to be worried by how many people don't know roughly how much energy they use?

[cakeorwine]

Read loads of threads on here about people being surprised by their bills. I appreciate that some people struggle to read meters but Smart Meters are more common nowadays and people do get regular bills.

It seems that there are people who are unaware of how much they pay per KWH, their standing charge and roughly how many units they use - and how it can vary.

For information - the 'average house' is supposed to use 2400 KWH of electricity and 12,000 KWH of gas per year.

That's what the price cap is based on - with the appropriate charge per KWH and a standing charge.

Knowing what you pay per month isn't that helpful if you don't know how much you use - and that's when the new charges and tariffs are going to hurt.

If you know what devices use power, you may be able to make changes.

I know some people know this and how much power they use but I worry that there are many people who don't and will get really caught out.

Why?

I don’t use gadgets that use a lot of power - as I said, I don’t use the dryer, I don’t boil a kettle unless I need to, I use my microwave convection oven as much as possible.

I can’t see what you’d teach me - I’ve been very poor, I know what costs the most money to run. But it’s the money I’m interested in, not the kWh.

And I can’t calculate that for oil. Many people in rural areas won’t have mains gas at all.

oh PS, its a bit weird for a person to be worried about strangers do?

As far as I see it, the price cap is a per unit cost for gas and electric, and a per day cost for standing charges.

If you consume the "average" amounts of both those things you get the random number they quote on the TV. As illustrated on this thread almost no one does so one can ignore it.

One can then use those unit costs, day costs and one's own usage to calculate what it will cost after the price cap.

I don't see any need to hold this information in my head when I can just hold how to find it out in my head. There's almost certainly a website you can plug that information into and it will pop something out.

But I, and clearly a load of other people from this thread, haven't done this because if you aren't prepared to change your habits if the cost changes, then knowing what you use is irrelevant. Obviously that's a choice one can only make if you have the luxury of being able to absorb the cost increase and there will be a big chunk of people who can afford it but need to run the numbers to check and then another big chunk who can't afford it and need to run the numbers to understand how much they need to cut their usage.

But I don't think thinking everyone should magically hold this information in their head is realistic - frankly I store most of my knowledge outside my brain and use my brain space for remembering how to find things out.

I’ve done a few comparisons for fixed rate using our calculated usage and our current fixed plan and looking at the best options. We have a large period house so are on the higher side so our DD looks to be going from £140pcm to £275pcm. Obviously that’s a big increase and we will be being careful where possible (avoiding tumbler etc especially) but with two small kids I don’t want them to get cold to will be prioritising heating over leisure activities etc. I appreciate we are very lucky that this is an option.

My mantra is not to worry about strangers as they surely do not worry about me.

Price cap from April is
Electric is 28p per kwh and Gas is 7p per kwh.

When I was on the bones of my arse, it would have made zero difference even then. I’d a set budget and I was already parsimonious with both the oil and the electric.

What do you think your way would teach me ?

They are changing maximum standing charge amounts too

I am sticking with the SVR just now as the fixed rates I am offered are crazy prices. I will stick with the price cap figures just now

Christ alive, why would I want to know all that?

Very luckily we’re not on the breadline.

If it’s dark I put lights on and if it’s cold I boost the heating.

Knowing my kilowatts isn’t going to make it any cheaper, just make me less fun at parties.

We’re an all electric household so it’s always been quite expensive and we worked out what uses most energy. I know how much my DD is and how much the monthly usage is but always forget what kWh usage is. Our usage last year was 7909 kWh which was less than the previous two years but roughly the same cost wise.

I genuinely don't care to be honest - I'll look at my bill and plug the numbers in when I need to chance tariff or suppliers - I have too much to think / worry about as it is without adding bloody kilowatts to the pile. It's not going to stop me needing to use the same amount of gas and electricity knowing the kWhs

Exactly. We use what we use and have no particular intention of changing anything tbh. If our bills go up, they go up. And yes, I realise we are fortunate that this will not be a problem financially. Your OP seems to assume that everybody will need, want or be able to cut back, but that's clearly not the case.

