My Energy use Diary

Frugaldom

Hello everyone, hi to Rangemore - just G00gle the items you are asking about, there's plenty of info about what, where and how much. I pay about £4.00 for a year's supply of soapnuts from www.inasoapnutshell.com if that's any help. Haven't a clue about the meters that measure how much electricity an item uses, though.

This week's results: badges D and E

Your household's total energy spend over the last 36 weeks is £670.09.
For week ending 16th August, 2009 your household spent £11.56 in total.
Electricity A Rate: £9.40
Electricity B Rate: £2.16
Electricity C Rate: £0.00

My average over the year, including £1.61 weekly standing charge, is now running at £20.22 per week.

This week's useage is slightly up on accounts of jam making but it still works out cheaper to make jam with foraged free fruits than to buy it from the shops and it tastes much nicer.

It's also been a bit chillier and extremely wet here, so the fire was lit twice to help get the washing dried on the airers. I burn logs, so the fire doesn't really have much impact on our carbon as the logs are classed as neutral and I use only a handful of coal to help get it kindled.

Decola

Your household's total energy spend over the last 39 weeks is £134.18.
For week ending 16th August, 2009 your household spent £2.42 in total.

Last week I used 21kwh of electricity and 11kwh of gas. I'm a C carbon rating, and 22nd out of 35 in the mse carbon club.

cw18

Just been to check my badges - and despite my user details saying I have 3 adults in the household, my results page still says 2..... and has divided the household emissions by 2.

So it appears that the site's taking NO NOTICE whatsoever of my headcount change But when I asked on their forum which would be the first readings to be impacted by my changing this, I was told it should work as I expected

I keyed my readings for 4th on 5th, then immediately upped my headcount.
Last Monday "correctly" still calculated by badges (using those readings) using a headcount of 2
I then entered my readings for 11th on 11th - so expected these to be used with the new headcount of 3 for the calculations ??? (And had been told on their forum this should be the case)


So I'm currently showing as having 2 D-side of 'E' badges, but I reckon I should be C-side of 'D' for all users, and D-side of 'C' for similar households (g&e detached houses)

Frugaldom

Don't worry, Decola, I'll make up for how little you use. :rotfl: Haven't a clue how you manage on less than 50p per day (my standing charge alone is 23p per day), can only guess you aren't home much, eat out and don't rely on electricity for hot water or heat. Amazing, I'd never have believed it possible until I joining MSE. :T

CW Just divide the total carbon by 3 and ignore what the site says, it's not like it's of any major importance if they get the calculations wrong because their site can't update quickly enough. What is important is that YOU know how you did. Hope your kWh useage hasn't shot up too much with DS being home on leave.

Decola

nykmedia wrote: »

Don't worry, Decola, I'll make up for how little you use. :rotfl: Haven't a clue how you manage on less than 50p per day (my standing charge alone is 23p per day), can only guess you aren't home much, eat out and don't rely on electricity for hot water or heat. Amazing, I'd never have believed it possible until I joining MSE. :T

I'm at home nearly all the time and never eat out. I only use hot water for a shower each day - everything else is done in cold, unless I need hot to shift grease when washing up.

The two heaviest users of power here apart from heating are my pc, and fridge freezer. In winter, the ff uses less power, which compensates for the extra use of lights.

A_fiend_for_life

Dropped a little this week - 7 / 35 - got a B and a C and used 18 kWh. Not surprised as I have been doing lots of washing and blanching veg. I blame the toaster that fused.;)

I've just heard on Radio 4's You and Yours that the British Retail Consortium wants the government to scrap VAT on white goods similar to the car scrappage scheme. Basically anything with an energy efficiency rating should be included in such a scheme. It would apparantly save about 1% of UK's emissions every year for around 10 years. I'm thinking in that time the VAT would be better spent on loft and cavity wall insulation.

ajmoney

I like this idea. Gas and electricity are the only things I haven't worked on saving yet. I am away from home at the moment so will look into it at the end of the week. Our bills are always huge at the end of winter as we normally have the attitude that we earn enough so why not be warm etc. Maybe we can look at reducing the winter total without getting too cold. We currently have no double glazing just sash windows, although this may change soon). I don't think we have great insulation either so I am going to try and tackle this by the end of September. I am a huge money saver elsewhere, I am surprised at how long it has taken me to think about this.

cw18

Readings for this week entered.....

Electricity up 1kWh on last week to 75kWh, which isn't bad as I've done one hotter wash load including pre-wash (only done a couple of times a year)
Gas down by 23kWh to 34kWh (back to where it was the week before), and the only difference I can see is I've not needed to boost the hot water at all...... so it appears this is something I need to really think twice about doing (frightening to think one short boost last week used all that gas)

All in all, the household CO2 is looking pretty good given we have an extra person in the house.....

reading taken kg CO2
28/07...............43.....................last full week with a head count of 2
4/08.................47.....................elder son came home just over half way through this week
11/08...............50.....................3 people all week, including boosting hot water
18/08...............46.....................3 people all week, including a hotter/longer wash load

cw18

Spent half an hour on the phone to my energy provider tonight.... I'm one of those Martin flagged up as being automatically moved onto a capped tarriff (which may not be the best for us) on 1st September.....

Started by asking what figures they had as an annual estimate of useage for me - as I wanted to be sure I was doing an accurate check on the comparison site

I was working with 3,800kWh for electricity and 7,800kWh for gas, which was my actual useage from 9/7/2008 to 13/7/2009 inclusive. Was puzzled slightly on being told 8089kWh for the gas (but not so far out I was worried), but was horrified on being told 5010kWh for the electricity :eek:

When I queried this figure he checked back what I was using, and agree that (even though the 5,000+ seemed low for an average user) it was way off my useage, so he had a chat with a supervisor. Turned out their figures were based on my last annual review - which was apparently back in January, so not at that point showing any of the benefits for being 1 down on the permanent household headcount.....

So he took the readings I'd taken on Tuesday and forced the system to do a fresh annual review.

Annual gas down from 8089kWh to 7852kWh - meaning a 3% reduction, which isn't bad as I've have the heating on around school for my GDs.
Annual electricity down from 5010kWh to a mere 3565kWh, so a whopping 29% reduction :T Just goes to show how much hubby used by leaving the TV on when he went out, even if it was only on standby sometimes which he didn't believe was a 'problem' (and by constantly leaving lights turned on) :mad:

ETA: Also means my Direct Debit has dropped from £60/month to £53/month

2nd ETA : Just remembered that the drop in electricity will also have been helped by the freezer replacement last October - review now has 10 months of the energy efficient one, whereas January would have only had 3 months of it......

setmefree2

ajmoney with your energy reduction attempts:D