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 see they've now corrected the article and have added this statement to the end.

"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."

I agree that's generally true.

Stuff like consoles and PCs are the sorts of things that you might think are in a very low power consumption mode in standby but actually aren't. I have a PC that is always on and consumes about 60W on (3 monitors turned into eco mode) and about 20W off. Most of the standby saving is from the monitors going off. The PC is still humming away under there when it goes into standby. But I'm not too bothered about getting rid of the final 20W, as I already got rid of a lot of the consumption by turning the processor speed down by 50%.

Originally that PC was using about 150W with the processor on max and the monitors not on eco mode.

They still have it wrong though.

A gaming console on standby does not use £1.63 a day

£8.94 sounds low for a kettle given that your meter starts whizzing the moment you switch it on.

And why does an alarm clock - going off once a day on average and the rest of the time having only an LED/LCD display - cost more than a TV which is much larger and might typically be on with sound and light for at least a couple of hours daily?

That was the figure for when it's not turned on and doing its stuff.

So not heating water, just sitting there, doing nothing.

@AnApparitionQuipped That's the thing... a kettle has a very high power (kW) but isn't on for very long each day, so to get energy use you have to multiply the kW rating by the hours it's on for to get kWh.

Again - standby mode.

It's not discussing the costs of actually using them (except for the alarm clock)
It's an article about standby mode.

No

The article is about standby mode.

If you actually worked out the cost of using a kettle everyday, it would be a lot more than the figure quoted.

You need about 0.2 kWh to boil 1 litre of water.

So about 7p a litre.

@cakeorwine Oh, sorry, shouldn't spread misinformation in a thread about information! (Why does a kettle draw a current when off?)

Isn't that a good question?

I am sure the energy expert in the Express could tell us

Ah, I see re. the TV and clock - but a kettle doesn't have standby mode - at least I have never had one that does. It's either on or off.

Exactly

Schrodinger's kettle.

I don't know why the energy expert in the Express thinks that it uses £8.94 of energy a year - as that's about 3 watts . Where is that energy going?

Unless they mean one of those expensive kettles that has a 'keep warm' function maybe?

I haven't just spent 15 minutes googling kettles, honest.

As well as 'keep warm,' some modern "smart" kettles have touch-switches and/or remote controls and/or wifi. (Who knew?) Those are obviously drawing power.

If someone is going to discuss energy, then they need to know what they are talking about.

In the corrected article, a kettle on standby uses :

Although a kettle is not the worst energy consumer, switching it off at the wall can make a surprising saving. 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 £8.94 to your annual bill.

There is so much wrong with this statement - and if I had a red pen, I would have returned it to the journalist with things highlighted.

Uses 0.3 kWh - for how long? A year? A day? An hour?

Where did the £8.94 come from? That's not the cost of 0.3 kWh

On the plus side, they have spelt kWh correctly.

Wow. So when you're coming down the road in the cold and rain you can switch your kettle on and make a cup of tea as soon as you get in! Perhaps we need 'Smart Teasmades' so people can walk through the door to a steaming cuppa without even pouring the kettle.

To be honest, I'm starting to find the all 'how much does it cost' information confusing. I'll stick to switching off at the mains where/when it's sensible to do so and be confident I am saving what I can, without trying to add it all up.

I feel sad for the kettle if you are going to spend a lot of money on a wi fi enabled, smart kettle with remote control just to keep it switched off to save £9 a year.

To be honest, I'm starting to find the all 'how much does it cost' information confusing. I'll stick to switching off at the mains where/when it's sensible to do so and be confident I am saving what I can, without trying to add it all up

It's just a case of knowing the power a device is drawing

If you run a 1 watt device for 1 year constantly, it will use 8.76 kWh

That's about £3.30

A 10 watt device, running constantly, will use 10 x more. So 87.6 kWh - about £33

You need to know the power of a device and the length of time it's used for.

(Like speed and time. The faster you go and the longer you maintain that speed, the further you travel. It's the distance you pay for)

There is a good calculator here

www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/energy-cost-calculator.html

Yes, I'm sure I could calculate it, but I'm not the sort of person who'd think 'Oh, it's only costing me £3 a year so I'll leave it on' - I'm the sort of person who'd rather have the money in my own pocket even if it's pence. So knowing the amounts involved wouldn't alter my behaviour.

Yes, I'm sure I could calculate it, but I'm not the sort of person who'd think 'Oh, it's only costing me £3 a year so I'll leave it on' - I'm the sort of person who'd rather have the money in my own pocket even if it's pence. So knowing the amounts involved wouldn't alter my behaviour

I suppose it's the effort involved versus the trade off.

I wouldn't go round turning off things like alarm clock and then resetting them for when I need them just to save a few pounds a year.

Nor would I turn off things that have other useful clock functions if I have to reset them.

Some people would.

@AnApparitionQuipped Not saying you do this, but there are plenty of people who will think that it's okay to shower for 30 minutes a day because they're saving energy by switching off their TV at the wall every night. Not realising that the shower will cost infinitely more than having the TV on standby.

I agree that the exact numbers are not super important, but I do think it's useful to have a general sense of what actions save a lot of energy vs those that only make a minimal difference.

wouldn't go round turning off things like alarm clock and then resetting them

I wouldn't turn off anything that had good reason to stay on - like a clock. The only time I disconnect those is if we are away on holiday and that's more to reduce fire risk than save energy. A better bet would be to buy a wind up alarm clock if you really didn't want it plugged in all day!

Not saying you do this, but there are plenty of people who will think that it's okay to shower for 30 minutes a day because they're saving energy by switching off their TV at the wall every night.

I agree to an extent (I don't do this personally) but it depends what you mean by thinking it's OK. People are obviously going to be disappointed if they think unplugging the telly will offset their showers to any noticeable degree. But if they want to prioritise long showers knowing the cost, it doesn't mean there isn't any value in making small savings elsewhere.