Money Saved on Electricity in One Year

[Zak33]

Lo people

One year ago... I started saving money on electricity. I started learning which things needed turning OFF at the wall and which could stay on.

http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...lot-money.html

I had purchased a gadget to plug into my wall plugs which then I plugged things into it.. to see how much power they used, On and OFF, standby and in full use.
http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...ng-device.html

I got rid of two older fridge/freezers and purcahsed one brand new efficient large one. I spwapped as many bulbs as possible for energy savers.

I learned to turn things off properly when not it use. I paid for multi block switches for Sair's PC so that she could turn off all of her PC's, Monitor, Speakers etc with one easily reached plug. It seemed silly from some quarters.. but I did it.

I moved around plugs to different sockets so that I could turn OFF stuff that could GO off (DVD/Amp/CD player/PS2/Wii)... and leave things on 24/7 that needed to be on (ie TV aerial booster and Settop box/recorder PVR)


Last year vs this year. Top darker sections are Economy 7 (midnight until 7am) showing that the savings occur all day and night long even though it's cheaper at night to run this stuff.



Obviously, the summer months are less electricity heavy.. no lights on, less pumping of water for heating, etc.. but it's still a saving. In winter it's a huge saving.... energy sabing bulbs MUST be partly to be praised.... but I THINK it's the down to a new fridge freezer that's done most of that....
http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...-freezers.html

[Zak33]

and yes... my bill is a lot lower

[pp05]

Good stuff!

[Whiternoise]

Bulbs will have saved you a fair amount. If you've got a 100W filament bulb and you replace it with a 20W eco one (that gives you a similar amount of lux) then you've saved 80W (or for every ten hours the bulb is on you've saved 800Wh - that seems like a lot to me, i'll double check).

Nice to see it actually paid off!

What i think is really interesting is that you seem to flatlined your power usage. In the past, your data shows that you used about double the electricity in winter than you do in the summer. With the various improvements it's more or less the same. That, to me, would imply that changing the fridge didn't have that much of an effect. If we assume that your fridge/freezer is on 24/7 then each month you will have almost exactly the same number of kWh dedicated to it. So, all your "always on" devices give you a sort of baseline, a minimum expenditure.

When you use heating and lights, your TV and consoles, appliances, you vary your consumption above that baseline. You can take your summer consumption as roughly the minimum since you don't need heating, lights only need to be on for a couple of hours a day and so forth - while at the same time you're using your appliances with the same regularity (though you could also have a couple of weeks of baseline use due to a holiday).

So, where's this going?

Well, your baseline consumption hasn't changed that much, it's hovering around the 800kwh mark per quart. Less than the previous year, but not by much. This implies, to me, that where you've saved most of your electricity is in heating and "occasional" power usage, things like lights, the TV and things that used to be on standby all the time. The fridge probably dropped your base consumption, but not by that much.

You've dropped it by quite a lot since a year ago, but as i said, your consumption now is almost equal throughout the year (almost no variation in comparison to last time). I suspect that most of that saving was from turning things off at the wall rather than letting them just turn off (and suck up all that quiescent power). If you turned off your PC and peripherals that might save you, what, 40Wh per hour it's off?

In some respects i think that's more important than just dropping it, now you know you can keep your usage consistent. People should take note, there is NO reason why your electricity usage should suddenly skyrocket in winter.


Out of interest did you cut down on your heating as well, put on a few woolly jumpers sort of thing?

[G4Z]

Has it paid off though, how much did you invest in all these devices?

I dare say the fridge would have been a fair bit.

[Zak33]

Has it paid off though, how much did you invest in all these devices?

I dare say the fridge would have been a fair bit.

From myt calculations, the purchases are a fridge (£400) and the older of the two freezers that i got rid of (sold both on ebay so money back in for that total was over £100 for the pair ) used vast amounts of power.. but that's not on that chart, as I sold it before those numbers.
A £7.99 switch for Sair's pc cos she's too lazy to climb under the desk and power it off properly (paid back in one year, as I know what power her pc was drawing when "off" with monitor and speakers and second pc.

