wore once into the basket because I'm very sweaty. From now on i'll only change my T-Shirt unless it starts to actually smell. We're going to try to make only one cycle every two days, from what it was which was daily

The wife has sworn off using the electric fan oven anymore unless it's a special occasion (like Xmas dinner). Apart from the washing machine i can't see what else we can cut without drastically reducing the quality of life in our house

Is there a either an eco or failing that a quicker wash at lower temp 30oC you can try?

Yeah but the wife thinks it doesn't wash the clothes well enough. Even with laundry liquid that is supposed to be good for it.