Direct debit going up to £600pm?

[nogella]

It's just me, DS and DD.

I don't even own a telly. They just get broken. Lights rarely on. I mostly just use the microwave for food, and oven a max of 15 mins a time. During the day none of that is in use really

What on earth am I spending £600 a month on exactly?! Charging phones and the shower?

I don't know what to do. What will I do! I don't really use my energy anyway. So I can't cut back either and I can't afford £600 a month. I don't have that. It doesn't exist even if I stopped eating

This list has surprised me. Have read lots of saying lighting isn't expensive, yet an incandescent bulb is the most expensive thing on the list, and an LED bulb is 25p an hour. Obviously in winter lights are on longer and we have three teenagers who, as much as they adore us 😉, would rather be in their bedrooms listening to music in the evenings, so several rooms have lights on. We will pay a fortune for lighting?! Is this right? (We have LED bulbs).

an led bulb does not cost 25p an hour.
Having one light bulb on for 16 hours a day would cost £4 a day.
What madness are you quoting here?

It’s 0.26p not 26p

LED bulb more like 0.25 p per hour! Think you've misunderstood and missed the decimal place

A 1 watt bulb will cost 52p per 1000 hours
A 10 watt bulb will cost 52p per 100 hours

Look at the actual wattage and not the equivalent to the old style bulbs

(Which would cost more to run nowadays)

How can people be this uneducated about basic concepts?

God I have. Serves me right for trying to read that after having a drink 😆. Thank you for correcting me without being a supercilious arsehole.

Thanks.

Thanks.

@Chowbellow No, there wasn’t a question in there. Do you expect one in every comment? If so, why? (There’s 2 questions for you anyway)

Earlier in the thread, several people were posting how much they were spending per month, presumably to provide context or contrast to OP’s question. I suggested that people should include information about how many kWh they were using and their tariff, rather than just the cost.

So I was following my own suggestion, only I didn’t have time to type it a part of my original comment because - as you can see - it’s complicated.

Here is a thought. Rather than posting a cunty comment like that, you write a decent post explaining it? Plenty people are unaware. I’m not one of those I might add but how about being friendly and explaining to those who don’t fully understand how energy works and may be help.

How can anyone be genuinely surprised at this?

sparklecement yes, I agree. Thing is I am perfectly capable of understanding these concepts, but I was half pissed and made a daft error which other posters pointed out in a straightforward way.
My question might be: "How can people not refrain from being condescending twats?"

If you come out with something idiotic, it's not really condescending to correct you.

Being pissed doesn't usually diminish your brain power. Decision-making may be compromised, but I don't usually lose the ability to think when pissed.

Doing maths and posting on MN when a bit pissed can lead to mistakes - I've done that before.

I'm pretty sure that I did.

The way our physics teacher tried to explain it to us idiots was, if you imagine you're peddling a wheel to fuel a light. Peddling will light a small little light on your bicycle. Then imagine trying to heat water while peddling.

If you can imagine that the filament in a light bulb is let's say 0.1cm thick.
The filament in a kettle is about 10 times as thick and 10 times as long.

Try to compare that to a heating system?

But surely a basic multiplication of the sums would tell you that you're talking through your arse?

I'm sometimes astonished that a caveman somewhere discovered fire lol.

Joules calculations are much more interesting.

Energy is in Joules. 1 watt is 1 joule of energy per second.

So a 10 watt lightbulb needs 10 joules of energy per second to provide light energy.

To raise the temperature of a litre of water from 20c to 100 c, you need about 330,000 Joules. If you have half the volume, then you need half the energy.

A kilowatt hour is 60 60 1000 = 3,600,000 joules of energy

So 1000 joules costs 0.014p (if we are talking about electricity at 52p per KWH)

And this is why I hated physics lol.

I think some people need to compare things to physical concepts. Hence the Physics teacher trying to explain it all in physical terms that we could visualise. Concepts are vague things to me. I need something concrete to work with.

However, thick and all as I am, surely you'd know that a light bulb doesn't cost 25p an hour?

My father left school at 14 and yet he understands concepts without even knowing that they are concepts if you get me? Like I'd be talking about something and he'd say 'but that's obvious'. To some of us, things are not obvious and they difficult to understand. That said, I wonder about the British education system where people seem to merrily go through life understanding fuck all and questioning nothing.

There's an example actually with my grocery order delivery. Now I did physics to A-level (relevant). My front door is a fire door, so it's on a spring. I ask each delivery driver to put something heavy at the outer edge of the door to hold it open. Simple you'd think?

No!
Lol
Most of them stick the heavy bags close to the hinge and so the door slams lol.

I understand the distance from the fulcrum concept but most people don't. It's why bats in cricket are long. Don't ask the equation about mass and distance from the fulcrum but you'd think that even by just observing something that you'd figure out something, without even knowing the mathematical equation behind it.
The thing is that my father with no education knows this shit from observing things. I know some of this shit having studied it. However, there are people who don't grasp this at all!

I should admit that Physics was my worst subject, so I do find concepts difficult to understand too. Nuclear physics and splitting the atom is Einstein territory; not Chowbellow's territory.

My gas and electric has been £160 this month for 6 people. Kids constantly leaving lights in, games consoles 24/7. TV in every room.

That's insane.