The energy saving bulbs were all free from British Gas (and are in Lidl this week at 5 for 50p!!)

[Zak33]

Bulbs will have saved you a fair amount. If you've got a 100W filament bulb and you replace it with a 20W eco one (that gives you a similar amount of lux) then you've saved 80W (or for every ten hours the bulb is on you've saved 800Wh - that seems like a lot to me, i'll double check).

Nice to see it actually paid off!

What i think is really interesting is that you seem to flatlined your power usage. In the past, your data shows that you used about double the electricity in winter than you do in the summer. With the various improvements it's more or less the same. That, to me, would imply that changing the fridge didn't have that much of an effect. If we assume that your fridge/freezer is on 24/7 then each month you will have almost exactly the same number of kWh dedicated to it. So, all your "always on" devices give you a sort of baseline, a minimum expenditure.

When you use heating and lights, your TV and consoles, appliances, you vary your consumption above that baseline. You can take your summer consumption as roughly the minimum since you don't need heating, lights only need to be on for a couple of hours a day and so forth - while at the same time you're using your appliances with the same regularity (though you could also have a couple of weeks of baseline use due to a holiday).

So, where's this going?

Well, your baseline consumption hasn't changed that much, it's hovering around the 800kwh mark per quart. Less than the previous year, but not by much. This implies, to me, that where you've saved most of your electricity is in heating and "occasional" power usage, things like lights, the TV and things that used to be on standby all the time. The fridge probably dropped your base consumption, but not by that much.

You've dropped it by quite a lot since a year ago, but as i said, your consumption now is almost equal throughout the year (almost no variation in comparison to last time). I suspect that most of that saving was from turning things off at the wall rather than letting them just turn off (and suck up all that quiescent power). If you turned off your PC and peripherals that might save you, what, 40Wh per hour it's off?

In some respects i think that's more important than just dropping it, now you know you can keep your usage consistent. People should take note, there is NO reason why your electricity usage should suddenly skyrocket in winter.


Out of interest did you cut down on your heating as well, put on a few woolly jumpers sort of thing?

EXCELLENT POST

Holidays dont count as I tend to have them in winter as much as summer but good point for some people, REF baseline

Bulbs have done good things, except for the quality of light, which is harsh and slow to turn on and won't dim.

As montioned above you can't see the oldest freezer in the garage figures cos it wernt before that chart was avaialbe, but MAN it used a LOT.. most in SUMMER.. as you'd expect in a hot grage, trying to stay at -18'C. If I had those figures, you'd die of shock! Luckily I had it on for only a few short months before sussing it's power demands.

Turning thigs off is DEFINATELY the biggest saving.. my PC uses between 18 and 30 w when OFF (Intel motherboard with loads of remote access possibility) and my monitir is 8w and my speakers 3 w when OFF.

Sair's 2 rigs are as bad...

Our microwave uses 8w when not in use.....! so that goes off whwn not in use.
Child monitor in the boy's room off when he's up and about.... 5 w

I've also banned sair from buying certain lamps that she wanted because they used a powerbrick, and when I tested it after she's brought them, I was maddened to see the constant power use of this brick.. so I sent her back to the shop for a refund. Such crap design, cheaply designed/made circuitry.

[Zak33]

Out of interest did you cut down on your heating as well, put on a few woolly jumpers sort of thing?

that's the hardest of the savings... but yes.

But I had done that all the year before, when my boy was born, so he got used to a cooler house as he grew up. We have a log fire with a reasonable supply of fire wood from a good friend (on hexus) whoch works out economically for both of us.

So yes... an extra jumper before the heating goes on. Our unused bedroom has the radiator off nd the door closed, but it does effect the house temp if the door is left open by accident.

