The true cost of running electrical devices - a useful guide?

[cakeorwine]

I did a thread a while ago on electrical devices - even more relevant now with the coming increase in energy costs.

This might be useful for people to get an idea of what it costs to run devices.

These calculations are based on a unit of electricity being 45p / KWH which is what it could be in October (it's currently about 27p / KWH)

A 1 watt device run for 1000 hours uses 1 unit of energy.

There are 8760 hours in a year - so that 8.76 units of energy = £3.90

For context, my Alexa is about 3 watts and it's on all the time - so it would cost 3 * £3.90 = about £12 a year to run.

A TV is between 50 - 100 watts.

So if a 100 watt TV was run for 10 hours, that's 1 unit (100 10) - so about 45p per 10 hours or 4.5p per hour*

A hairdryer is about 1500 watts (on high speed, high heat). So in 1 hour, it's used 1.5 units or 67p. - so about 1p a minute

A PlayStation 5 on active gaming is about 200 watts - so in 5 hours, it's used about 1 unit - so 8p per hour

An electric shower - about 10 kilowatts, so in 1 hour (full speed, full heat) - it's used £4.50 - so about 7p a minute

Just a few examples - but you can see how devices use energy

Standby mode is very good now - about 1 watt - so a device on standby will use about £4 per year. Obviously lots of devices on standby do add up.

I am sure people can post other examples. It's just useful to know where your energy goes.

Exactly

Halving your sauna usage will have a massive impact in electricity usage

Boil as little as possible.

Seriously - the thermos will make very little difference.

You might not want all the water in the thermos so you've wasted energy there.

I know the 45p per hour sounds a lot - but it takes little time to boil a kettle

Ok I won't bother with the bigger thermos then, saves me money buying that now! But filling up just a little more than the minimum fills my mug and my flask so gives me 3 cups of tea for just over the minimum boiling so I'll stick with that.

Halving the sauna definitely had the biggest impact, that and turning down our electric radiators.

Electric oven is the other big user of power, consumption doubles in the evening when I'm cooking dinner. How much would using a slow cooker save?

Halving the sauna definitely had the biggest impact, that and turning down our electric radiators

That would do it

We have an electric storage cooker (farm kitchen) - if prices go up as you suggest we’ll be looking at £40/week to run it😖🙈

I’ve already told my daughters there’ll be no hair drying this winter!!

Short hair?

But yes - hair driers if you use them for a long time, can add up as it's everyday use.

I heard that slow cookers are a false economy as they are on for 8-12 hours but pressure cookers save energy as they speed up the cooking process. No idea if that is true.

I was going to buy an air fryer instead of using my fan oven to save energy. A decent sized one costs between £100-200 so I need to work out how many times I would have to use it before it starts to save me money. Maybe I would be better to just put the money into my energy account instead of buying another appliance.

😂 yes, we’ll that would be one solution @cakeorwine …..sadly I had to beg one of them just to take off 6 inches the other day and it’s still mega long🙈!! I think we need to put solar panels in but the installation costs are scaring me (& actually I’d rather stick ours on the ground but sadly there doesn’t seem to be a cost saving doing this)…

I am going to buy those electric throws for sitting around the house. To me the running costs will be worth it as they make your day to day life more comfortable.

We have an electric under blanket on the bed and I would not be without it. I only have the bedroom radiator on if the outside temp goes below freezing. I like a cold bedroom.

How much does it cost to toast two slices of bread in a toaster (say, for two minutes or whatever the average or 'normal' is?). I've kind of worked it out as 2p now but maybe 3.5p come October - does that sound remotely feasible?

I always feel like I've misplaced the decimal point ...

Home PC - about 60W

So an 8 hour day is about 0.5 KWH - so 25p

£1.25 a week, £6 a month...

Assuming 5 work days a week and it's on all the time

Good question

A toaster is about 1000 watts. So in 1 hour, it uses 1 KWH - 45p

Let's say 3 minutes to toast - so that's 1/20 of an hour - so about 2p

Obviously a more high power toast uses more energy per second but it takes quicker to toast.

This is all really useful information! Thank you @cakeorwine
I bought an energy monitor and checked the usage for some of my kitchen appliances. The slow cooker on low setting used 0.879 kWh for 5h . - approx 5p per hour at 28.5p per kWh. My 2- slice toaster cost 1.5p per use. My AEG washing machine cost about 14p (0.45kwh) for a 30 C eco synthetics wash (full load). My big surprise was the dishwasher (Bosch). It uses about 1.3kwh for a 50 C wash on vario speed (ie quicker wash). - about 45p. I now use quick wash for most washes, still about 22p (0.8kWh) per wash.

