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.

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

Seriously? And we allow people that stupid to vote? Explains a lot.

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

I suppose it depends on the savings.

If the bill is £2000 for a year, does turning things off every night and turning them on again when you need them to save £3 make a significant impact?

For some- maybe it does.

The other thing is - where does all that energy go?

Mostly heat. So in winter it reduces your heating bill.

If the bill is £2000 for a year, does turning things off every night and turning them on again when you need them to save £3 make a significant impact?

For some- maybe it does.

I'm not saying this is you, OP, but people these days do seem to have lost sight of the phrase 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'. £3 on its own - not much, but better in your pocket than your energy provider's; and the point is that little savings - £3 here and £3 there do add up over time.

There are lots of things I could do everyday that would save much more than £3 a year.

But...

the point of this thread is to debunk the myths out there about the cost of running devices on standby

I see that, but I'm challenging the view that just because it only saves £3.50 a year, it isn't worth doing.

It's your choice.

I wouldn't

You can

But do you have a cut off point?

10 p a year?

50 p a year?

As someone once said, it all comes down to "time" versus "money." If you'd rather spend 10 minutes a day switching everything off and on again than 10p on your bills, then that's your decision.

I found more than £3 in supermarket carparks last year😁

There is that saying thought. Penny to penny, pound to pound.
But I still can't be arsed because most of my sockets are behind furniture

It's more an effort cut-off point than a cost cut-off point. E.g. the alarm clock that was mentioned earlier - I'm not going to reset my alarm clock daily for the sake of saving pence disconnecting it. But most devices, it takes seconds to switch them off at the mains or unplug them, so why not do it? I'm not going to go insane if I forget occasionally, but the way I see it, I might as well as not even if the cost saving is negligible.

But most devices, it takes seconds to switch them off at the mains or unplug them, so why not do it? I'm not going to go insane if I forget occasionally, but the way I see it, I might as well as not even if the cost saving is negligible

How many devices do you have on standby normally that you would turn off?

Up to six - they're not all on at once. I unplug as I finish using, rather than doing a 'round' before bedtime, and then plug in when I need to use it again. I don't normally have things on in the background, so some things might not be plugged in for several days.

TBF - if I don't need something, I don't have it turned on. But this is more about standby mode - and I don't have many devices on standby ready to go.

My TVis on standby mode - or it just turns on really quickly. YouView box is on eco eco standby mode. DS has his console turned off.

Old saying like " look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" are just that, old sayings.

It's not 3 pound 50 here and there, it's 3 pound 50 per annum, there isn't any worthwhile savings to be made. About a penny a day.

There was a thread on here recently with a mum in tears because she couldn't afford to put the TV on for her child. Cue dozens of " it's come to this" and " the evil energy companies".

Why not spend 5 seconds googling how much it costs to run a TV?

I found 5p in the street yesterday and said to my partner " look, that's tonight's TV paid for". I only picked it up because I thought it was 20p.

Since we have learned how cheap energy is and how little some thing use we have started leaving more stuff on standby, our TV never goes off at the mains now and as a bonus the x box updates it's games during the night, so no long wait when it does get used.

One wonders how many super keen environmentalists have been burning away power on immersion heaters etc for years because they had no idea how their hot water is provided until the price of power went up, it's a recurring theme.

We use 3kWh electricity a day in the summer, 5kWh a day in the winter, and we don't skimp.

I am agog at the energy use of some posters, I assume they live in Downton Abbey and float around in a t shirt like a 1970s British gas advert.

There was a thread on here recently with a mum in tears because she couldn't afford to put the TV on for her child. Cue dozens of " it's come to this" and " the evil energy companies

Maybe they read the article in the Express and thought it cost a fortune to run a TV?

Which is why so called experts should think about the consequences of their articles.

*We use 3kWh electricity a day in the summer, 5kWh a day in the winter, and we don't skimp.

I am agog at the energy use of some posters, I assume they live in Downton Abbey and float around in a t shirt like a 1970s British gas advert.*

Very silar usage here and am surprised how many people say they can't get their under 12. We don't skimp either. Not like we sit here in dark staring at walls.

We use similar - the biggest electricity use in our house is the electric shower - that's 8000 watts so 8 kWh in 1 hour. You can see how that adds up.

Of course, lowering that use makes big difference. A minute is 0.13 kWh - so 5p a minute. So reducing it by a minute a week would save 35p - that's £18 a year per minute saved per shower.

That would be a great maths question.

To be fair most of the alarm clocks I've had over the last decade have remembered all their settings when I turn them back on after switching them off at the mains when I go on holiday. If I could be bothered it wouldn't be crazy for me to unplug mine when I woke up and then plug it back in when I went to bed. Might save me the price of a couple of teabags over the course of a year.

If the clock has a battery back up it's false economy anyway because the clock will start draining the batteries, which have a cost of their own.

Likewise, my direct debit has dropped from £50/month to nil. The government's £67/month has covered my entire dual fuel bill.

I've still got to buy logs, but I've got a decent amount left over from last winter.

Good point, but my radio alarm doesn't have a battery, just remembers it all on the electronics.

I grant you it's advice that won't work for everyone, and would only save pennies for the people who it does work for.

One wonders how many super keen environmentalists have been burning away power on immersion heaters etc for years because they had no idea how their hot water is provided until the price of power went up, it's a recurring theme.

There was someone on the Cost of Living thread who had been doing that the other day !

I guess every cloud has a silver lining - the cost of energy is up, but people are now a lot smarter about energy/electricity and how they use it (in spite of misleading tabloid articles to the contrary). Soon mumsnet might be designing its own nuclear power plant...

It's a positive thing IMO. We should work towards using the least energy possible (within the practicality illustrated on this thread of course).

My guess is that this winter we will use a considerable amount less than we have been in both electricity and gas - at least 10% across the whole country I am going to guess. That's got to be a good thing.

Yes, and there is the risk of forgetting to turn it back on, and oversleeping. I can't see mine without my glasses at night so I wouldn't notice.

My late MIL insisted that all switched sockets were kept off otherwise electricity leaked out of them!