I decided to see if there were any easy wins.
We have oil CH, so only use electric for cooking, kettle, fridge freezer, washing machine, vac etc. Plus we're on private water, with a 1kW borehole pump. According to the energy supplier's figures, we use about 5.6 units per day, which isn't huge. Conveniently, at our current unit rate of 33p, it turns out that a unit per day equates to almost exactly £10/month (£0.33/unit * 365 / 12 = £10.04)
First I decided to check what our "background" usage was like ie. with all the big stuff switched off. That just left things like clock radios, laptop chargers, router, TV on standby, car trickle charger, oil level monitor. I was a bit surprised to discover that these were consuming 0.5 units per day or 20W/hour (£5/month). It turns out one of the clock radios had an old fashioned PSU with a transformer, instead of the more modern solid state ones. Turning this off reduced consumption to 0.2 units per day (£2/month). OK, saving £3/month ain't much but if you've got old electronic devices on all the time, it's worth checking that they're not running up a significant bill.
So far, the only other ways I've found of making modest savings are:
1) only filling the kettle with the amount of boiling water we actually need (2 cups etc); this makes a pretty big difference
2) flushing the loos less often (each flush drops the water pressure enough for the borehole pump (1kW) to kick in for 40 secs; 100 flushes = 1 kWh unit)
Any other suggestions?
We have oil CH, so only use electric for cooking, kettle, fridge freezer, washing machine, vac etc. Plus we're on private water, with a 1kW borehole pump. According to the energy supplier's figures, we use about 5.6 units per day, which isn't huge. Conveniently, at our current unit rate of 33p, it turns out that a unit per day equates to almost exactly £10/month (£0.33/unit * 365 / 12 = £10.04)
First I decided to check what our "background" usage was like ie. with all the big stuff switched off. That just left things like clock radios, laptop chargers, router, TV on standby, car trickle charger, oil level monitor. I was a bit surprised to discover that these were consuming 0.5 units per day or 20W/hour (£5/month). It turns out one of the clock radios had an old fashioned PSU with a transformer, instead of the more modern solid state ones. Turning this off reduced consumption to 0.2 units per day (£2/month). OK, saving £3/month ain't much but if you've got old electronic devices on all the time, it's worth checking that they're not running up a significant bill.
So far, the only other ways I've found of making modest savings are:
1) only filling the kettle with the amount of boiling water we actually need (2 cups etc); this makes a pretty big difference
2) flushing the loos less often (each flush drops the water pressure enough for the borehole pump (1kW) to kick in for 40 secs; 100 flushes = 1 kWh unit)
Any other suggestions?
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