Another irresponsible thread about energy saving - save £2000 a year by turning things off

[cakeorwine]

In the Express but also in other papers from last April.

An 'energy' expert claimed

"The prospect of huge home energy bills this winter means Britons are desperately casting around for ways to reduce how much gas and electricity they use. Experts have revealed the easiest way you can shave hundreds off your energy bills is by making sure your appliances are switched off.

According to Natalia, the following items are “the worst offenders” costing you the most money. When these appliances are combined, turning them off of standby can help save £2,102.41"

Your TV is one of the most energy-hungry devices in the house when left on standby.
If you don’t want it idling in standby mode, you will have to make the effort to get up and turn the set off at the wall. But doing so will be worth it for the money you save.

Natalie said: “Leaving the TV plugged in and switched on uses 1.3kWh.

“As the average cost of electricity is now £0.34 per unit, just leaving the TV on idle for an hour a day adds up to an enormous £161.33 a year to your bill.

Gaming consoles are likely to be left plugged in and on as the TV, but it consumes a significant 15kWh per hour when it is on standby. Natalia said: “Simply making sure it is totally off can save £5.10 per day.

The expert noted: “Leaving an average kettle plugged in and switched on when not in use uses around 0.3kWh. Although this is seemingly a small unit of energy, it still adds £37.23 to your annual bill
.........................................................................................................................................

If she had used any intelligence, she would have realised that if you actually watch TV , then you would spend a fortune on just watching TV

If my gaming console was using 15 KWH on standby, then I would worry about it

This woman is no expert and newspapers are being irresponsible in publishing this stuff.

There used to be a poster here called schrodingerscat, now i know the read for the name😀

Sorry, total derail but am enjoying your thread @cakeorwine. Am thinking of all the teenagers banned from using consoles for more than 10 minutes now when really the consoles dont use that much energy. Bloody dishonest and misleading article.

Presumably accord to the article, they will end up owing you money?

As said, I think the articles author has confused watts with kilowatts, but it's shocking if no one has corrected it.

There will be people die this year from insane methods of saving energy, not because they can't afford it, because they have a massively inflated idea of how much things cost to use.

Here is a link to the how much do things cost to run thread.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/cost_of_living/4618028-the-how-much-does-this-cost-to-run-thread?page=1

Reason not read

Does the kettle REALLY use energy when it is off, but on at the wall?

Assuming the TV was 100W, that is probably about right.

However, unless you quantify the power consumption or at least know something about the TV type it's impossible to say exactly. For example a small 50W 20" TV will probably consume less than 1/3 the power of a 75" behemoth and a plasma (not very common these days) will consume about twice as much as an LCD for a given size.

I have an ongoing debate with DH, about if we are going out and going to get back after dark. I always want to leave at least one light on so that a) it's less obvious there's no one in the house and b) I hate going into the house when it's in total darkness. He insists it's a waste of energy. But in reality I'm sure the cost is pretty minimal.

My neighbour has been in nearly all the tabloids lately as a so-called money saving expert. His tips are mostly just common sense or along the lines of ‘not having Netflix saves me £x a year’ which is like me saying I save thousands a year on petrol by cycling everywhere. I don’t think the newspapers are really fussy who they speak to - anyone can call themselves an expert.

Absolutely minimal. I have a lamp for this and it eats something like 3w an hour

Just came on the LOL at Shrodinger's Kettle!! 😂😂😂

That’s the stuff I don’t get. If you’re not paying for Netflix then you’re not saving money or cutting costs because the cost wasn’t there to begin with.

My old kettle had a red light in the base to tell me it was on - I think. That would have used.....oh.....a few pence a year to run.

I'm so please you started this thread. So far my husband has spent £20 buying a device to tell me how much it costs to run the kettle for a week.......(then contemplated buying a newer more efficient kettle....£75ish!!!).....he could have worked this out using the smart meter....

I hate these articles with no substance.

Let's all buy air fryers that we will use for 6 months then put in landfill....(apologies to those who are actual air fryer converts).

😂
Like something out of Viz.

I save thousands of pounds a year simply by staying in bed! Why oh why doesn't everyone do it?

Not sure that a single light left on would convince burglars.

