The “how much does this cost to run” thread?

[AtomicBlondeRose]

Based on posts about people thinking of using candles instead of electric lights - which is both dangerous and not likely to save any money, I’d like to set this thread up as a place where people can ask how much items in their house cost to run, to let posters make informed decisions about whether or not to keep using them after energy price rises.

If you want to ask, useful information to have is: the energy usage of the item - eg a heater might say on it that it’s 1000w. If you don’t know that the name/model number as accurately as possible. Also to give you a useful estimate it would be good to know your current gas/electricity price tariff price per unit. However it’s easy enough to work out at current and predicted price cap levels.

I can’t promise to answer everything so please can I call upon other numerate MNers to help out? I think this could be a real lifesaver.

Good idea.

I've done a few calculations myself for my toaster and microwave, but that'll go up in October obvs.

I agree OP. So many people heard somewhere they need to take out lightbulbs etc. It's really dangerous!
Happy to help with searches.

Just as an example. About 5 years old BEKO american fridge (nearly 600l capacity combined) eats 1.1kwh a day. Set to -18 and 4 degrees. On 28p kwh that's 32p a day. ("Normal" sized fridges eat about half if rated F)

Great idea for a thread. Place marking!

Omigod this will be very useful. Just scarpered over from the Octopus thread thinking I won't switch anything on at all after this month 😳

Thanks @Bubblebubblebah - at the October price cap of 52p/kWh that will be about 57p a day or about £17 a month, which is quite sobering.

Lightbulbs - I can do different ones but say you walked into Tesco today looking for a “60W” bulb and picked up this LED bulb. It’s marked as 60W because that’s the equivalent brightness but it’s actually 7W. That means it uses 0.007kwh of electricity.

At current price cap rates (28p/kwh) that would be 0.2p an hour to run. For ten hours 2p. Ten hours a night every night - 60p a month.

At October price cap rates (52p/kWh) that would be 0.36p an hour. 3.6p for ten hours. £1.09p for ten hours a night every night for a month.

Great thread idea.
Tumble drier is already unplugged and I'm watching out for deals on heated airers. We're all retraining ourselves to switch off lights, not using standby on TV, stereo, printer and PC's.

If I learn something new, I'll definitely post it here.

I'm trying to zoom in to your pic to learn more. How can I tell it's actually a 7W?

What are the best bulb types to buy?

I'm renovating and have a large amount of downlights - LED's. Frantically trying to do some maths here.

I’m a bit unsure about heated airers. This one is 300W. That’s 0.3kwh.

Current : 0.3x28p= 8.4p/hr. But I have heard people say they leave it on all night! 8.4x12= just over £1.

October: 0.3x52p= 15.6p/hr. 15.6x12= £1.87! So I’d be wary about using them a lot.

@BastardtheCat the 7W info was hidden in further information though it must be on the box somewhere. I don’t actually know much about lightbulbs at all, I’m just looking at popular styles.

(The airer I mentioned above was the Lakeland DrySoon but I think they’re all similar)

How does the airer compare to a drier?

In terms of X hours on the airer V y hours in the drier?

If o have this right a 9 kw shower - so not a power shower - would at 50p per kWh cost £1.12 for 15 minutes- that's why we have very short showers

It's harder if you are on gas boiler - but it will be similar scale

The manual for my Indesit condenser tumble dryer says it uses 5.36kwh for a full load completely dry.

Current prices - £1.50/load

October prices - £2.78/load (!!!)

But much quicker than the heated airer and no damp in the house.

A 9kw shower -

Current prices £2.52 an hour or 4.2p/minute
October prices £4.68 an hour or 7.8p/minute

We have an air dryer which is on for at most 3 hrs

We then leave things overnight to finish

Assuming from google
5kwh for one tumble cycle would be £2.50

Re the heated drier, I think that's one place to save. I have normal one, put it in a hallway where there is good airflow and it all dries well.

We don't get damp - but it's in a vented room because it's a modern house which will affect this loads

Heated airers can save money but I have often read about them being on for a long time. In which case you’re not saving very much at all (and I find them not terribly good at drying clothes whereas a tumble drier at least works.) But in practice I don’t think I’ll be using either this winter unless in dire straits.

I’ve seen lots of people saying about using an air fryer rather than the oven. Are they that much cheaper? Does it offset the cost of buying one?

Ok - a kettle. Chose one at random from Curry’s. This is 3000w so uses 3kwh. At current prices that’s 84p an hour - but a kettle isn’t on for an hour. Say 3 minutes.

Current prices: 4.2p to boil a full kettle
October prices: 7.8p

That’s really useful. Do you know how that compares to the cost of using a standard bulb for same period?

We have an extractor fan in our utility room and we also have an overhead airer in there so I like to run the fan when clothes are drying. Am I right in thinking that these fans are very low energy? I don't know the exact spec but I have found something similar online which says it's a 7.5W fan. Using this calculator it says it costs about 2.5p to run for 12 hours. That seems so cheap, am I missing something? If it really is this cheap I will leave it running all winter to help the room air.

If this calculator is accurate then it's a really useful tool and saves @AtomicBlondeRose from doing all our calcs for us!

www.sust-it.net/energy-calculator.php?tariff=38

@SwedishDentist yes, they have very low usage.

@PriamFarrl the main saving come in because of the time they need to run. Now, if I would need to run air fryer for an hour because it needs bunch of things to cook for dinner, I would turn oven on. Mind me, there is a difference between old oven and new oven. New ones do about 0.9kwh, air fryer 1.5. Different settings, different use of course + preheat time. While air fryer uses more, it takes considerably less time to cook things in it.
So on 15min "fry" you need 5 min preheat so 20 min on 28p - 9.3p
Oven needs 10-15 min preheat + longer cook time of about 30 min. - 19p

(Please feel free to correct the math)

Very illuminating about the American style fridge, reckon we must be spending loads on this… ours is over 10 years old so likely to be v inefficient, but would cost a load to E place and even new ones don’t look efficient!