@dementedpixie
Thanks for that - that nearly doubling standing charge for electricity is scandalous.
It's not like I'm getting a solid gold cable to connect to the national grid!
Greedy bastards.

You are wrong actually about boiling a kettle. It’s not so simply as : Oh it just 1 p per cup. There are two sides of it: how much energy the action requires and how often you do it. So I might boil my kettle 20 times per day and use my straightener once per month. From this point kettle might give me quite a big expense over the year even if my straightener uses more KWh.
I know my energy usage. It’s far from average and my bills would go higher then the government predicted. I agree that you need to know basic principle to cut your bill but not figures by heart, it’s too much. Gas goes up 75%(without standing charges) so obviously if you have central heating and gas cooker and cook a lot you would be affected significantly.

I don’t have a standing charge for electricity and my rate is 22.13p per unit.

powerni.co.uk/compare-electricity-ni/unit-rate-prices?meterType=Keypad&tariff=Standard+rate

We have a smart meter, they didn't fit it properly so we ended up with a massive bill for gas because it didn't register any useage. We got a little box to plug in the house, I have no idea where that is , it got put in a cupboard, never plugged in, didn't really see the point as I could go out to the actual meters and get the numbers from those ?

Just looked on my app and our 2021 figures were
Gas: 4353kwh
Electricity: 2934 kwh

We have a smart meter but I got rid of the device that shows usage in real time, I got obsessed and would constantly look at it and it stressed me out.
I still have no idea what kwh are or cost and I don't think I care really, most people only care about the monthly cost as that's currency we know and measure a lot of things by.
We could definitely cut back on our electricity use and probably will need to when prices rise but I've got my head in the sand about it all if I'm honest.
I'm not too worried about gas as we have solar panels that heat our water so once winter is over we rarely need our boiler to kick in.

I know exactly what my electric is as I'm in a dispute with Orbit Energy atm , we were using average of 13kw a day my son left home 2 weeks ago , we decided to stop using the dishwasher and the tumble drier so along with less showers and washing machine being used less our usage has now dropped to 8-9 kw per day , quite a big difference .

And if I moved to bills it would be 21.76p per unit.

So a .5p saving per unit.

But I like prepay because I know where I am with it AND I get a free £1 every month when I top up via the app

I think most people have a direct debit set up with a fixed amount every month and that's about as far as it goes as well as doing the normal things like turning lights out etc. I did look my details up today and looked back and my usage of both are similar for the same periods of the year. Our biggest outlay is possibly a tumble dryer in the Winter months. I bought a heating overblanket and we sit watching TV with that over us in the evenings whereas before I would be wanting to crank up the heating. This winter has been mild though.

From this point kettle might give me quite a big expense over the year even if my straightener uses more KWh

Obviously.

So if I switched to bills on my usage over the last day where I used £3 it would save me £24.64 a year.

I was able to work that out but I don’t need to know it in my head.

@Wrongkindofovercoat

We have a smart meter, they didn't fit it properly so we ended up with a massive bill for gas because it didn't register any useage. We got a little box to plug in the house, I have no idea where that is , it got put in a cupboard, never plugged in, didn't really see the point as I could go out to the actual meters and get the numbers from those ?

We have a smart meter so I can glance at it to see how much it is costing me to boil the kettle etc. I don't normally do this 😂 - just out of interest with all this talk. I can see how much it costs me per day. For some reason though our gas is not hooked up to it.

I was able to work that out but I don’t need to know it in my head

I didn't expect people to know it 'in their head'.

But to roughly have somewhere an idea of what they use. You see so many threads on here where people say what they spend and want to know if this is a lot and should they switch - and they get asked for the actual power usage, not the direct debit cost.

If you use energy sensibly and can afford it, it doesn't matter though, does it?

I don't earn a fortune but I'm not about to start charging my devices up at work or sit in the dark just to save a few quid.