Electricity Usage Club

[Cloud]

I've seen you on the imeasure forum,I'm there too good to have you, I have slipped to No 3 on the list..

Hi Ellie, it was you who told me about this place

So, I'm now number 3 - well told you all it would be short lived.

And, Ellie, you can tell your OH from me (I'm an electronics engineer) that turning off the computer will save. Not only will it save the power, but the electronics ages fastest when powered. Personally I turn it off if I'm going to be away for more than an hour - a fair balance between laziness and cost saving I think.

I've moved our hot water heating to come on only during the economy-7 period so the pump and three-port valve run only on the lower cost electric. The tank is well insulated, so its still warm by the evening. This does not save CO2 or kWh, but it is cheaper.

I'm toying with the idea of only running the boiler just three or four days a week. I'm sure the water will keep war enough over two days. Not sure how much saving that would give though.

[Big Al]

I've seen you on the imeasure forum,I'm there too good to have you, I have slipped to No 3 on the list..

Hi Ellie, it was you who told me about this place

So, I'm now number 3 - well told you all it would be short lived.

And, Ellie, you can tell your OH from me (I'm an electronics engineer) that turning off the computer will save. Not only will it save the power, but the electronics ages fastest when powered. Personally I turn it off if I'm going to be away for more than an hour - a fair balance between laziness and cost saving I think.

I've moved our hot water heating to come on only during the economy-7 period so the pump and three-port valve run only on the lower cost electric. The tank is well insulated, so its still warm by the evening. This does not save CO2 or kWh, but it is cheaper.

I'm toying with the idea of only running the boiler just three or four days a week. I'm sure the water will keep war enough over two days. Not sure how much saving that would give though.

I think it was on this site that said if you leave a computer on for more than 16 seconds over turning it off you will use more leccy. In other words switch it off even if you go for a pee,lol.

Mind you I could be wrong but the fan along in this desktop is 350 watts so 3 hours of this computer being on and bang goes a unit of leccy.

Does anyone know if room 101 is still around ? I ask as in the i measure bit he has 10 people in his house so his figures will always keep him at #1. if he's not around then this will need to be changed.

[Cloud]

Does anyone know if room 101 is still around ? I ask as in the i measure bit he has 10 people in his house so his figures will always keep him at #1. if he's not around then this will need to be changed.

Room101 must still be entering data or they would not appear on the leader board I think. I believe the leader board relates last weeks only performance.

Obviously economies of size can play an important part in keeping CO2 emissions low. Our household figure is 35kg of CO2. Measured that way we have the lowest per household in the top four in the club. We'd have to count our cat to better Room101 with per occupant figure..

This plot might be of interest. Is our progress over the last two month we've been trying to reduce our Electricity bill...

Electric usage for April and May

power-end-may-500.jpg (42.35 KiB) Viewed 8661 times

First big drop was me turning off all the things on standby (including a 24 hour internet server - now at work).
Second smaller drop at the end of the first month was mostly me adjusting the temperature of the fridge/freezer.
The blip just before that was when we had people staying and we were cooking and washing more.

[Big Al]

Does anyone know if room 101 is still around ? I ask as in the i measure bit he has 10 people in his house so his figures will always keep him at #1. if he's not around then this will need to be changed.

Room101 must still be entering data or they would not appear on the leader board I think. I believe the leader board relates last weeks only performance.

Obviously economies of size can play an important part in keeping CO2 emissions low. Our household figure is 35kg of CO2. Measured that way we have the lowest per household in the top four in the club. We'd have to count our cat to better Room101 with per occupant figure..

This plot might be of interest. Is our progress over the last two month we've been trying to reduce our Electricity bill...

power-end-may-500.jpg

First big drop was me turning off all the things on standby (including a 24 hour internet server - now at work).
Second smaller drop at the end of the first month was mostly me adjusting the temperature of the fridge/freezer.
The blip just before that was when we had people staying and we were cooking and washing more.

Cloud, The smoothed out line, is that the average of the other readings ? If not how do you get the "smoothed out" line?

[Cloud]

Cloud, The smoothed out line, is that the average of the other readings ? If not how do you get the "smoothed out" line?

It's a rolling average (arithmetic mean) over the last two or three values. It seems to help the eye see the trend a little easier. As the period between measurements tend to fluctuate then the scientific basis of this averaging is possibly a little dubious, but it sort-of-ish works.

[wolfsong]

thats real good cloud! Well done!
did you have the central heating on?

[Cloud]

thats real good cloud! Well done!
did you have the central heating on?