I have smart lights that switch on patterns to simulate occupancy while I am away (so for example lounge on all the time 7pm until 10 pm, kitchen 5x 2 minutes at random times, upstairs bedroom 10pm to 10:30 pm, random bathroom 1 minute switch ons). It's not that hard to set up.

I know someone close who goes away for months and their place is always pitch black. Makes no sense to me.

You can save money by not buying the tabloid and reading that sort of crap.

I know lots of actual experts in energy saving (architects who actually specialise in this stuff and monitor input and output for years) and they only get interviewed in our professional press. Although one did make it into the local paper the other week for their award winning local passivhaus. The article said very little about what made it energy saving though and more that it had won an award 🤦‍♀️
I read these articles with despair as it really shows the disconnect for many that they take these articles as gospel when common sense says they cannot be right.
The problem is that the way for long term savings for most is some initial capital outlay and people waste money on gadgets when boring things like light bulbs, draughtproofing and insulation will have the biggest impact.

We used to be terrible for leaving everything on all day and overnight. 3 TVs, my works laptop and monitors, microwave, alexa, 4 Nintendos etc. I started switching everything off at the wall and I reckon its probably saved us at the absolute maximum £1 a day.

Sorry

Probably the only think I do is have the Youview box on eco standby.

On normal standby, it's 10 watts. On eco, it's 1 watt

10 watts is 38p / 100 = 0.38p an hour. Whereas 1 watt is 0.038p an hour.

It takes longer to start up.

Well they've updated the article

Now it's £300.

"Your TV is one of the most energy-hungry devices in the house when left on standby. If you don’t want it idling in standby mode, you will have to make the effort to get up and turn the set off at the wall. But doing so will be worth it for the money you save. Natalie said “leaving the TV plugged in and switched on uses 1.3W" and leaving the TV on idle would cost an average of £3.87 a year."

(A bit of a change from £161)

By turning off your games console you can save up to £1.63 per day, according to the expertGaming consoles are likely to be left plugged in and on as the TV, but it consumes a significant 2W per hour when it is on standby

They have added an update

A previous version of this article inaccurately reported comments from an expert who suggested that the cost of running a TV was £161.33 a year, a fridge and freezer were £138.72 a year, gaming consoles were £5.10 per day, kettles cost £37.23 per year and alarm clocks were around £24.48 annually. In fact, TVs cost £3.87 a year, a fridge and freezer are £297 per year, gaming consoles are £1.63 per day, kettles are £8.94 a year and alarm clocks cost £5.96 annually. We are happy to clarify this.

(They still have the gaming console wrong)

Hi Natalia and the eeditor who finally decided to do their job

I love this bit in the update

"If you don’t want it idling in standby mode, you will have to make the effort to get up and turn the set off at the wall. But doing so will be worth it for the money you save. Natalie said “leaving the TV plugged in and switched on uses 1.3W" and leaving the TV on idle would cost an average of £3.87 a year"

Will it be worth the effort to save £3.87 a year?

"alexa, turn the tv off"

EU regulations on standby power consumption developed over 10 years ago, were introduced in 2013 and became law in 2015. Manufacturers obeyed these new regs early, and even though we left the EU, we use the same appliances as they are mainly made in Asia by the familiar companies.

The rules say a device on standby (just waiting for activation) must use less than 0.5W (that's 4.38kWh per year = £1.49 at 34p/kWh) and devices that also have a display must use less than 1.0W. Manufacturers figures show that they achieve this and often use much less.

The only device in my house that uses more power than this is the Sky box, and I would guess that other TV boxes are similar. These are constantly updating the EPG guides and your favourites, suggestions etc. This is the only device I switch off at the wall when not in use - the penalty is that it takes about 3 minutes to boot up when I switch it back on.

PS. Despite never switching the TV, DVD, Microwave, Cooker, Broadband, Schrodinger's kettle, cordless phone etc. off at the wall I use an average of 4kWh/day - that's £1.36/day excluding standing charges.

This article in the paper has gone to many other papers - I guess they just pick them up without thinking.

Maybe I should do a press release - with the actual figures. I guess it would be a much more boring headline though

@Subnauctic i doubt you even save £1 a day. That would be 3kwh or 250 watts per hour for 12 hours overnight and I can’t think of any combination of chargers etc that would use as much as 250w. For comparison you could use 4 electric blankets on full all night for that.