Firstly learn how much electric you use and how much this is costing you.
I do this by taking daily meter readings of the gas and electric.I call this my "power diary" I can then tell how much I've used in the previous 24 hours. I tend to do this as I get up so it's now a matter of routine where I get up, get washed, go down stairs read meters do breakfast and bait for the wife and then start the daily chores.... I'm a house husband see.
It's a good idea to do a "power diary" and you can go further by doing an hourly power diary. it gets on your partners nerves but after a few days they "understand".
In a power diary I wrote my daily meter readings and in the hourly version I would write the meter readings immediately before i say... put the oven on then when I switched it off I would take another reading and work out how many units per hour of use the oven was costing. I would then do my cooking in batch form and freeze a lot of it for the following week thus using the full oven. After use I'd then open the oven door so the heat would "escape" into the house and not out into the vents to outside.
Once you know these figures you can go about reducing them. I started off in June with around 24 kwh per day and got that down to 18 then even further to now in November I was using an average of 8.56 kwh per day. The first half of the month the average was actually 7.6 but then we had the workmen in with their power tools so it's gone up a bit by the end of the month.
Once you know the units you are using you can check each individual appliance with
the aid of one of these meters that you can either plug into the socket and then the appliance into the meter or a second type clips onto you main in feed cable and that tells you what you are using. The idea is then to go around your house and switch everything off. Then switch one item on and take a reading, switch it off and do the next item etc.
I found this tedious and it lasted about 5 minutes and 3 appliances before it went out of the window and being of an age when I was able to Learn maths at school I was able to calculate the average use over 24 hours. Say a 100w incandescent bulb could get 10 hours for 1 kw or unit of electricity. So to run this bulb for 10 hours would cost me 11 pence inc vat. However if I used a 20w energy saving bulb i could run that one for 50 hours for 11 pence. It then became a game to see how much I could alter and by using an 11w low energy bulb I could get nearly 91 hours for my 11 pence.
Some things can't be switched off or altered such as the house alarm and other security features. However those 500w security lights can now use low energy bulbs of 24 w. We went away for a few days so I switched everything off that could be switched off and the background useage for the likes of the fridge, freezer, house alarm and satellite / cable box was about 4.7 units a day. Late on in the year we went away again for a couple of days so I switched off the fridge and freezer and the background electric was 1.2 units a day so the fridge and freezer used about 3.5 units a day which is quite a lot apparently. They are over 10 years old and are under counter jobbies so this will account for some extra use. Having researched this I am told that under counter is the worst place as there is little or no circulation so heat builds up and this causes the cooler to work extra. I plan to take the fridge and freezer out of the work benches an stack them on top of each other to see if this makes a difference. If not the next step would be to look for an A rated or A+ rated FF.
I switch off all the lights as much as i can, i use candle light in the bath. My explanation to the wife is it's relaxing but really it is saving electric, lol. I don't automatically put the telly on, i switch the clocks off on ovens and microwaves. it's been reported recently that we use more energy having the clock display on a microwave that we do cooking the food. It's not hard to flick a switch to put the microwave on like any other electrical appliance. I've learnt that the fan in this computer is rated at 333watts so I can have this on for 3 hours for one unit of elecy or I can use my laptop for 8 hours for the same unit.
We used to use the hoover to clean crumbs up in the kitchen now we use a soft bristle brush and a dust pan. Actually it was a better idea but it also saves electric.
Because I'm on ebico as my power supplier and i pay 11.31 pence per unit for electric inc vat my cost of electric for October was £27.32 and November £29.11 corresponding gas was £44.49 and £64.67.
I pay £50 each month for each supply so now I know that in the last 2 months I've used £111 on gas and £57 on electric so I'm going to phone the power company up and reduce my electric DD thus keeping money in my account rather than give them interest.Edit note:: This I've done today, 02.12.08 and reduced my electric to £30.00 and increased my gas to £60.00.
Gas is much the same as the electric. I went about checking the units it used to run a full bath of hot water and worked out a costing from that. It was something like £2.20 and i have a hot bath every night. I changed my habits from running a full hot bath and then waiting an hour and a half for it to cool down ( playing on the computer really) to running a 1/4 bath with hot water, putting in cold water and getting in straight away. alternatively get in whilst the bath is running and it saves more hot water. I've actually got the cost of a bath down to 51 pence now so I can have a hot bath 7 nights a week for the cost of 2 previously.
A lot of people will say it's being a miser or they couldn't be bothered but when I say my power bill is going to be around £1020 this year down from over £1700 last year they look shocked and ask how it is possible..... so I tell them.
Publish Post
..... It also reduces your carbon footprint if that is important to you.......
No comments:
Post a Comment