how much electric do you use a day

myozone

mute_posting wrote: »

Ahhh - that old chesnut...

Of the things you listed, the sky+ box (generally) has the largest standby consumption (about 14 Watts IIRC, the others perhaps 5 Watts each), so even that will only use 1/3 of a unit in 24 Hours - add in all the others, and the standby consumption will be about 1 unit per day MAX...

I'm afraid you have been swept away by the great standby bandwagon, whistling past at high velocity!

MP

It still all adds up ! - why 'waste' 1KWh a day ??? around £36 PA. I agree CFL's do save a lot too.

What are you going do when the oil has run out .......:rolleyes:

myozone

cheepskate wrote: »

hi
thanks for all the replys.
Hubby keeps the phones on charge all the time , even when fully charged and does the same with the batery chargers.
He tells me that because they are fully charged then no extra electricity is being used, is this correct ?
Also i have virgin cable that is constantly in standby(bedroom t.v) apart from few hours at night when it is on does this also run away with electricity

Also we use 17820 kwh per year for Gas looking at myozone we seem very high, we only have gas cooker and gas central heating( which must be about 18 years old) and the water boiler is only on for 1 hour per day, we use the electric shower most times and the hot water is just for the dishes etc.

thanks guys for the help.

simple answer :- If the charger feels warm it's using power !

mute_posting

myozone wrote: »

It still all adds up ! - why 'waste' 1KWh a day ??? around £36 PA. I agree CFL's do save a lot too.

What are you going do when the oil has run out .......:rolleyes:

Firstly, I'd say 1 unit a day is the higher end of standby consumption - I merely used it to make the point. However, If I was wasting £40 a month on SKy+, what's another £13 a year to have the box booted up 24/7? (as I know family with them - they take an age to come on from cold)

I was putting your previous sweeping statment, "A LOT" into some context.

The problem is that too many people think that the standby issue is the be-all and end-all of the problem, my point is that it isn't, rather that it only accounts for a small ammount of the bigger picture.

Many people come on here with huge bills and state "but I turn my TV off at the wall and don't use standby" and can't fathom why their bills are still huge despite following the media hyped TV standby consumption advice, that they read about in "Your Daily Mail" (TM?)

By all means turn off at the wall, unplug everything bar the fridge, just don't expect that to save "A LOT"!

As for when the oil runs out, well, I've travelled around Japan a bit, I say bring on Nuclear Power now rather than wait for the oil to run out ;-)

MP

ap2000

The biggest electricity saver for me was moving from a desktop PC (TFT, external speakers etc) to a laptop. I estimate I saved around 1.5 KW a day by doing this. The desktop PC is not that powerful either, as it's a shuttle case type.

All devices that can be turned off are at night, freeview box, cable TV box, router etc. Every light bulb is energy saving and fridge freezer, seperate freezer, washing maching and dryer are all quite new and A or A+ rated.

I got some byebyestandby devices to turn off things in hard to reach places.

mute_posting

ap2000 wrote: »

I got some byebyestandby devices to turn off things in hard to reach places.

Which is fine if you didn't pay for them, but from some simple calculations the payback time for many of them is prohibitive if you have to use your hard-earned to purchase them in the first place.

Also, some of them use more power than they save IIRC (From memory the example given was a TV that had a standby of 0.1Watts, whereas the standby "saver" actually consumed 0.4Watts!)

HTH

MP

Cardew

ap2000 wrote: »

The biggest electricity saver for me was moving from a desktop PC (TFT, external speakers etc) to a desktop. I estimate I saved around 1.5 KW a day by doing this. The desktop PC is not that powerful either, as it's a shuttle case type.

All devices that can be turned off are at night, freeview box, cable TV box, router etc. Every light bulb is energy saving and fridge freezer, seperate freezer, washing maching and dryer are all quite new and A or A+ rated.

I got some byebyestandby devices to turn off things in hard to reach places.

With the difference between my Desktop + monitor @ approx 160Watts and laptop at around 30 Watts I would need to be using* it for over 11 hours a day to save 1.5kWh.

* It goes into hibernation if I don't use it.

However you make a valid point on saving.

The point mute-posting was making is that amongst all the savings measures you take, your measures to reduce standby consumption probably have the least saving.

Yet, with all the publicity that standby consumption gets in the media, people can be forgiven for thinking this is the major issue, and switching off the TV is of huge importance.

Nobody is suggesting that you should not switch appliances off standby, but that people should get savings into perspective.

wannatravelmore

Has anyone considered having an "electricity free day" once in a while? I was wondering about trying it - not sure how I would get on. Would have to keep the hot water on though I think; but no TV, radio, computer, hairdriers, artificial light etc. Already panicking at the thought of no coffee though. BUT, it might help us to learn what will happen when the oil runs out....

mute_posting

wannatravelmore wrote: »

BUT, it might help us to learn what will happen when the oil runs out....

Do people honestly think that when the oil does run out there will be no electricity?

If we havn't built enough Nuclear power stations by then, I'm pretty sure we'll just be importing even more French (Nuclear) capacity than we do already!

Anne3333

I am embarrassingly ignorant about the cost of electricity, for example I havent a clue whether a lamp with a 40W bulb uses £2 or £20 a year! Anyone care to enlighten me?

tomstickland

A 40W bulb uses 0.04Kwh per hour. A unit is around 12p, so that's 0.048p per hour to use it.