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.

Daily Express readers could save more money not buying that insipid rag.

I'm taking a common sense approach. I might as well turn things off at the mains rather than leaving them in standby mode; it takes seconds. Even if it only saves a tiny amount, that's better than nothing. Obviously I am not going to switch off clocks or the freezer/fridge - they stay on for a reason - they don't have 'standby' mode. Also, it's common sense not to leave lights on that you don't need. That doesn't mean stumbling round in the dark, it means when you leave the room, switch the light off.

It's state of the art.

Most of the devices in my house are pretty much state-of-the-ark. My beloved hi-fi (remember that expression) was mostly bought in the 1990s and will not be replaced until the dove with the olive branch comes flying out of the 🌈.

Even if it only saves a tiny amount, that's better than nothing

Do you turn your router off? If you do, you shouldn't as that's bad for the router.

I think "state of the ark" is a deliberate play on words. 36 inch CRT TVs and projection TVs were prestige TVs, twenty years ago.

(I don't think there was any such thing as a 36 inch projection TV though, projection TVs would have come in the same sizes as today's flat screen TVs, 42 inches and bigger. 36 inches was the upper limit on size for ordinary CRT TVs.)

I love state of the ark term

No, I don't - as I said, I only switch off things that have a standby mode; my router doesn't - routers do updates at various times, so they shouldn't be switched off.

It's why people turn lightbulbs off, stay in the dark and put themselves at risk with falls down stairs.

Or use candles

Yes, quite so, and then they are at the perils of the NHS and long waiting times for ambulances when they suffer needless injuries!

"Tips" like this annoy me. Most people are not just throwing money around and do not care about bills.

It's like these programs about saving money on food. Yes some people perhaps haven't clocked that they buy ridiculous things (I don't know any) but most people know how much they spend/waste.

It gets to a point where people cannot cut back anymore. And it focuses the problem on the individual/family rather than the government.

@SkylightSkylight

For lighting I use TCP Smart. If you put that search term into Amazon you'll get a list of the different stuff they do.

It's pretty easy to set up via the app. Maybe just buy one LED bulb (about £10) and then add in more if you like it.

I use TCP Smart for the indoor cameras as well. These are handy for checking the place is OK while you are gone - one in the hall pointed at the front door and one at the back.

For door/window sensors (to sense whether the outer doors are forced open) I use Tuya Smart Life, because the sensors are cheap (about £10).

For thermal control I have Hive on the boiler. You can get pretty much everything on Hive, but the sensors tend to be more expensive.

Finally I have the router and the cams on a UPS because otherwise you could switch them all off at the outside electricity point.

The thing I like about my smart lights is if you switch them they carry on as a normal light. My sister has some that run through Alex. Problem is every time someone switches the switch she has to re-pair them which I don't like.

There are numerous systems you can get - you can run a lot of stuff through Alexa, but I'm not really bothered about having that control, when I'm in the house I am happy to use the switch - I only want the smart capability for when I am away.

Two more tips - one is to see whether your neighbour will park on your drive while you are away if you are friendly with them. The other is make sure your locks are up to scratch as the cheaper euro cyclinder locks are easy to break. Also I removed my thumbturns on the inside so that no one can smash the door glass and open the door easily. Of course if you do this you really should have a spare key kept permanently in close proximity to the door inside the house so you can open it easily in an emergency/fire.

Oh and to add - Hive is really good if you have erratic working times, because you can control the boiler remotely - ie turn on the heating before you leave work rather than having it fixed on a timer.

I do not spend £2k a year on electricity anyway!

I 100% agree and there have been a few threads discussing this exact issue of really bad energy savings advice making the rounds. It’s like they’ve dusted off advice from the 2008 crash and just re-published it.

On the TV she is way off. Since 2013, the European Commission has ruled that TVs must not use more than half a watt of power while in standby mode. Testing by Which? in 2014 found that an LED HD TV left on standby for 19 hours would use 0.22 watts during that time. Assuming that was repeated for 365 days, your TV would use 80.3 watts over the course of the year while on standby.

Which is a grand total of 2.7p per year of leaving your TV on standby not the £161.33 per year she is saying.

Similar applies to everything else she mentioned. It’s disgusting because desperate people will do all these things and then be mystified as to why their electric bill has not gone down. You’re not going to notice a 2.7p savings over a year by switching off your TV at the wall….

I wish my autocorrect knew this…everytime I put in KWH …yep its done it again, it auto-capitalises all the letters.