My maths of off. 38p per 50 C dishwasher load, not 45p

If people get the low income boost (( can't remember what it's called )) and have capped energy prices for now and have ancient appliances, the biggies being washing machines, fridge freezers and tumble dryers I'd strongly advise using that money to replace them. I replaced my 14 Yr old washer and dryer with a heatpump dryer and much more efficient washing machine and I can't believe the difference. I'm using 1/4 less energy compared to last year.

Be aware that some devices like washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher and maybe ovens etc don't use a consistent amount per hour so these calculations can be misleading. For example for things that heat water, they use loads of electricity while heating the water but once they have done that, the pump or motor getting the water around onto your clothes or dishes isn't using anywhere near as much. However as someone pointed out above you can usually find the energy use of the main cycle on the EU energy sheet on the website. This is also how the longer cycles can be more eco friendly despite being longer.

Our main sources of power usage seemed to be:

Console used as a YouTube streaming device, replaced with Google Chrome TV plug in thing

Night storage heaters that you can only control 24h in advance - replaced with plug in electric heaters that we could turn on or off depending on if we were actually in the room

Cooking lots of individual convenience type meals like chicken nuggets in oven. Switched to air fryer. Using grill a lot to make cheese on toast, changed to making this occasionally and more often using the hob or having a cold lunch.

3x gaming computers on a lot of the day. Changed settings to hibernate instead of sleep when left idle (in power options). Changed to a more efficient power supply or CPU (didn't really understand this, DH says it would have helped)

Doing all this saved us 1500 kWh per year even though that was the year we got a tumble dryer, though that might have indirectly saved energy by not having to rewash stuff when I put off hanging it up, and not having to have the heating on all the time to prevent damp in bedroom. Or it just might not have added enough use to offset the saving since we got a heat pump one that uses approx 1.2 kW per cycle.

I was thinking about getting one of those one cup water heater things instead of a thermos - the minimum fill level on my kettle is 2 cups and i live alone.

The Lakeland heated airer is 300 watt, so 0.3 kW. If you run it for an hour that’s 0.3 kWh. At current prices that’s 8.2p per hour but reviews say it takes 12 hours to dry a load including jeans and jumpers. So 98p.
My inverter tumble dryer costs 31p per load on average (I’ve had it plugged into a smart meter plug for the last 3 months so I know what it uses).

Ah, thank you @JellyBabiesSaveLives . We went on to a fix not long ago so cost is even higher. I started using heated airer more (and it’s always on for at least 12 hours, sometimes 24 when I’m moving things around and drying heavier items) and dryer not so often, but now we are using more electricity than ever. I think the airer is the culprit.

Now that is interesting maths.

How many cups of water do you need to boil to get your money back on the cost of the one cup water heater?

Let's say you have a 2 cup kettle - so it boils 400 ml and you need 200 ml. So it's costing you about 2p when you boil and you waste 1p as you don't need the water that's left. (although it may still be warm when you come to boil more later)

So 1p is wasted. A 1 cup kettle costs about £50. So you would need 5000 cups of water boiled to get your money back.

Obviously less as the price of electricity increases. How many cups do you have a day

I know someone might mention boiling water taps. They still have to boil water and it's the boiling water that costs the energy. They have a standby mode but they still need energy to boil the water that is on standby at all times. If it cools down, it needs energy to boil again.

Thank you so much for the thread @cakeorwine. Very insightful and useful.

This is really useful and I thank you for posting.

The daily standing charge is also a reason why bills are shooting up as well as utilities inflating direct debits.

VAT on energy is still 5%.

If DDs are inflated to stupid amounts which are far greater than the actual increase in wholesale energy, then that is time to demand the supplier reduces the DD to reflect the increase in wholesale energy.

Its worth bearing this in mind too, if this happens to anyone, just get the Ombudsman involved.

Recently my nieghbours got the absalute shock of their lives as one of their quarterly bills was larger than expected.

It does annoy me that it doesn't have a standby mode - I can't lower the power of the wi-fi and there is no way on my model to have it in low power mode when it's not needed. It's either on or off.

Mine will cost about £35 a year to run. Yet it's not used much during the workday.

It is also the energy being wasted - individually not a lot, but it all adds up when you look at the UK as a whole.

I have just got 2 throws for me and DS. He has looked at me - because he knows I am on one of my missions.

I have a target to reduce electricity and gas usage by 20% over the next 12 months compared to the same months last year.