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.

Interesting!!

Actually, just googled it and apparently that’s urban myth and it doesn’t really make much difference.

I reckon the only way you can do this is by experiment, taking gas meter readings before and after. With a hot water tank switch the boiler off and time the shower until it runs cold, then switch the boiler on and take meter readings as it reheats the cold tank. Without a water tank just run the shower for a decent length of time with meter readings before and after. You could measure the volume of water but its probably the length of the shower that matters

Got our august statement in. We used 153kw electricity approx £40 and 101kw gas approx - £7. I’m not sure where that falls on the average use? (2people 3bed semi), just trying to think where we can cut back really.

gas heating and hot water and everything else electric.

The hard thing about gas is that its use varies massively throughout the year so it's a bit harder to look at the average when it fluctuates so much

We live in flat - our gas was 178 KWH in July - we use gas for cooking and heating. I think there are some baths in there!!

I’m feeling a bit disappointed at our usage, I can’t seem to get it any lower. 300kwh pcm electric and 400kwh pcm gas in the summer compared with posters above.

@HairyKitty there is lots of factors always like we have low ish because the way we just are. We grew up abroad with different styles and lifestyle and it shows.
I do miss nirmal sickets in bathrooms so much... Some things you don't get over😂

Do you know what devices are using electricity?

As I say on all these threads, it's often a few devices that consume most electricity - such as showers. Reducing shower time can have an impact.

It's just trying to understand how you use energy.

I’ve really had a good look. If we are away it’s about 2kwh or less. If I’m at home it’s 5-6kwh and if kids also home it’s 9-10kwh.
No electric shower nor tumble drier. Hardly any oven or ironing.
Ive checked lightbulbs, make sure things are turned off.
I’ve put a bunch of things on timers so they are on standby less.

You need a 'gadget' audit.

Basically a list of electrical appliances in the house, the power and rough time used per day.

Can anyone recommend a shower timer please?

A great thread OP and at last some sanity.

I bought a deely, you plug it in, enter your unit price and it calculates how much energy you are using on the device attached to it. Based on 27p per kWh, you can double my numbers for the new rate.

Big fridge freezer ( but not American style) in the garage used 23p in 24 hours, but this was on the hotest day of the year, it will be much less in the winter.

40°C 45 minute washing machine, 19p. So 38p at the new prices. You could do 10 washes a week for less than 4 quid at the new prices coming in.

At the moment we are spending £65 a month on fuel but a third of that is standing charges.

Big TV on standby uses so little it doesn't even register. Xbox on standby is 5W an hour, so would take 200 hours to use 1kwh.

I had a look at our old bills online, last December we used 1000kwh of gas, that will be tough this winter, hopefully get it down to about 800.

“Hey Siri, set a timer for 4 minutes”

😉

Hello @AtomicBlondeRose thanks for this thread, it's very useful.
I have an old bosch fridge freezer but it has no ID on it and the manual doesn't say the model either bizarrely. It's about 25 years old... I'm guessing that means it's inefficient? Because I don't know the model or energy usage I don't know if I should consider replacing it. It works fine, hence keeping it so long
Also looks like the bread maker costs more to run than buying yellow sticker bread. Which is a shame.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/332512799935

@rumred

If you can get to the info plate of your fridge freezer you should be able to see the power rating in watts as well as the model number. It may be on a sticker inside behind a drawer, or on the back.
For efficiency make sure its defrosted, the coils/grids at the back have ventilation and sweep the dust off.
Our old Bosch FF (2000ish) I just looked up online and it was 325kWh/year.
A modern similar one might be 250kWh/year, that's a saving of say 75kWh/year or 0.2kWh/day. Maybe not enough to be worth buying a new FF.
A breadmaker is about 0.3kWh per cycle so maybe 9p now, 18p in the October. Plus maybe 30-40p on ingredients?
You will never beat the price of yellow sticker sliced bread, if you can find it,
with home made. But a breadmaker is way cheaper than an oven.
To be honest I expect shop bread prices to go up since they use a lot of power in bakeries.

@InsertPunHere thanks but I think something in-shower and visual may be best to encourage washers to hurry up!

@NotMeNoNo that may just be the ticket, thank you!

TVs on standby use so little electricity it doesn't even show on my plug in meter, so less than one watt, phone chargers, my best charger uses less than 5 watts and once my phone is at 100% uses less than one watt.

Thanks @NotMeNoNo
I will have a go at shifting it to see the details.
My breadmaker is 500-550 w. I made the last loaf in the oven as we had it on for cakes. We're trying to use the whole oven whenever we have to use it. Also I'll experiment cooking on top of the wood burner. Planning to get a whistling kettle for it too. I'm trying to find as many ways as possible to minimise our contribution to the utility companies

I have just washed up using water heated by gas, read the meter before and after.

Used 0.072 M³ of gas.

Multiply by 10.5 to give kWh unit = 0.756

Multiply by gas price per kWh (7.344) = 5.52p

So five and a half pence to wash up.

I need to get out more.

Normally wash up once a day ( I do all the washing up) but it's going to be a plate heavy day so it will be twice.

I am not sure how a dishwasher that heats with electricity and runs for ages can be cheaper than this, I suspect the manufacturers are stretching the truth when they say it's cheaper than hand washing.

Someone up thread asked about fridge freezers using more energy in hot weather, yes they do, but even in the recent hot weather ours only used 23p in 24 hours, I suspect in the winter it will be a fraction of that.

Also wattage on items ,the wattage quoted is usually the max that unit needs, like a fridge freezer when new will draw full power until it gets to temperature, then it will be much lower.

Many water companies are offering some free water saving bits eg shower timer, flow restrictions etc.

Has anyone posted this yet? Produced by Bloomberg. Needs a bit of studying - it is the cost of running various appliances for various times depending on how they are used. /So a tumble dryer for 1.5 hours, a fridge freezer for 24 hrs. Quite useful - can see that eg a heated airer for 10 hours (eg overnight) is only 50p less than running a full load of the tumble dryer etc. anyway I think it is useful.
^^

Might be clearer?

Thanks @Delphigirl , that is useful.

@Nolongera - maybe you do need to get out more but thanks for working that out, that’s very good information to have! So a sink of hot water is just over 5p - interesting too if we think about the strip wash vs shower vs bath situation.

That’s really handy, and what I have spent the last 2 days (on and off) trying to do in a spreadsheet. (I still can’t account for 15 kWh of my daily 25 kWh of usage).

Do you have a link to it?