New to home working - utility supplier quandary

Nikonator9000

Hi, I will be working from home from mid September and am due to renew my energy supplier contract at the start of the month. I'm conscious my daytime consumption will significantly increase.  Does anyone have any advice on which suppliers are best for home workers? Many thanks

MattMattMattUK

Nikonator9000 said:

Hi, I will be working from home from mid September and am due to renew my energy supplier contract at the start of the month. I'm conscious my daytime consumption will significantly increase.  Does anyone have any advice on which suppliers are best for home workers? Many thanks

Unless you are on E7 then they are all going to be the same. 

I also have to ask why you expect your daytime consumption to increase significantly, Are you running anything particularly energy intensive? A laptop and monitor uses around 100w for most usage, so an entire day will be less than a kWh, so around 24p, lighting costs are negligible with modern LED lighting. You might need some heating in the winter, but you do not need to heat the whole house, just one room and it is amazing how little heat it actually takes to keep one room warm in a modern house.

Will your official place of work be changed to home, or is this just you choosing to work from home? Some businesses offer the standard working from home allowances, you can potentially also claim tax relief from HMRC (but not usually both).
https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home

daveyjp

Decide which room you will use and how that will be heated.  I sit next to a radiator and have the wireless CH thermostat near me so I'm kept warm not the whole house.

elsien

I’m a home worker and I didn’t notice that my energy cost significantly increased. I did find I got cold when sitting at the laptop for longer periods so I just turn up the radiator  a little bit more in that room and wear an Oodie (when not on Teams).

Qyburn

It's going to depend on what sort of work you do and whether you need high powered gear. As a network/voice engineer I had laptop docking station, VPN router and external monitor and that only used 0.6 to 0.8kWh per day. Heavy loads like simulations ran on servers in the office.

One thing I did was it a smart plug on the rig, so I could switch everything on at once, and with schedule to shut off at 1800 in case I forgot.

Slinky

My OH works from home most of the time, but has to go into the office at least one day a week. There's no significant change in the amount of energy used in the house on the days he's not here. If you're just sitting using a computer with the lights on in a room, you're talking 1-2 kwh a day tops in the summer.

BridgetTheCat

I’ve worked FT from home since 2017. Energy consumption is not really an issue and is more than offset by the elimination of commuting costs, parking charges and takeaway lunches.

What did increase significantly was broadband usage, so get unlimited broadband if you don’t already have it.

MattMattMattUK

BridgetTheCat said:

I’ve worked FT from home since 2017. Energy consumption is not really an issue and is more than offset by the elimination of commuting costs, parking charges and takeaway lunches.

What did increase significantly was broadband usage, so get unlimited broadband if you don’t already have it.

The latter will depend on what one is actually doing, but I am not sure there is any broadband that is limited anymore, they are priced by speed not data limits, though tethered connections might be an issue for some.

QrizB

BridgetTheCat said:

What did increase significantly was broadband usage, so get unlimited broadband if you don’t already have it.

If your employment depends on a broadband connection, keep in mind that there's little guaranteed about a consumer BB contract. If your service fails (eg. someone digs up your cable) you could be cut off for days or weeks, with just £6 a day in compensation.

Think about signing up for business broadband, and/or investing in a 4/5G router for contingency use.

nologo

We are currently using Octopus,
when working from home it's easy to use the  occasional free electricity sessions during the day, usually 1 or 2 hours, for dishwasher, hot water, washing tumble dryer ect & it's a useful reminder to get up & walk about I if working at a desk.