Energy Saving

[scotview]

No.

I use less than 3500kWh a year. I average just 1881 kWh per year over the last 5 years. My lowest years usage was 1346 kWh in 2003. I have an electricity only house (no gas) and a woodburner for the central heating.

So, everyone gets a wood burner, is that you message ?

You seem to have the solution to the energy crisis......and that's a VERY emphatic "NO" at the beginning of your reply.

What exactly are you saying ??

Woodburner folkies seem to have all the answers, seriously tell us what to do.

Before you answer please be very aware that I could install a wood burner with back boiler, its not a financial constraint. Are you advising me to replace my gas boiler with a wood burner and cut my total energy use by 80% ? Whilst at the same time retaining my exact same home comfort ? And having the same degree of ease of use ?

[daveh]

I'm not quite sure what you guys are trying to do. My base energy usage is 100 watts. Thats 72kWh per month.

In January my total energy usage is 3500 kWh. Yours will be about the same.

So your baseload energy is negligible. A couple of things.

1 To really save, you should try and minimize your winter heating load.

2 Heating and cooking by gas is incredibly cheap compared to electricity. If you are on gas heating you are fortunate.

No.

I use less than 3500kWh a year. I average just 1881 kWh per year over the last 5 years. My lowest years usage was 1346 kWh in 2003. I have an electricity only house (no gas) and a woodburner for the central heating.

Do you use the woodburner for water heating, heating and cooking?

Just water heating and radiators in winter. Rest of the year I use an electric shower or kettle for hot water. I cook with electricity.

[daveh]

No.

I use less than 3500kWh a year. I average just 1881 kWh per year over the last 5 years. My lowest years usage was 1346 kWh in 2003. I have an electricity only house (no gas) and a woodburner for the central heating.

So, everyone gets a wood burner, is that you message ?

You seem to have the solution to the energy crisis......and that's a VERY emphatic "NO" at the beginning of your reply.

What exactly are you saying ?

Woodburner folkies seem to have all the answers, seriously tell us what to do.

Before you answer please be very aware that I could install a wood burner with back boiler, its not a financial constraint. Are you advising me to replace my gas boiler with a wood burner and cut my total energy use by 80% ? Whilst at the same time retaining my exact same home comfort ? And having the same degree of ease of use ?

No I'm saying that the comment that we shouldn't worry about a couple of hundred watts of base load energy usage because 3500kWh per month is normal usage is not normal. I was pointing out I use much less than that, but also showing why. I'm not suggesting that is the way to go. If I was building new I'd go passive house standard insulation with a heat pump, but that's not where I'm at.

[scotview]

I was pointing out I use much less than that.

Yes, I know, but:

If your energy use is almost an eighth of mine, and most other UK folkies, shouldn't we all go to wood burners, the saving is astonishing, seriously.

And if you don't strongly think your solution is to be recommended why did you begin your reply with "no".

[daveh]

I was pointing out I use much less than that.

Yes, I know, but:

If your energy use is almost an eighth of mine, and most other UK folkies, shouldn't we all go to wood burners, the saving is astonishing, seriously.

And if you don't strongly think your solution is to be recommended why did you begin your reply with "no".

Forget the wood burner, that wasn't what I was commenting on I was commenting on the electricity usage. I could be heating my house and water with gas or oil and I'd still be using approx 2000kWh of electricity. My comment was that 3500kWh of electricity per month (42000kWh per year) is not average and that for someone using more normal levels of electricity looking at reducing the background level of electricity usage can make a difference. My background usage from items on standby, router etc is about 44w, which I think is pretty good, but still adds up over a year. So the lower you can get this background the better with out compromising liveability.

[servodude]

I agree with your calculations and they seem to be equivalent to about 220 watts used per hour, 3 times what Mike4 is using but equivalent to two old light bulbs does not seem too bad. Must try to reduce it though. I now do not leave outside lights on but must see what on stand by I can remove.

Dod

The trouble with doing the measurement as you have done by counting the flashes is was the fridge freezer running the compressor whilst you were counting or not.

If it was then the 220w might be reasonable, but if it wasn't then 220w might be quite high.

Take a meter reading last thing at night and then take a meter reading first thing in the morning and divide by the number of hours between them to get a better average 'vampire' usage.

Or alternatively turn the fridge freezer off and count the flashes (and then turn the fridge freezer back on!).

How did you count the timing?

I'd probably suggest using a stopwatch/timer and counting for 10 periods (11 flashes) a few times
- just to try and remove rounding errors a bit

The lowest value you get from doing that would be the closest one to your base load; higher values imply they caught an on cycle for your freezer
-sd

[scotview]

3500kWh of electricity per month (42000kWh per year)

3500kWh is January. If your stove can do 1881 kWh/12 = 156 kWh per month you really need to have a meeting with Liz Truss.

June is 500 kWh.

[servodude]

3500kWh of electricity per month (42000kWh per year)

3500kWh is January. If your stove can do 1881 kWh/12 = 156 kWh per month you really need to have a meeting with Liz Truss.

June is 500 kWh.

indeed

I think the talk of "averages" in this conversation is really helping to confuse the situation.
But hopefully it's possibly helping some folk realise they should have a look at what they can.

I remember make some changes last year and have only just checked the results: our daily usage when on holiday in summer has gone from 6.4 to 4.2kWh; which now puts our vampire usage at ~175W - and is more of a change than I expected from a newer TV and a rejig of the main computer setup
I can live with that given what I need to keep running - and there's not really much more I can squeeze out (it's mostly whitegoods and computers)

Peak electricicty usage hits 19.23kWh on a 38.7 deg day when we would have been dripping under the aircon
- it occasionally hits 15kWh/day in winter running the fans for the ducted heating - which is more than I expected to be honest

But.. most of that that's probably going to be irrelevant to anyone else

-sd

[AF62]

Peak electricicty usage hits 19.23kWh on a 38.7 deg day when we would have been dripping under the aircon
- it occasionally hits 15kWh/day in winter running the fans for the ducted heating - which is more than I expected to be honest

But.. most of that that's probably going to be irrelevant to anyone else

-sd

Don’t be so sure it’s irrelevant…

24.35kWh here on the 19th July the UK’s hottest day when I had the aircon at home running full blast.

However on occasion I will use almost 50kWh a day when I charge my car, in addition to everything else running in the house.

[Mike4]

I have a smart meter but my display does not/will not work and I cannot get through to the supplier. The flashes you mention are interesting. I notice these on my meter but they did not mean anything to me. Now I know. Must take an educated look. Thanks.

Dod

You're welcome. Do post your findings and impressions as and when they arise!

I seem to be the only person in the world who figured out what these flashes mean, and they are really useful. I'm intrigued to find out how my results compare to yours, and anyone else's.

Armed with a torch this morning, I have just checked my meter again and it does indeed have the red flashes you described, but in daylight they are overwhelmed by the green ones which I now understand to be the connection for the smart meter. Today is the first day that I am on the standard tariff, my fixed annual contract having ended yesterday so I am particularly interested. Even with my house in darkness (hence the torch), my red light flashes every 4 seconds or so, presumably with all the stuff on standby that I described. It would indeed be interesting to know what others are showing because we seem to be worlds apart. At the same time, I have taken a meter reading and it is well below what I would have expected so my energy saving measures still seem to be working.

Dod

Could you see anything that identified what the rate of flashing meant?
4000 and 1000 per kWh are common; at 4sec flashing with stuff off I'd expect the former

Which would suggest your meter might be measuring a consumption of about 220-ish Watts
- 4 second pulses would mean 16000s for each kWh consumed (and at 3600s per hour it's taking you about 4.5hr to use a kWh)

Which sounds not unreasonable (but I'm just back from the pub with my kid )

-sd

Correct! My meter says 4000 Imps/KWh. Amazing the stuff I do not know! I agree with your calculations and they seem to be equivalent to about 220 watts used per hour, 3 times what Mike4 is using but equivalent to two old light bulbs does not seem too bad. Must try to reduce it though. I now do not leave outside lights on but must see what on stand by I can remove.

Dod

Thanks for your comparison figures. I had totally overlooked the possibility of a smart meter which if truly smart one would think would actually display the power consumption at any given time on the display. I overlooked this because weirdly, smart gas meters explicitly don't display power consumption and no-one in the gas industry seems to know why not. Especially when it is a legal requirement to measure and check the power consumption of certain gas appliances.

Anyway back on topic, I've never seen a 4,000 imp/kWh meter, only 1,000. The calculation logic I use is as follows:

For a 1,000 imp/kWr meter this is one flash per Watt Hour. One thousand flashes per kiloWatt hour. For Dod's meter giving 4,000 flashes per kWr this works out at one flash per 0.25 Watt hours.

One flash every four seconds = 15 flashes per minute = 900 flashes per hour. With a 1 Watt hour per flash meter this is obviously indicating power consumption of 900 Watts, but Dod's meter is 0.25 flashes per Watt Hour, so multiply the 900 by 0.25. A vampire consumption of 225W. Equivalent to having 3.75 old style 60W incandescent light bulbs left on 24/7/365.

[servodude]

You're welcome. Do post your findings and impressions as and when they arise!

I seem to be the only person in the world who figured out what these flashes mean, and they are really useful. I'm intrigued to find out how my results compare to yours, and anyone else's.

Armed with a torch this morning, I have just checked my meter again and it does indeed have the red flashes you described, but in daylight they are overwhelmed by the green ones which I now understand to be the connection for the smart meter. Today is the first day that I am on the standard tariff, my fixed annual contract having ended yesterday so I am particularly interested. Even with my house in darkness (hence the torch), my red light flashes every 4 seconds or so, presumably with all the stuff on standby that I described. It would indeed be interesting to know what others are showing because we seem to be worlds apart. At the same time, I have taken a meter reading and it is well below what I would have expected so my energy saving measures still seem to be working.

Dod

Could you see anything that identified what the rate of flashing meant?
4000 and 1000 per kWh are common; at 4sec flashing with stuff off I'd expect the former

Which would suggest your meter might be measuring a consumption of about 220-ish Watts
- 4 second pulses would mean 16000s for each kWh consumed (and at 3600s per hour it's taking you about 4.5hr to use a kWh)

Which sounds not unreasonable (but I'm just back from the pub with my kid )

-sd

Correct! My meter says 4000 Imps/KWh. Amazing the stuff I do not know! I agree with your calculations and they seem to be equivalent to about 220 watts used per hour, 3 times what Mike4 is using but equivalent to two old light bulbs does not seem too bad. Must try to reduce it though. I now do not leave outside lights on but must see what on stand by I can remove.

Dod

Thanks for your comparison figures. I had totally overlooked the possibility of a smart meter which if truly smart one would think would actually display the power consumption at any given time on the display. I overlooked this because weirdly, smart gas meters explicitly don't display power consumption and no-one in the gas industry seems to know why not. Especially when it is a legal requirement to measure and check the power consumption of certain gas appliances.

Anyway back on topic, I've never seen a 4,000 imp/kWh meter, only 1,000. The calculation logic I use is as follows:

For a 1,000 imp/kWr meter this is one flash per Watt Hour. One thousand flashes per kiloWatt hour. For Dod's meter giving 4,000 flashes per kWr this works out at one flash per 0.25 Watt hours.

One flash every four seconds = 15 flashes per minute = 900 flashes per hour. With a 1 Watt hour per flash meter this is obviously indicating power consumption of 900 Watts, but Dod's meter is 0.25 flashes per Watt Hour, so multiply the 900 by 0.25. A vampire consumption of 225W. Equivalent to having 3.75 old style 60W incandescent light bulbs left on 24/7/365.

It's actually surprisingly difficult to do instantaneous consumption (well not that surprising if you think about it in terms of speed and distance or volume and flow rate) which is why a lot of this style of stuff is done with integrators and pulse counting.

[XFool]

That is interesting because I thought the advice came from the provider, in my case BT. I suspect that a lot of my idle usage of electricity comes from my PC, monitor and the router, all of which I leave on. I may switch them all off this evening to see what difference it makes to my usage and also how easy it is to get them up and running again.

Fingers crossed.

Let us know how you get on.

So? Did you dare? How did you get on?

I'm still on the same sync speeds I was on yesterday - router turned off overnight and on again this morning.

[Dod101]

That is interesting because I thought the advice came from the provider, in my case BT. I suspect that a lot of my idle usage of electricity comes from my PC, monitor and the router, all of which I leave on. I may switch them all off this evening to see what difference it makes to my usage and also how easy it is to get them up and running again.

Fingers crossed.

Let us know how you get on.

So? Did you dare? How did you get on?

I'm still on the same sync speeds I was on yesterday - router turned off overnight and on again this morning.

Thanks for your interest. I was impressed by IAAG's comments so just left it on. I really am not looking for problems.

Dod

[chas49]

Freezers and fridges work more efficiently when they are not cooling air, i.e., when they are full. If you only have a few frozen berries there, you should try and fill it up, even if it is just with empty plastic bottles filled with water. Once frozen, they will help keep the freezer at -16 or whatever setting you have. Otherwise, every time you open the door, you're letting out cold air that fills with warm air that needs re-cooling. The less space for air in there, the less this is necessary.

That is a good point. (I would only be letting warmer air into the drawer that I open.) Regular defrosting is said to help too. If I have only a tiny amount in the freezer, I have to run that down to zero to defrost. According to AEG, the running cost is £1.26 per week. Probably rather less when the room is at 17 degrees C. That is not much to cover the extra cost of fresh.

I checked my fridge-freezer consumption the other day. Whist running it consumes 1Watt-Hour every 20 seconds. I'd estimate it runs maybe 30% of the time but I haven't actually sat and timed it on and off over, say an hour.

But let's imagine I am right about the 30%. This means my fridge-freezer actually consumes 1 Watt-Hour per minute, all the time on average.That's 60 Watt-hours per hour, or 1.44 kWh per day.

At say 35p per kWh that means my fridge-freezer costs 50p a day. £3.50 per week.

I *think* you're confusing (kilo)watts and (kilo)watt-hours. If your freezer uses 1W when it's running, and it's on for a whole hour, then it has used 1 Wh. If it's only on for 30% of the time, that's 0.3Wh. However, that seems *very* low. How did you obtain the figure of 1 watt-hour?

[UncleEbenezer]

I'm not quite sure what you guys are trying to do. My base energy usage is 100 watts. Thats 72kWh per month.

In January my total energy usage is 3500 kWh. Yours will be about the same.

So your baseload energy is negligible. A couple of things.

1 To really save, you should try and minimize your winter heating load.

2 Heating and cooking by gas is incredibly cheap compared to electricity. If you are on gas heating you are fortunate.

Agreed.

It ain't that simple.

The microwave oven or the induction hob are much more efficient ways to cook than simply heating your food. The microwave has its limitations in terms of what you want to cook with it; the hob doesn't (so far as I'm aware). So if, like me, you use the hob a lot more than the oven ...

[funduffer]

I'm not quite sure what you guys are trying to do. My base energy usage is 100 watts. Thats 72kWh per month.

In January my total energy usage is 3500 kWh. Yours will be about the same.

So your baseload energy is negligible. A couple of things.

1 To really save, you should try and minimize your winter heating load.

2 Heating and cooking by gas is incredibly cheap compared to electricity. If you are on gas heating you are fortunate.

On 2, except if you have a heat pump to provide your heating, and except if you have an induction hob. Not sure about gas oven v electric oven.

NB electricity rate per kWh used to be x5 gas, but is now 3.5x. Makes a difference.

FD

[swill453]

I note that I now have a credit to my account at my energy provider (Shell) of £66 from the Government's Energy Bills Support Scheme dated 2nd October.

I assume my next Direct Debit will be reduced by this amount, though I haven't specifically been told this yet.

Scott.

[UncleEbenezer]

Not sure about gas oven v electric oven.


FD

On ovens, there are more factors at play than just that (for example, who would voluntarily use a fanless electric oven)?

Another point particularly relevant to smaller households is size. A full-size oven is hopelessly over-sized if you're just doing, for example, a quiche and baked spuds. A mini-oven - in my case the Ninja - is the efficient solution in such cases.

[staffordian]

I note that I now have a credit to my account at my energy provider (Shell) of £66 from the Government's Energy Bills Support Scheme dated 2nd October.

I assume my next Direct Debit will be reduced by this amount, though I haven't specifically been told this yet.

Scott.

Same here with EDF and my son, with OVO has a similar credit.

Yet EDF explicitly stated on their website that if paying by DD, a credit of £66 would be paid into the customers bank account. Maybe the energy account credit of £66 will be refunded and disappear from said account?

[staffordian]

EDF have, as I suggested they might above, are now showing this £66 as being refunded; and says I'll receive it within five days, so adding it to the energy account is obviously the method needed to get it onto the books prior to refunding it.