Duel Fuel Switch - little help needed please!

notbritishgas

Coates wrote: »

thanks for the advice guys, i'm having a bit of trouble getting in touch with scottish power, there's no phone number on their website :S
i went to take readings yesterday, logging the results and plan on continuing to do this from now every week. not long ago a new electricity meter was put in our house and the man left a wee card saying what the old meter was at and the date the new one started at zero.
the upshot is since 29/02/08 (1 and a half months) the meter now reads 819.
i know we use a lot but is that really high? it could mean anything to me, i don't know what we're meant to be using for our tariff!

If you heat your house by gas then 819 kwh electricity in 6 weeks is very high, the average usage is between 65 and 70kwh per week. Look to see if you use high consumption items, they are normally the ones that supply heat, ie panel heaters, tumble driers, washing machines, ccokers, kettles etc.
Things like computers, lights and TVs use less but of course add up if left on continuously.

Coates_2

thanks for the replies

We average out about 125kwh/week by the looks of it which appears to be double the average usage! Crikey
We have no panel heaters or tumble driers but we do have a kettle, microwave, cooker and a washine machine. All four people in the house work so main usage is evening and weekends. PC's tend to get left on a lot though lights and tv's not so much. I can't believe we use so much electricity, i worked it out at around 10p per kw, it should only be £55 a month which doesn't seem too bad for 4 people does it?
I guess a lot depends on the gas bill now. We don't often use the gas on the cooker but our house it central heated using a boiler which only gets turned on in the evening and at weekends, the girl in our house is handy at turning it off before bed which makes it freezing in the morning!
Is our gas usage likely to be a lot more than our electricity? Is it generally more expensive?

notbritishgas

Coates wrote: »

thanks for the replies

We average out about 125kwh/week by the looks of it which appears to be double the average usage! Crikey
We have no panel heaters or tumble driers but we do have a kettle, microwave, cooker and a washine machine. All four people in the house work so main usage is evening and weekends. PC's tend to get left on a lot though lights and tv's not so much. I can't believe we use so much electricity, i worked it out at around 10p per kw, it should only be £55 a month which doesn't seem too bad for 4 people does it?
I guess a lot depends on the gas bill now. We don't often use the gas on the cooker but our house it central heated using a boiler which only gets turned on in the evening and at weekends, the girl in our house is handy at turning it off before bed which makes it freezing in the morning!
Is our gas usage likely to be a lot more than our electricity? Is it generally more expensive?

Normally if you heat your house by gas then the gas bill is higher than the electric one.
You do not seem to have any abnormally energy hungry items, I take it also you have just the one fridge and freezer (the older models are less economical)
If the oven to your cooker is electric then these are high users, but the microwave is fairly economical.
The girl who switches the heating off at night hasn't got a crafty fan heater??:rotfl:
As a rule 4 people do not use 4 times the electric as 1 person as there are a lot of common items, so I think you are still an unusually high user,(I pay£35 a month for 2 people home all day same items as you, and that is at ripoff npower prices which are a lot higher than 10p per unit), your advantage is of course that you have 4 people to share the bill so it does not seem so high.

Computers usage varys as to the spec, but say 100w, so left on for 10 hours thats 1 kw.
Just to check, switch everything off and make sure the meter does not move or flash.

Coates_2

I have pc's with screensavers running, having read up it seems clear that i need to change this setting to turn the monitors off after idle for a few minutes to save energy, screensavers apparently make no difference to saving energy which seems so obvious to me now. we have one pc that runs the server in our house constantly on, this need to have the monitor switched off at all times - apparently a monitor uses most of the energy.
Our fridge/freezer is pretty new, the cooker though not so new. afaik the girl doesn't have a crafty heater
I think we need to sit down together and discuss ways which we can all help keep the usage low.
i'm considering one of those energy meter plugs to see what is using the most, do you think that's wise? £20 investment may help me save lots of money in the future. I am curious to know if you can plug a four way into it and get a reading for a bunch of items (my pc/speakers/printer etc all run through a fourway into one socket).

notbritishgas

Coates wrote: »

I have pc's with screensavers running, having read up it seems clear that i need to change this setting to turn the monitors off after idle for a few minutes to save energy, screensavers apparently make no difference to saving energy which seems so obvious to me now. we have one pc that runs the server in our house constantly on, this need to have the monitor switched off at all times - apparently a monitor uses most of the energy.
Our fridge/freezer is pretty new, the cooker though not so new. afaik the girl doesn't have a crafty heater
I think we need to sit down together and discuss ways which we can all help keep the usage low.
i'm considering one of those energy meter plugs to see what is using the most, do you think that's wise? £20 investment may help me save lots of money in the future. I am curious to know if you can plug a four way into it and get a reading for a bunch of items (my pc/speakers/printer etc all run through a fourway into one socket).

An energy monitor is a good idea. I got one from aldi or lidl a while back, you can programme in your unit costs and it will even tell the cost as well as kwh used.
Yes you can plug as many things into it as you like but it will only tell you the total used, not individuals.
Just another thought , you are not on E7 tariff are you, that is one where you have a cheaper night rate for 7 hours, normally starting about midnight or so, but the day rate is higher,