Cost of working from home 9 February at 3:23PM in Employment, jobseeking & training 11 replies 780 views

Silverbird65

Hi my hubby is working from home 4days a week. He is using a surface pro laptop with a battery pack . He has it plugged in for 8hrs. Any idea in elec costs? He cannot claim £6 allce from HMRC.
Thank you

DullGreyGuy

A surface comes with a 65W charger but most the time it wont be drawing full charge unless you are making it work exceptionally hard. 

Worst case scenario therefore is 0.065 x 8 hours = 0.52 KWH and with our electric at 28p per KWH that/d be 18p per day inc VAT.

Reality if they are word processing, teams etc rather than doing video editing etc its likely to be under half that... my laptop will happy run on a 20w charger for that type of work so under 6p a day.

He certainly should be demanding a raise to cover it!

Reality is the heating for the room etc will cost much more than the laptop

Silverbird65

He has a call centre job with Home Office.  He does attach mouse and keyboard. We have bought a fitment so he can just use battery once it's charged. Although now I am wondering was it worth the cost of the fitment.
Thanks 

DullGreyGuy

Silverbird65 said:

He has a call centre job with Home Office.  He does attach mouse and keyboard. We have bought a fitment so he can just use battery once it's charged. Although now I am wondering was it worth the cost of the fitment.
Thanks 

A wired mouse/keyboard will add to the draw but you are talking pennies a week if that. 

Not sure what you mean by a "fitment" but in contact centre work the effort on the laptop is likely to be closer to 6p than 18p... though my clients Surface wont charge on a 20w charger despite my much more powerful Mac being more than happy to.

Unless you have economy 7 where its cheaper to recharge it overnight I dont think there is much difference in power consumption between running off battery and recharging when run out or having it connected to power all day... battery life may be different but that's the employers problem.

Silverbird65

He has a power exchange that is 199 watts. So maybe more. .
Thanks

DullGreyGuy

Silverbird65 said:

He has a power exchange that is 199 watts. So maybe more. .
Thanks

Again, not a normal term but unlikely, uk power is typically about 3.1kw... you can plug in a 3kw, 0.199, 0.065 or 0.20kw and the device will draw what it needs. If not you could boil water on your laptop quicker than your kettle. 

Undervalued

Silverbird65 said:

He has a call centre job with Home Office.  He does attach mouse and keyboard. We have bought a fitment so he can just use battery once it's charged. Although now I am wondering was it worth the cost of the fitment.
Thanks 

Quite!

Unless he lives within walking / cycling distance of the office he will be spending far less than he would have spent on travelling to work.

mcpitman

As said previously, you are generally talking pennies a week.

I went through an eco spree last year as the prices increased on household bills. My works laptop (Dell Precision, fairly hard worked with data) costs about 4p a day.

Heating costs are negligible, my wife was at home anyway so the usage is the same.

Other electric, possibly lighting, but that's negligible.

Probably biggest increase would have been in kettle usage

I save far more working from home than I used to in commuting costs, so it's all fine with me.

mcpitman

Silverbird65 said:

He has a call centre job with Home Office.  He does attach mouse and keyboard. We have bought a fitment so he can just use battery once it's charged. Although now I am wondering was it worth the cost of the fitment.
Thanks 

You can set your laptop to do that through battery settings normally (most do automatically to increase battery longevity), no need for a "fitment".

Silverbird65

That's is to use mouse and keyboard.
Thanks

Alderbank

Silverbird65 said:

That's is to use mouse and keyboard.
Thanks

In that case the 'fitment' is a USB hub. Costs about a fiver (£5.50 from ASDA) and no measurable power consumption.