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.

Most countries don't even have switches. All that leaked leccy.

Fun story. When i first arrived to uk, i kept complaining about broken things not working until they showed me what the switches are for....

This is a screen shot of how this story got picked up. It's surprising how quickly misinformation spreads.

Misinformation always spreads quickly because it is usually sensational and clicky

Absolutely

I just wonder how many people have read it and banned their children from the X Box and turned off their TVs?

I’ve seen so many people on FB and the like who won’t let their kids have a light on overnight and are telling them off for not switching TVs off at the plug, then drop in that they have half hour showers every day….

So you can make 95% of a kid’s life a misery to save 10p a day or you can cause a slight amount of pain by asking them to halve their shower time and save £5 a week per child - I know which I would choose but they go down the route of people falling downstairs and being afraid to boil a bloody kettle instead of tackling the major issue. I’ve seen similar where people are drinking from flasks and using solar lights but doing 2-3 loads of washing a day! It’s crackers.

FWIW we use about 3kwh of electricity a day. No electric shower and a gas cooker. Lights on as and when we want them, kettle boiled any old time, everything left plugged in, electric blankets and a small electric fire (used sparingly!) in the living room. No tumble drier use this year so far and plan to restrict that but I don’t worry about anything else because I’ve done the sums and it’s worth to me.

I keep a bucket next to the Wi-Fi router and then any 'spare' Wi-Fi things that are not used collect in the bucket, and I empty that back into the router (through the little slots in the back) each week. I reckon I must have saved loads of money although I not yet found a definitive way of calculated the amount.

I'm thinking of carrying another bucket with me when I go shopping etc. so I can collect spare Wi-Fi when in a shop or cafe where they have 'free Wi-Fi'.

(Buckets are only £1 at B&Q)

Argh! This whole thread just goes to show you shouldn’t read The Express! and if you do, don’t believe the “facts”!

Unfortunately people do and headlines get generated. And people believe them

My other half has an electrical enginneering degree so generally rules the roost with how to reduce energy use in the house. Our most costly appliance is actually our electric shower (no bath, no way to change it as we rent) so we've had to cut our showering to every other day. We also avoid having the TV on all day but we do leave it on standby. In fact he doesn't turn anything off at the wall as it's pointless. I was terrified to see our electric bill this month with the increase - it only went up by £8 and our gas by£10 (as we have actually turned on the heating). I'm going ignore click bait and follow my fiancés way.

It’s great that you have it under control @Ideatcakeforbreakfast but let’s not spread the idea you need a degree in electrical engineering to be any good at working out energy use - all you need is a calculator (or a pen and paper). It’s one of the simplest household things you can do.

I think I'm on the same energy costs reduction fb group that someone mentioned above and there are people buying battery operated lights to save on their electricity bill.

It's very obvious that this isn't going to save any money- just the cost of buying the lights will be more than leaving the lights on, let alone the cost of batteries - but there are so many people convinced that this will make a difference.

It won't save you money but with the upcoming possibility of power-outages, it's a good idea to have some battery lights in the house.

The thing is there are people who the people who don't understand listen to like a certain person on Twitter taking their lightbulbs off and living with solar lights. In summer... I believe the bulbs are back were never gone anyway. This all then just ends up in extra spends of money people apparently don't have as above with battery operated lights.

Now, I say apparently because from my experience actually poor know extra expense is bs. But they might well be caught up in the express shite.

Still suprised how many people, after all this time, don't know how to read a meter.

@AnApparitionQuipped haed torches rule. I have 2.

As mentioned above ,this article has been picked up by numerous sources and repeated as gospel.

I have emailed my local rag to point out how poor it is, I can only assume those repeating this article don't pay their own electricity bills, as they would soon see it as nonsense.

I might write my own article using facts, I wonder if they will print it?

Her tv apparently uses 1300 Watts an hour on standby.

Mine uses 33 Watts an hour when watching it, and so little on standby it doesn't register on my smart plug.

Seriously, there will be people dying this winter with money in the bank, through fear and ignorance generated by piss poor reporting like this.

Well - TV is a different debate. A TV costs about 3 - 5 p an hour to run (depending on the wattage) so you could debate about the cost of that.

12 hours of TV is about 36 - 60p.

Honestly? I am sure you could get very good traction on twitter if you tag newspapers who did print it and point out the issues. You can write it and they might pick it up.

New expert in town. Watch out Naomi or whatever her name was

Mine uses 33 Watts an hour when watching it, and so little on standby it doesn't register on my smart plug

Technically it uses 33 watts. That's 0.033 kWh every hour.

It's good to complain to IPSOS where there are factual errors - more official
www.ipso.co.uk/complain/complaints-form/#

I read this on the Internet so it must be true

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to make a TikTok telling everyone about so they can also collect up and use bits of wifi that would otherwise be wasted but not before I've been to B&Q to buy all the buckets because when this goes viral there's going to be a run on buckets and I'm going to sell my bucket stash on ebay and make my fortune.

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to make a TikTok telling everyone about so they can also collect up and use bits of wifi that would otherwise be wasted but not before I've been to B&Q to buy all the buckets because when this goes viral there's going to be a run on buckets and I'm going to sell my bucket stash on ebay and make my fortune

Daily Express headline - mum saves fortune by collecting wi-fi

I double dare you

Shrodingders kettle.

UPDATE

They have changed the article again after they were made aware of their error and their second error because they didn't understand energy.

A gaming machine on standby uses 0.002kWh in one hour. So in a 24 hour period, it would use 0.002* 24 = 0.048 kWh. At 38 p per kWh, this is 1.8 pence a day.
Turning games consoles off of standby will stop the device from doing things like checking for updates or messages while it’s on standby.By turning off your games console you can save up to £6.57 a year on your energy bills.

The kettle has vanished

And in their footnotes

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. It was also stated that by turning off your games console you can save up to £1.63 per day and that kettles can waste energy when left on standby. However, by turning off your games console you can save up to £6.57 a year on your energy bills and a kettle does not use energy when left on standby. We are happy to clarify this.

It's close enough - and hopefully they will realise that they need to think carefully

Good for them for fixing it, but you wonder about the process that led them to ever think this was an expert who knew what they were talking about.