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.

I agree. 24x nothing is still nothing.

However ... good calculation is at the heart of getting things right. Whether a TV uses energy of 0.5 Watt hours or 0.5 Watt hours/24 in an hour is of little consequence in cost terms.

Change that calculation for a 1.5kW electric fire though and things get a lot different.

The "expert" screwed up because her calculations and understanding is/are lacking. Get the calculation right, and you will get the right answer, whether it is consequential or not. /teachermodeoff.

Corrected for you :)

Your calculation give the right result, but your units are wrong.

Energy used (kWh) = Power Rating or Usage (kW)*Time (h)

--

That sounds quite a lot!
X BOx x has apparently 0.15kW usage in game and 0.05kW 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?

Thanks 😁

I feel like back in math class "how did you get to that??? It's correct but what the hell is this formula you used?"😂

You'd probably get a B for the right answer but somewhat questionable workings!

At the risk of being a bit boring, I think the reason a lot of people don't understand the calculations is that most people don't understand the difference between energy and power. What you pay for is energy. How fast you consume energy is power. It's the same as speed :

Energy=Power x Time
Distance=Speed x Time

People provide you with Power and Speed because that enables you to calculate energy or distance for any given time period you want. So in the distance analogy someone selling you a car will tell you its speed and therefore you can calculate how far it will go in any time period.

You need to know the energy usage.

What power does it run at in game mode and how long does it run at that power?

What power does it run in standby mode and how long does it run at that power?

It's like speed. You run at a speed and for a time. The combination of speed and time give you the distance. And it's the distance you pay for.

X BOx x has apparently 0.15kW usage in game and 0.05kW 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?

No. An XBox uses 0.15 kW while gaming and 0.5 W (0.0005 kW) on stand-by.

So 4 hours play + 20 hours stand-by = (4 h x 0.15 kW) + (20 h x 0.0005 kW) = 0.61 kWh per day.

At £0.38 per kWh, that would be £0.23 (23 p) a day, or £84.60 a year.

If it were on stand-by all the time, it would use 24 h x 0.0005 kW x 365 = £4.38 a year.

You forgot to Include the TV!

And charging the controller and headset

It's probably time for someone to post that graphic that shows that about 60% of the cost is your heating and hot water, 15% standing charge, 15% cooking, 5% fridge, laundry and dishwasher and then all these lights, screens and WiFi systems that everyone seems to be focusing on making up a tiny remainder, ie you can tie yourself in knots switching it all on and off, waiting for it all to start up and reconnect to save yourself all of a tenner a year.

Or you can turn the heating down a degree or two and put a jumper on or move around for 5 minutes and save 10 or 20 times that amount.

@AnApparitionQuipped if someone offered to pay you 73p a year, for 5minutes work a day, every day of the year, would you accept the job or refuse it?

This.

In our house, electric showers contribute a lot to our electricity bill. High powered and on for a reasonable amount of time. Cut down the shower time and it has a big impact.

Same for the heating. These are the changes that have most impact.

But a boring headline though. Mum shares her top tip for reducing energy bills. Take shorter showers and turn your heating down.

@GasPanic thank you for your reply re lights & plugs etc. I'll have a good look into it when I'm home from work!!

Sounds like the kind of 'journalist' who thinks stealing threads off here is actual journalism. I see so many useless 'facts' about energy use on FB etc, so much wrong information, such as comparing cooking methods - oven uses 40p/day, microwave uses xx/ per day ... utterly pointless, needs to be per hour and accurate to be of any help.

The paper has, not surprisingly seeing as it's the express, taken a concept unrelated to cost savings and then mashed it into a factually incorrect article about cost saving.

The concept itself was more of an environmental one and is quite valid. The idea being that, when cost wasn't the focus, they were saying to think about the scaling that okay 1 household is a bit fast and loose and uses a small amount of energy more than it needs to every day, not a problem in itself but a problem when there's 25million households doing the same thing, and then another xxxmillion in all the other countries in the developed world with similar habits

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

A previous Express article discussed the best time of day to charge a phone because energy can be cheaper at night for some people.

They had to correct it

This article has been corrected online and changed the cost of charging a phone from £248 to £4.96 a year.

Which makes a difference to the headline!!

Our previous kettle had a light that was permanently on, if plug switched on, so I imagine that must have used some. I don't know about normal ones - there is such conflicting information, as this thread is showing .

Just telling you that it's ready and waiting to boil some water!!

Did it change colour if you wanted it to start boiling water?

Actually - that would be quite cool. A kettle with a strip of blue light that changed colour as the water got hotter and hotter until it boils and is bright red. I bet that's already been done though.

Of course it has

www.amazon.co.uk/Salter-EK2841SS-Colour-Changing-Illumination/dp/B07DPZNRV7/

The original calculation is correct for the figures given.

But ...

You are correct that the Xbox uses a smaller amount on standby than the 50W @Applesandcarrots originally said.

I have an Xbox One X and it uses 15W in "always on" standby mode (I've measured it) and 0.5W as you say in green standby mode according to this article :

www.theverge.com/2022/9/5/23337587/game-console-energy-usage-mode-xbox-standby-instant-on-ps4-switch-compared

If you leave your X Box in "always on" standby then it will consume :

0.015x24x365x0.35=£46 of electricity per year.

If you leave it in green standby mode it will consume :

0.0005x24x365x0.35=£1.53 of electricity per year (you forgot to multiply by the unit cost in kWh)

When switched on to boil there was a blue strip that lit up and flashed around the kettle -
It didn't change colour though. I think it was bought as an end of the range - going cheap!

I have an Xbox One X and it uses 15W in "always on" standby mode (I've measured it) and 0.5W as you say in green standby mode according to this article

This is like my Youview box,

10 watts in always on standby versus 0.5 watts in "I am going to wake up in a few minutes" mode

I do enable the second mode. 10 watts always running is something I don't need to be doing.

Yeah - I turned my always on standby mode off.

The thing is, your kids will nearly always have the console in this mode because it downloads updates and boots up much faster in the 15W mode compared to the 0.5W mode - and the fact they don't care about the cost of the electricity !

It's not so bad I guess if you only have one console, but get two and its £100 a year. Add that to something like the youtube box you mention as well and it starts mounting up.

So that's why I agree the most money is to be saved on stuff like heating, all these smaller bits of standby modes etc can add up if you have enough of them.

So that's why I agree the most money is to be saved on stuff like heating, all these smaller bits of standby modes etc can add up if you have enough of them

I know the 'background' rating of my house with energy. It's now 33 watts. That's with standby mode enabled and just the things on that need to be on. I was 43 watts but I then realised it was the YouVIew box.

The thing is though - it's not as the article claimed. Some device on standby make an impact - but most really don't.

“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

I don’t understand this - the kettle is either on or off. It’s not on standby like a tv.
Do other countries obsess about unplugging stuff all the time? I’ve been abroad to several places and the UK is so far the only place I know that has these wall switches. I thought they were extra safety precautions - like 3 point plugs which are also not common elsewhere as well as having no plugs in the bathroom… is ‘turning stuff off at the wall’ just a bit of a misconception?