No CH just hot water and that's gas fired, so not so much electric is used. Plot is for electric only. This cut our electricity bill from £90 to £40 per month. We've just has £100 back from the electric company as they took too much by DD last quarter

[ellie12022]

Cloud, you're here because of me?Wow! Even though I'm no 3 this (last) week again, I feel like number 1 now

How brilliant to get a refund

I try to do same as you re computer - if I think it's going to be more than an hour till it's used I'll switch off & on..But it is being used a lot more now, evenings & weekends...Maybe when I find my library card I'll go back to the library now & again (use their electricity!)

Cloud, I live in an old stone house with no double glazing, although my mam does want to sort that out at some point. It gets cold in the winter.

At the moment, it's my gas use that's confusing me..I thought I would have used less this week...
Anyway, I will leave as is for today I think. Maybe tomorrow I will try just to switch timer off, and see what happens..Problem is, it's easy to forget it's on..

[Cloud]

Hi, Ellie. We can bask in our mutual glory this week.

Pity we seem to have only three active ish club members. Would anyone else like to join us?

Cloud, I live in an old stone house with no double glazing, although my mam does want to sort that out at some point. It gets cold in the winter.

You do very well then. We're just waiting to exchange contracts before (hopefully) moving in to our old stone cottage very shortly. I'm predicting our energy usage is going to go through the roof (probably literally) as we work out how to heat it. And we have to learn how to cook on a electric Esse stove too.

So I'm going to take the glory of being top of the list while I can

[Big Al]

About Smart Meters....
Everyone thinks these will be fantastic, me included until I started to think about it. The idea is that there will be no more estimated bills, in fact the meter readers are being trained to install these SM. The customer can see exactly how much energy they use each hour, day, week, month, 3 months etc which will they hope help to cut down the use of energy because people will become "more focused" on the waste they use by leaving things on standby etc.

The one negative thing they don't tell you about and one i need to write to the government about is the fact that these smart meters will give an amount used every month to the utility company. What happens if the said utillity company then decides to bill you monthly? All ok in the summer but low paid, poor people like myself will get a nasty bill in the winter months. Now i'm not a big user and well below average but I can't afford to pay for winter bills all in one monthly go....

what do others think?

Here's an article http://www.economist.com/world/britain/ ... d=13664192

edited to add article link

[Cloud]

About Smart Meters....
<snip>
The one negative thing they don't tell you about and one i need to write to the government about is the fact that these smart meters will give an amount used every month to the utility company. What happens if the said utillity company then decides to bill you monthly? All ok in the summer but low paid, poor people like myself will get a nasty bill in the winter months. Now i'm not a big user and well below average but I can't afford to pay for winter bills all in one monthly go....

No, I don't think that will happen. They could do that now based on estimated consumption if they wanted, but they don't. Also I think it helps them to have a more smoothed out flow of income, which is why they like you to pay by DD. You might pay/they get less in winter months, but they get/you pay more in summer months.

What it might enable them to do is to pick times of the day where they charge you more for the power - like a backward Ecomomy-7. Sort of a peak-rate for power like you get with phones.

[ellie12022]

What concerns me the most is a comment in that Economist article about how they will be able to turn your electric appliances off whenever they want. I can see all kinds of dangers in that..Also, will you have to be able to access the internet to see the bills? I know now, that my water meter in Birmingham was a smart meter but I did get paper bills (I just thought it was very clever how they knew how much I'd used without coming to the flat..)

Anyway, I can't see it happening - at least not for a while - they can't keep up with meter exchanges as it is - I only had a new meter put in a few weeks ago because they thought the bloke doing it had a day off so he wasn't rotored on any appointments - he told me there are only 5 meter exchangers in the whole of my county & the one adjacent (North Wales). I'm not keen on the new meter - it's too small to read easily.

Utility Warehouse already install smart meters (& tie you in to a 2 year contract) & they bill monthly, so what you say is feasible Big Al. And like you say, Cloud, they have 3 different tarriffs depending on when you use your electric most.

Also there seems to be concern that companies will pass on the costs to consumers anyway, so we will end up paying more.


Cloud, we bought a little Quartz heater last winter, which we move around the house, so as not to use the gas fire or have the heating on if we were in one room.(still cold though!!).

[Thurston Garden]

Good thread AP!

Being the tight singleton that I now am, I have been keeping very close tabs on my leccy and have been averaging 97 units a month since Feb. £17 a month

(At that point do I admint that I have an oil Rayburn though?)

[Annpan]

Sorry to hear about the singleton business TG, hope your alright.

I have failed spectacularly at keeping tabs on my usage... It just got to damned depressing... elecric portable heaters, no insulation and baring in mind I have to boil a kettle to do any cleaning and I was trying to avoid doing that.

I am still pretty good though and I will concentrate on it more when the building work is done... promise

[Thurston Garden]

Sorry to hear about the singleton business TG, hope your alright.

Thanks - never been better! Going up steps two at a time