Part of the WINTER electric useage is a little 500 W Bambino oil flled radiatior for the boy's room at night. It's was on a timer to come on low between 2am and 6am to keep his room at a safe tempterature when he was smaller (1y old) but I used the elec monitor on it for a month and it was very cheap to use.. cheap enough to consider buying a second one for the hall of the house to keep the edge off the cold on economy 7... until the morning. But Sair thinks it looks ugly... so I'm not alowed to do that

[Pob255]

Well your resaults don't surprise me that much, as Whiternoise so nicely put it.

Heating is a major factor in energy consumption, cooking is another area.
Now while I don't expect you to eat less during the summer, there's a good chance you cook less and eat cold/uncooked food.
Depending on the age and type of ovan you have that may be another area you can reduce costs/consumption.

Have you increased your insaluation? that's a major area you can cut down waste.
Check your front door, you may have drafts around the edges esp in winter, simple draft excluder strips & seals will help cut down cold air seeping in there.
A porch, as nasty as sticking a front door on your front door is, will also help reduce heat loss.

[pipTheGeek]

Bulbs have done good things, except for the quality of light, which is harsh and slow to turn on and won't dim.

Yes they will
Although at about £12 delivered they are not cheap. We have just bought one to try on all of our dimmers. It works well on the two newer ones (these two are about 8 years old), not so good on the older dimmers. They also have a fairly bright minimum brightness, which means it's not so good for the bedroom where I need a light that can be almost off for when I am getting home late, so I don't wake up mrs pip, either by blinding her, or by falling over stuff.

That, to me, would imply that changing the fridge didn't have that much of an effect. If we assume that your fridge/freezer is on 24/7 then each month you will have almost exactly the same number of kWh dedicated to it.

The fridge and freezer are likely to use more power during the summer months to keep themselves cool. Especially if he is now trying not to heat the house un-necessarily during winter.

We always try to buy energy efficient appliances, the lowest rated thing we have is the tumble dryer (hmm, not suprise really), which is a C. My main PC isn't exaclty frugal at an idle power draw of about 150 watts. Rising to 300 when working hard. Sadly my friends power meter that we had borrowed has died so I can't check any of the other stuff. I ought to try and do something to reduce our £70 a month electric bill though!

[directhex]

I've been using LED bulbs where I can

They are CRAZY expensive (£25 a bulb for some), but the result is impressive

In the garage we used to have a fitting with four 50W halogens, those are now 5W high-intensity (50W equiv) LED bulbs. In the kitchen we have 2W wide-beam bulbs (35W equiv - the original shipment, "EnviroLight" branded, were terrible, with 2 failures and one with a muddy low light, the replacements are good though

It's only a small impact, but going from 105W to 6W when leaving the kitchen light on has to help, right?

[Clunk]

Zak, how much power does your new fridge use according to your watt meter? My 12 year old fridge (Yes 12 years old!) uses 50w and up until a few months ago looked and sounded like new, but it's started to vibrate and I think it'll probably die soon, but 50w seems pretty good to me, although I can't make head nor tail of the energy ratings on Comet and the like, they all seem to have different ways of showing what power is used.

[Whiternoise]

Check out the thread Zak posted about his fridge, plenty of good links in there to stuff about ratings and how they're calculated. All EU appliances should, in theory, follow the same code. The difficulty arises because you have to account for different sizes of appliance, power/cubic metre say.

50W isn't too bad, it's fairly simple to work out the annual use assuming that's it's maximum load and it's always on. 50x24x365 = 438kWh/year.

http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...-freezers.html

I've often wondered about LED lights, they'd be excellent for a workshop/kitchen where a good bright cold light is suitable. Not sure i'd want them around the house though, not until they bring out this quantum dot stuff http://www.physorg.com/news7421.html

[ash42]

I've saved a lot eversince I started using LED light bulbs.

^ They're definitely great for a kitchen. I use ceiling lights that emit light in all direction.

[Sputnik]

I've saved a lot eversince I started using LED light bulbs.

^ They're definitely great for a kitchen. I use ceiling lights that emit light in all direction.

I've been looking at MR16 LED lights, Do they get hot?

[Zak33]

good to see this thread back into life