I can recommend Tapo smart plugs which go with Alexa, if you have it, as well.
Really easy to set up, often on offer on Amazon. Some better models also show energy usage. Mine don't, I am cheap ass.

Watts is not a unit of energy, it's the SI unit of power. In order to get energy you need to multiply the watt rating by the time the appliance is on for. So if something is rated at 60W and is on for two hours, it will use 60x2=120 Watt hours of energy. Energy is generally priced in kilowatt hours rather than Watt hours, so to transform Watt hours into kilowatt hours you divide by one thousand, so 120 Watt Hours = 0.120 Kilowatt Hours.

Saying something would "use" 0.22 watts during a specified time makes no sense.

Don't get me started on using kilo Watt hours instead of Joules (the SI unit of energy).

If a TV was rated at 0.5W on standby then every 24 hours it would use 0.5*24 = 12 watt hours, or 0.012 kilo watt hours every day, or 4.38 kilowatt hours per year, a grand sum of 4.38 x 0.35 = £1.53.

If a TV on standby did use 0.22 Watt (Hours?) in 19 hours, that would imply a continuous power rating of 0.22/19= 0.0116 Watts. Which even for a TV on standby is pretty implausible, especially if the imposed limit is 0.5 W.

Nope. You don’t save that much.
Since 2013, Computers, TVs, audio and video equipment, microwave ovens and electric toys they must not consume more than 0.5 Watts in standby or in off mode per day.
So if your stuff is pre 2017:
3 TVs= Max 547.5 watts per year or a maximum 18.25p per year saved
Laptop & monitors (2?)= Again max of 547.5 watts per year or a max of 18.25p
Microwave, Alexa, 4 Nintendos= Combined use a maximum of 1.095 KWh per year or 37.23p per year.

You save a grand total of 73p per year if all your stuff is more than 5 years old

Since January 2017 networked standby devices must not consume more than 3 to 12 Watts per year depending on the product. So the only not networked device would be your microwave.
Microwave= 182.5 watts per year or 6.2p per year
Everything else is 11 devices times maximum of 12 watts per year= 132 watts per year or 4.5p per year

You save a maximum grand total of 10.7p per year if all your stuff is less than 5yrs old

So no, you are not saving £1 per day. You’re not even saving £1 per year by switching off stuff at the wall.

If a TV on standby did use 0.22 Watt (Hours?) in 19 hours, that would imply a continuous power rating of 0.22/19= 0.0116 Watts. Which even for a TV on standby is pretty implausible, especially if the imposed limit is 0.5 W.

The limit is usage of half a watt per day, not per hour. I don’t disagree with you on how the terminology is expressed, I’m just posting how the EU wrote the regulations which as you know, are not written by actual electrical engineers.

No, that's incorrect.

The EU statement is here :

ec.europa.eu/info/energy-climate-change-environment/standards-tools-and-labels/products-labelling-rules-and-requirements/energy-label-and-ecodesign/energy-efficient-products/mode-standby-and-networked-standby_en

"Since 2013, they must not consume more than 0.5 Watts in standby or in off mode"

The statement says nothing about time, because time is included in the power rating defintion (Joules per second). The statement is about power consumption, not energy consumption.

A TV with a power rating of 0.5W consumes 0.5W x 24 = 0.012 Watt Hours of energy in 24 hours.

If the statement was about energy consumption, they would have to state the time. So they would say for example the TV should consume no more than 0.5 Watt Hours in 24 hours.

Sorry that should be "consumes 0.012 kilo watt hours".

Which is not a lot of money.

Basically a 1000 watt device costs 38 p an hour to run.

So a 1 watt device costs 38 p /1000 = 0.038p an hour to run.

That's all these energy experts need to know

We have three consoles running at the moment as it’s half term. Definitely not seeing a huge spike in usage (current spending is about £150 a month although I overpay at £250).

Most appliances now are pretty efficient.

I worked this out last night.

Xbox one S 4 hours per day is around £100/yr
Xbox series X £300/yr

A gaming PC on the other hand could be much higher depending on the spec.

You save a grand total of 73p per year if all your stuff is more than 5 years old

If you found 73p in your pocket, would you:

a. Put it in your purse
b. Throw it in the bin, because it's only 73p

That sounds quite a lot!
X BOx x has apparently 0.15kwh usage in game and 0.05kwh stand by, so 4 hours play (like the other one, just example) would work out 0.6kwh, plus 20 hours idle 0.1kwh so 0.7kwh a day.
AT 38p (approx) that would be 26.6p x 365 = £97 and change.

Am i getting that right?