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.

@GasPanic funny you should say that, after reading @Getoff 's post I actually got off my arse to check my tv, I've been meaning too since all of this started. I've actually turned it off a few times when it had just been making background noise! I live on my own, so sometimes it just adds back ground blather!

anyway, it's OLD, very old, one of these if anyone wants a laugh

www.manualslib.com/manual/123846/Philips-28-32-Pw-6006.html?page=2#manual

I thought I might have to say goodbye & get a new one....

he's costing £37.50 per year (assuming 5 hours per day, every day) to run, he can stay 🎉 🍾 🥂

A new one would be much cheaper to run, but I luffs Phil ❤️ & he's already here (no capital expenditure, it would take decades to repay that in power savings😂😂)

@GasPanic

o want to set this up as im
often working evenings and away quite a bit. Could you please give me a brief outline of what I need & what system you use?

@Subnauctic I guess for families really struggling it would be worth it as they could get a few days shopping with £30.

For other people, £30 a month compared to the inconvenience isn't worth it. My best friend switches everything except the FF off at the wall, when she been here I have to remember to turn things back on as I need them or the kettle just sits idle looking at me. She doesn't do it deliberately here, it's just habit for her, but by god it's annoying 🤣🤣

she doesn't have the lowest bills of anyone I know, but I just cannot be arsed, scrabbling around for the switches then waiting for things like the Tivo box to power up.

More to it than just the electricity use, which, on modern appliances is relatively small even if a TV used 5w it would only cost £14 per year.

I worry about power cycling appliances regularly. I have all mine on surge strips and on standby, I've never had a TV break, my oldest one is 20 years old, and the others have all been handed down to the kids for the bedrooms whenever a new 'must have' fracture comes out. My inlaws tvs generally last around 2 years before something goes on the power inverter or logic board, the only thing I see they do differently is power off and on repeatedly. Same thing happens with their PCs...

Same theory with incandescent bulbs, the reason they blow as you switch them on, is the conductors are cool, lower resistance therefore higher current flow until it warms up and the current drops.

Vaguely related, as a former physics teacher, I get a little annoyed by kwh, KWH, kW/h and all the other variations on a theme. It suggests that the author and/or editor don't know what they're talking about!

It's kWh. The amount of energy that a device with a power of 1 kilowatt will use in 1 hour. Abbreviations for units get a capital letter if they're named after someone.

There, I feel better now. (I don't get annoyed by this on Mumsnet, just in writing by professionals.)

I guess for families really struggling it would be worth it as they could get a few days shopping with £30

£1 a day is about 3 kwh a day. I would be surprised if devices on standby used that much energy. 3 kwh a day is a 'background' rate of about 125 watts energy consumption. But you would be using those devices during the day - so that alters the amount of energy saved.

For context, that's what we use in the house when things are switched on and being used.

I firmly believe that people will die this winter because of the irresponsible reporting on this issue.

I already know elderly people who are too scared to put their heating on and not switching the light on when they get up to the toilet in the night because they think they can’t afford it and they actually can.

Oops.

@cakeorwine Nonononono, I assume that you're not being paid to write this! That makes a difference to me. As you were! 😀

I already know elderly people who are too scared to put their heating on and not switching the light on when they get up to the toilet in the night because they think they can’t afford it and they actually can

THIS

A 10 Watt light (see what I did there) uses 1/100 of a unit every hour - so 38p/100 = 0.38 p an hour.

And yet people will be scared to turn lights on

@cakeorwine (I am whispering this because I don't want to be That Person, but it's 10 watts, which is abbreviated to 10W. I know, I know, if you elect me to the Committee for the International System of Units I could try to get it changed...)

Completely agree about the dangerous situations this will produce. Especially regarding lighting.

Tbf while it is partially (a lot) fault of reporting it also shows the fact that people never had to care to find out ao now many are panicked.
So many adults are coming out saying they have no idea how to read meters for example, so they have no idea how much they use.
It's mindboggling tbh.
Faults on both sides.

But doesn't take away that Natalie (was it?) needs to google more 🙈

@PhotoDad 😂😂😂😂😂😂

Love the way we’re all being told to shut things off to save electricity and now we’re threatened with staged power cuts.
How about they start with turning off the bloody Blackpool Lights !!!

I agree. I also get wound up when I see "kWh per hour" or similar.

I've also seen articles along the lines of 'this is the cheapest time to use your dishwasher', they are utter rubbish.

The majority of people are on a tariff that is the same around the clock. Even if you are on economy 7 or a cheap night rate for electric cars the hours of cheap electricity vary slightly across the country. There are a few people on 'octopus Agile' where the price fluctuates, but the cheap time varies day by day.

And if you've got solar panels you are probably pretty used to checking your generation levels before using high power items.

There are certainly times when it's more environmentally friendly to use electricity (so when there is plenty being generated by renewables and less being used, so definitely avoiding the peak of 4-7pm), but for the majority of people that does not affect the price you pay.

Do these journalists or newspapers actually fact check anything? Or are they just more concerned with click bait titles...

To a degree, that is useful with context.

So a 1000 watt device when run for 1 hour will use 1kWh per hour.

And a 100 watt device for 1 hour will use 0.1 kWh per hour.

But when someone says - it uses 2 kWh - well that's meaningless without context. Is that for say a cycle as in a washing machine. Or when running an electric oven to cook something. Or is that in a day? A year.

And that's when the confusion comes in - when people write articles stating that a device uses 0.3kWh on standby - well, how long on standby does it use that much energy for?

I used to have lights always on in my hall, outside, etc, when I wasn't using the spaces. I live in a place where it's pitch dark in the evening and it just made me feel that I wasn't in a dark space on my own. I've stopped doing that and only have lights switched on that I need. That's nothing to do with cost (minimal) but to do with using less energy and hoping I'm contributing to no power cuts. I believe that leaving electrical appliances on standby does have a cost (but, again, minimal) because the power is still flowing. I switch everything off at the socket that doesn't need to stay switched on when I go to bed, but that's because I grew up in the days when there was no switch at the socket > it was either plug in, or out. I have a fear of an electrical fire happening when I'm not alert enough to realise.

Similar sort of ‘helpful tips’ article in my local paper today had the bizarre advice to ‘turn off your alarm clock at the mains when not in use’ 🤨🤪

I'm so sorry. I know I'm a dick but

Maybe the TV values are for an enormous CRT TV. Something like a state of the ark 36" projection TV might be a kW. And the Express is known for the "older demographic" readership.

It's state of the art. We're not floating on a big biblical flood ship!

<<gets coat>>>

I've been shitting myself since receiving an email from EDF about my new direct debit after all the headlines recently. I finally put my big girl pants on to face up to the exuberant price hike and discovered I'm in credit and my direct debit has actually gone down by just over £20 pm. Headlines are click bait.

It's actually 10 W with a space between the number and the unit if we're being that pedantic scientifically accurate.

But I think anyone making life decisions based on crap they read in the tabloids is beyond help TBH and if they do come a cropper because they think lights cost a thousand times more to run than they actually do because 'it says so in the paper' then we have a good candidate for the Darwin Awards.

@BarbaraofSeville Touché!

Well - there is the reality of increased energy costs and the false information in articles like this.

As always with energy bills, you need to know your usage in kWh and it's helpful to know which devices use the most energy. As well as your heating usage.

This article has appeared in many local papers when you google the name of the 'expert' - who I suspect is not an energy expert.