My Energy use Diary

Frugaldom

CW, won't your electricity useage go up by 50% by the time you count in extra showers, hot water, cooking times, lights, tv, games consoles and computer for a third person in the household? I'm counting on mine coming down by almost a third when DS is away from home. He showers sometimes twice a day, has his computer & tv or music on about 8 hours a day despite working fulltime and has hot water for washing plus cooked breakfast every morning, which I don't grudge him, as he cooks it himself. Best be prepared, just in case your DS decides he's at yours fulltime for the month.

:T Well done Lingojingo, making it to your first year on imeasure! Mine's will be delayed as I had to start again when I moved house and imeasure couldn't work it out. I'd to start again late December

cw18

nykmedia wrote: »

CW, won't your electricity useage go up by 50% by the time you count in extra showers, hot water, cooking times, lights, tv, games consoles and computer for a third person in the household? I'm counting on mine coming down by almost a third when DS is away from home. He showers sometimes twice a day, has his computer & tv or music on about 8 hours a day despite working fulltime and has hot water for washing plus cooked breakfast every morning, which I don't grudge him, as he cooks it himself. Best be prepared, just in case your DS decides he's at yours fulltime for the month.

When he's been home on leave before I've had him around the house during the day - while friends are at work/college - and not seen a significant increase at all. And when he's out (including overnight) he's a swine for leaving his laptop plugged in - though I guess it shouldn't use much as it's doing nothing apart from keeping the battery topped up while 'sleeping'.

His last stint at home was from 14th March to 11th April (about 4 weeks), and in that time we used 264kWh electricity and 592kWh gas. The 4 week period before that used 244/842 and the 4 week period after used 249/432. The gas was clearly down to heating because of the time of year as it was dropping all the time, but the electrity gained maybe 20kWh (or around 8% of the average for the surrounding 8 weeks).

Can't see I'd have any significant increase for cooking, as I still use the same number of pans on the gas hob (or the same electric oven on for the same amount of time at the same temperature). Our showers don't use electricity either - one's a mixer over the bath, and the other (cubicle in en-suite) feeds hot and cold water from our tanks, so just a bit of extra gas if/when I need to boost the water. Given I rarely use all the hot that's generated in the 20 mins the immersion is on each morning anyway, I hopefully won't need to boost it often

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

lingojingo wrote: »

Well, I have now done a full year on imeasure.
According to them I would have spent £663.53 but in fact it has been £791.61:eek:
The good news is that when divided by 12 it works out at £65.9675 per month, and Eon altered my payments down to £65 a couple of months ago. As we've decreased our usage quite a lot over the year I'm hoping to be quids in again.
This week will be higher as DS and GF are staying - he always brings huge amounts of washing with him, towels included:eek:), but then DD is off to her Dad's and then Spain, so we will use less again.

Hi lingojingo

Good news on your reduced Direct Debit.

Have you spoken to our Energy Efficiency people? They may be able to help reduce your usage further.

Also, check out the interactive house on our website. Some useful tips on there about cutting energy usage. :cool:

Malc

cw18

Just read my meters for the week, and not the best of news

I turned the thermostat on the water tank up on Friday night - had turned it down a few weeks ago, but was having to boil the kettle to top up the water every time I did the pots. Going to turn it back down to a mid-way point and see how it goes as my gas has gone up from 23kWh to 34kWh :eek: Can 4x20 minute sessions of heating to 60 degrees instead of 50 really make that much difference (It's the only extra gas use I'm aware of this week!)

So, for the last few days I've boiled the kettle less often - which should have reduced the electricity a touch. But I knew this would be more than swallowed by the two extra wash loads provided by DS after cleaning up in his room (and the two loads that had to go through the dryer due to the rotten weather we're still having - I won't drape jeans or towels around the house, but DS was disgusted that I refused to put the T-shirts and everything else in the dryer too ). Have decided I must hook my washer and dryer up to my energy monitoring plugs to see exactly what they do use as I've gone up from 60kWh to 64kWh

Frugaldom

CW, if it's any consolation, I've used £590 worth of electricity and about £140 in coal & logs this year so far but, as we're slightly more than halfway through the year and I've spent slightly less than half my annual budget, it doesn't seem too bad to me. If I can keep the electric heaters off until November then I may come in under £1500 rather than the estimated £1700 (That's assuming there are no nasty shocks like further price increases, of course.)

Frugaldom

OK, here goes, as my readings are done first thing Monday mornings. It isn't too bad as we've had much better weather here than some places, I believe. However, Ratings - E and F :eek: (That's country living for you, I guess! )

Household's total energy spend over the last 33 weeks is £638.87.
For week ending 26th July, 2009 your household spent £10.49 (+ £1.61 standing charge)

Electricity A Rate: £8.50
Electricity B Rate: £1.99
Electricity C Rate: £0.00

This now makes my weekly average over the year to date £20.97 :j
We used a total of 100kWh for 3 of us and CO2 was 53g

The exact amount I spent in real cash was £11.96. I wish I could get this down to under £10 but it looks impossible. I can't even switch off the dehumidifier as it's filling up almost every day with the high humidity we've had recently. It's taken a long while to get this place anywhere near dried out, so an extra £ or so a week is, I hope, worth it to make the place easier to heat this winter. :T

cw18

I've managed to retain my "D" against similar (detached dual fuel) properties, but have dropped back to an 'E' against all users

However, my personal spreadsheet (to figure out which side of a grade I'm on) suggests I'm bang on the 'cusp' of the D/E against all users, so I'm not as upset about the drop as I could have been

belfastgirl23

So my reads for this week, 43kwh gas 67 electric. I've been looking properly at Imeasure for once and weirdly down in the long list of all my reads it gives our total CO2 read as 44 whereas up in the 'badge' part it says 48? In fact just realised that this is because the badge is still showing last week's figures?? In any case I'm still an E. Apparently the average for households like ours is 36 units of CO2 What I didn't realise till today though is that I'd need to focus on electric rather than gas to get the ratings improved since 65kwh gas produces 13 units of CO2 whereas 65kwh electric produces 35!! Interesting reading.

I'm now on week 50 of my first year with imeasure, looking forward to updating totals but I'm pretty sure I'll be considerably down!!

cw18

The badges had been based on the previous weeks readings for a quite a while now - they change on a Monday, by which point all users should have keyed in their readings.

If they based them on this weeks, then your badges would change every time someone entered a set of readings for this week.....

A_fiend_for_life

17 kWh this week and an A. I defrosted the fridge / freezer last week so it had been off all week and ended up with a stupidly low reading. Certainly one to consider for the winter though.

Just got 52 weeks readings.

total electricity is: 1313 kWh (£217)

total gas is: 2757 kWh (£139)

total kWh 4070 on spreadsheet, 3960 on imeasure. Probably because I have used 11.3 to convert from units to kWh.

total cost is £356

(It was about £370 a couple of months ago but I have found that I missed VAT off the SP part of my spreadsheet which means it is £16 more than I expected.

total carbon is: 1264 kg (1231 kg on imeasure)

elec: 690.6

gas: 573.4

The added cost for standing charge is £78 or 22% of the annual bill.:eek: