Help me work out how I'm using so much electricity??

[Crazybengalcats]

Hi, I know there are a million threads on this topic and I've read most of them, but I could really do with some help working out why the electricity usage is so high in our household.

I'm with Bulb and the annual estimated electricity usage is 14,000kwh :(

Here's what we have in the house:

Combi boiler

Electric oven and hob - we do oven cook a lot of things and some days the oven is on 2-3 times (we might eat something spicy later in the evening after children have eaten, for example) and each morning we boil coffee on the hob using a coffee pot.

Electric shower (all three children shower daily, 10 mins each roughly, partner most days, me every other day)

Kettle - boiled a few times a day, I do tend to fill it up each time

Toaster used maybe 3 times per week

3 x tvs on standby 24/7, one used for the xbox in our room which dp is on most evenings for a few hours

3 other xboxes plugged in but switched on infrequently

3 x sets of led lights (one in each of the children's rooms) - always on but this week I've started turning them off during the day.

Printer - plugged in and switched on all the time.

Alexa device

Google home device

Many phone and laptop chargers left plugged in and on at the wall

Washing machine - new this year and a rated, plus a tumble dryer - a rated. I do lots of washing (2-3 loads per day), one load at 60 degrees and the others at 40.... only an hour for each cycle though.

Tumble dryer I was using for most loads but have been trying to hang the washing out while it's been sunny recently

Chest freezer and a small undercounter fridge which are both -2 years old.

That's it!

Does anyone know the most likely culprits for the high electricity bills?

We can't get an in home display as we have a 1st gen smart meter so was thinking of trying one of the energy plugs to monitor usage but would like to start with one of the most likely electricity-guzzling appliances first!

Thanks in advance

I'd like to know in real terms how much difference it makes actually leaving things on stand-by

Probably hardly anything. There was a rule brought in about 10 years ago that meant that TVs etc must use 0.5 W or less on standby. That means that something will need to be on at least 2000 hours to use 1 kWh, so the absolute most it can use by being on standby for a whole year is about 4.5 units, which costs around a pound or so.

Meanwhile, an electric shower uses a unit in a few minutes and a family could easily spend more than a pound a day on showering.

Switch off everything at the wall unless it is actually being used - stop leaving things on standby. Less of a fire risk too.

You're using a heck of a lot of water as well, by the way.

Crikey OP that is a lot of washing. The kids clothes with food and mud I get, but pyjamas and towels after one use! Absolutely not necessary! A week is plenty often enough IME.

As you have noticed, this will be costing you a king's ransom. If the pyjamas are getting sweaty you're using too many bedclothes!

You can save yourself a great deal of work too.

(I raised two children with much the same laundry habits as my mum raised hers (ie cooler washes and nothing like so frequently). We are all still alive and well (she's nearly 90) and none of us have had bedbugs, lice or a public shaming for being smelly.)

Re the oven, that will be using a shed load too. You have to heat up not just the food but the whole oven - and a fair bit of the room too, every time you use it. The hob and microwave direct the heat much more accurately at the actual food! The microwave will use a fair bit less. Something very slow like baked potatoes can be started in the microwave then moved to the oven to 'crisp' once soft.

and yes, don't overfill the kettle!

If you have a smart meter it can be really informative to note down the pence used per minute or 5 minutes usage of a particular device. Then times it by how long its actaully used for for each session.

Then whehn you ahve collected all this info you can come back on here and share your new knowledge as we all need to be energy experts now

Washing towels after every use is bonkers and totally unnecessary! We use ours at least a week between washes and they don't smell!

Try and swap some of your cooker use for an air fryer, uses much less electricity. Washing outside or on airers, and do much less washing overall! I do about 4 loads a week. Bedding, whites, colours, towels. Never more than 6 loads a week but often less. Family of two adults and a toddler who can't wear anything more than once!

This is something I wouldn't tell people in real life, but if clothes aren't dirty after wearing, I put them back in the cupboard. Especially the kids clothes, because they're too young for smelly armpits.

There are loads of good things about this:

• less hassle doing washes
• clothes last longer
• saves energy and water
• you're not needing to get so many washes done, so you can take your time with a slow eco wash, and using an air drier

I definitely do wash clothes that are visibly dirty, or smelly. So no-one knows the difference. The only problem is, you have to keep it a secret, otherwise people who like to do loads of washes will think you're a minging soap dodger.

Why are you washing towels after every use? Hang them up!

But an indoor drying rack and use it. Mine was a tenner from IKEA

But seriously, who can be arsed doing 2-3 washes a day. Isn't it just a massive, time consuming hassle?

OP why don't you start small.

1. Try washing towels every other day instead of every day. That alone will make a massive difference becuase they take lots of energy to tumble dry.
2. Likewise PJs.
3. use the eco cycle on the washing machine. It takes longer (soaking the clothes) but uses less electricity (less movement)
4. wash at 40, not 60. (Unless sickness etc)

I wash towels once a week- so I've used mine 7 times, and the kids 3/4 times. Kids PJs washed once a week. Mine more often due to night sweats.
Always line dry if I can.

Try for a month. And see how it impacts your useage

And for comparison- we are family of 5, cooking on electric. Teenagers with devices etc.
Average annual usage over the last 3 years is 4,200 kWH

Kids PJs washed once a week. Mine more often due to night sweats

I'm getting night sweats just reading about all this pyjama wearing and washing. Aren't you all boiling in bed?

I don't wear anything in bed except a tshirt and socks in the depths of winter. We don't have the heating on or a mega duvet either and I'm plenty warm enough.

Yes, agree with only washing towels after a few uses. Presumably you are clean when you are drying with them so not sure why they need washed every time!

Take temp down on washing machine. We do most stuff at 30 on an eco wash. It does take a long time but if you cut down on the number of washes you do then it shouldn't really matter overall.

(But you will prise my clean PJs every night out of my cold, dead hands (or toasty dead hands ...) I'm a huge slattern generally but this is my one 'luxury' as I love getting into a clean pair of PJs every night! )

Just wash your stuff less and don’t have your lights on all day.

That is a crazy amount of washing. Washing a towel after one use is so wasteful. 😕

I have re-deployed my smart plugs to turn things off. I have set them all so that my office set up, sewing set up, various kids charging set ups and sitting room plugs all plug in to one power strip each, via a smart plug. The smart plug has a routine to turn off automatically at night. That means I need to turn them on manually (‘Alexa, turn my desk on”) to use them, which is pretty easy, but my office doesn’t need to be on at weekends, for example. The chargers come on for an hour a night, and then go off again. I try to turn off when I finish, but if I forget, it will turn itself off at bedtime. You could do that with your kid’s chargers and gaming set ups.

Heating and cooling are the big energy users though.

Def stop boiling a full kettle. Or get a thermos and make a day’s worth of tea/coffee in one go (I do this when camping)

Consider if you really need to do so much laundry? I know when kids are little they need clean clothes every day, but older kids can wear things a couple of days if they aren’t visibly dirty (I am still trying to train my DD, here!) are they all just used to chucking everything in the wash every time? Get some sort of airer - one of those lazy daisy things over the stairs is brilliant if you are short of space - I think a tumble drier is £1 a time, so that could be £20 a week!

By the same token, do you all need to shower every day? We don’t. I get Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and my kiddo takes her ‘turns’ Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, to fit in with her activities, mainly. I am going limit baths to weekend treats only when we go on to our variable rate at the end of this month. (Sob. I love a bath. We are too broke to go out atm, I’m so sad to let it go)

If you can clear out the big freezer it will help, but I think that will leave you without a freezer? I would find that hard, but you could see how it goes.

You definitely could be more mindful of oven use. I am a big fan of batch cooking (hence my freezer dependence!) and I only use my oven for pizza on Fridays (where I also make bread rolls and a weekend cake treat) and Sundays (where I cook a roast, a dessert and a baked dish like roasted veg or baked potatoes for the following week). We have leftover roast on Monday, the baked dish Tuesday, something batch cooked from the freezer Weds and Thurs, or something very simple in the halogen oven (like fishfingers and chips, but I cook everything in it, except Yorkshire puddings and pizza) then pizza Friday. Even if you use it every day, you could still cook your food along with the DC’s and eat it later, or cook theirs with yours later for reheating the next day. I used to do that when DD was in nursery, and we didn’t get home till six. I fed her leftovers from our meal the night before, then cooked for everyone once she was in bed)

There’s lots of low hanging fruit to pick here, which means it’s relatively easy to make changes. Read your meter tonight when you go to bed, first thing in the morning, and then tomorrow night. On Friday morning start making changes (or you won’t know how much difference it makes. I did an ridiculous ‘turn everything off at the socket faff’ at night, and it didn't make any difference at all! Still two units at night and six in the day. So I made some different changes, I need to go back and recheck those.

Don't sweat the small stuff like chargers and TV's on standby. Its the tumble dryer, showers etc that make a difference. Here is a good guide
www.cse.org.uk/advice/advice-and-support/how-much-electricity-am-i-using

In addition get the kids involved. Take monthly meter readings or even weekly and get everyone engaged with it. Discuss all the things mentioned including turning off lights when not in the room (so long as safe to do so - don't have accidents because you are living in the dark!)

Our children have left now but when they were younger we did this and it was much better engaging them in the process. They've also learnt to not waste energy now they pay for their own too. Win win.

That's my issue with the line - we have a shady garden so even today in warmer weather I had a pair of my dds joggers on the line from 9am and the cuffs ahead only just dried now.
Sorry.. what is the issue? They’ve dried right? So what’s the problem? Wind is the best weather for drying not heat anyway.

It doesn’t seem like you want to do much and have excuses not to. Garden is tok shsdy not to use the tumble dryer, kids are teenagers so can’t have shorter showers, couldn’t possibly use W towel twice… if you really need to make these savings you can implement the changes people have suggested. They’re not crazy or really anything extreme, just what most people do.

Wash less. Towels will easily do way more than 1day. Why not drop to 2 towel loads a week? That will also make moving to a more economical longer cycle possible, and you can tumble less, as it has longer to dry.

Shorter showers. Challenge them to 5 min showers (and get a waterproof timer so they know - we have a big egg timer). No consequences for going over, just an indication of water and elec used.

No point telling with switching things off at the wall with those massive usages to tackle.

So if an electric shower is 10kW and you're using it for 45 minutes per day (10 mins X 4 plus 1/2 of another 10 mins for you as every other day) then that's 7.5kWh per day just on the shower - so that's about 2,700kWh of your total usage right there.

A gaming PC I think is usually about 1 kW when switched on, so that might be about another 6kWh a day - so then that's another 2,200kWh

That's nearly 5,000 of your 14,000 right there.

I would try bringing all your washing down to 30 as well.

On the plus side there’s loads of savings to be made. On top of all those mentioned I would check that the short washing cycle you’re using is the cheapest one - the manual should tell you. If you move to 30 degree washes you can check at the same time.

Just checking about hairdryers as I don’t think you mentioned that? (I’ll go back and check)

Is there a reason that your washing habits are so crazy? How are your towels getting so that they need to be washed every day? You are already spending an insane amount of time in the shower, do you not know that you should be washing yourselves and rinsing off the soap so that the towels are drying clean water?

Agree turning everything off at the socket isn't really your problem. I read somewhere recently (MSE?) that for an average family that saves £10 a year at a very best estimate, probably less.
Can you pop your airer in the bath/shower if space is a problem?

@marqueses

Is there a reason that your washing habits are so crazy? How are your towels getting so that they need to be washed every day? You are already spending an insane amount of time in the shower, do you not know that you should be washing yourselves and rinsing off the soap so that the towels are drying clean water?

Are you new here? Half of MN seems to be showering multiple times a day and then washing all the subsequent wet towels produced, along with mountains of PJs along with everything else.

Then they complain that their electricity bill is sky high and their washing machine needs replacing after 2 years...

wow that is a lot of stuff using electricity all the time.

turn off chargers when not in use.
TVs - turn off. Only leave on the box recording stuff

tumble dryer - by comparison to you I only dry sheets and towels and the emergency stuff (Ah my school trousers are wet, type of thing.)
We have a utility room. It has an extractor fan, a loarge washing rack and a long pole high up with 1,000 hangers. Washing is hung up, dried within 24 hours. More fiddly, but it works.

Kettle - the whole point of jug kettles is that you can boil one mug of tea efficiently. So use the guide on the side and only fill for how much you need.

Oven - this is harder as it is more of a lifestyle change, but yes, cut down on long cook oven dishes. Introduce quicker things like stir fries.

Some of these things oculd be donw using timers.
Have LED lights, and all TVs/ consoles on timers so that they go off at 11pm and come on again at 4 pm for example. At the weekend they will need to press the override, bu t isn;t a bad thing