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.

I should really put my plug in to it and check

Hi, is anybody able to help me work out how much an oil filled radiator is to run? I have this one in particular:

www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-led-oil-filled-radiator-white-black/p4769069

We have electricity only in our flat, no gas central heating. So I'm trying to figure out how much this would be to heat our living room.

Thanks!

@Alexandria94 it’s 2.5kw so in theory up to £0.85 per hour to use, but that would assume it being on full all the time and not even cutting off with the inbuilt thermostat. Your best option might be a plug that will let you measure the actual usage.

I got one of these (not the exact model), plus a glass panel heater a year or so back because my boiler broke and it was 4 weeks before BG could fix it.

I prefer the panel heater because it operates over wi-fi and takes up smaller space. Because it is wi fi enabled you can set it to come on before you come home to warm the place up (a bit like the gas CH wi fi thermostat such as Hive) or turn it off via the mobile app if you will be back later. They also look really smart if you have a modern house layout.

I guess the oil filled one is better for retained heat.

Remember when you site it to put it in the middle of the house/against an internal rather than an outer wall. That way the heat won't go into the outer wall and out of the house.

Thanks @UserNameNameNameUser. 85p, that is a lot! Although, I've never had it running on the highest setting. I will take a look around for one of those plugs so I can figure out exactly what I can get away with.

defintely grab a power monitoring plug. I have three tapo P110s which were pretty affordable from amazon. You can move them around to check eg a week on each big item. Dehumidifier tends to use about 150w running continously so 8 hours for 1 unit. Kettle is a 'big' thing - 3kwh - but its on so little it doens't use much. likewise microwave - normally a few mins to heat something up

over the last month my microwave has averaged about 3kwh - so at 34p/unit thats about £1 for the month. Kettle maybe 8-10kwh for the month but obviously yours will vary based on how much you use and how long for.

This may have been mentioned but what would a slow cooker be a day, left on for 8 hrs? It's a slim one 1.5 litre

Slow cookers have low wattage, so even cooking something for 8 hours will use less energy than an oven or hob. On average, slow cookers usually use about 1.2kW over the course of 8 hours, which means it will only use around 162.5w per hour, which works out at just 5 pence per hour.

And yes I did cut / paste from a Google answer I read last week! 😂

The BBC are running a dedicated section on their news pages for the cost of living crisis.

Today's story has someone forced to fit a prepayment meter as they are in debt.

They are 11 000 pounds in energy debt.

They haven't paid a bill in years, most of this debt will have been built up at the old energy prices.

Did they really expect free energy forever?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-63398234

@PriamFarrl I've found this info for your dryer, which suggests it uses more energy than you thought.

We have just had an energy advisor calculate how much the appliances in our house should be costing us to run as our electricity usage is extremely high at 10,000KWh per year, which didn't make sense as there's only 2 of us, one of whom is out of the house for most of the day, and I'm extremely energy conscious and rarely use anything or switch anything on just for me.

Once we have an answer that will include exact prices for all our devices I'm more than happy to share the running costs for them.
Atm, even when we were away on holiday with all except the fridge (x 2) freezer (x 2) and pond turned off, the electric cost alone has been running to almost £6/day.

Pond might be a biggy, my neighbour has one and says it costs a fair bit, pump is never off.

We have 2 fridge freezers and fairly normal needs, big tv, kettle when we want, oven is electric and I bake our own bread.

per day we use about 3 kWh of electricity in the summer and 5 kWh in the winter.

My aquarium pump is 12w. Does anyone know how much this is costing to run please? Its on 24 hours a day

1 watt is 0.038 p an hour (38 / 1000)

So a 10 watt pump is about 0.38 p an hour

I am sure the fish appreciate it.

About 7.7p a day.

I wouldn't turn it off. It is vital to the aquarium and fish health.

I have a 24w aquaroum filter going 24/7 coupled with a 42w pond filtration machine. It adds up so as with all my cutting back it leads back to the 8.5Kwh electric shower. I don't switch the water on for long.

It is like a bloody F1 Pitstop - I am shaving milliseconds off my water usage time.

Edit: 9.8p per day.

My old filter which I've just replaced with this one was 18w so I'm happy with that 😊

We did the same with the pond. Was 80w. Now 42w. The pond UV is off for winter too saving 24w / ph.

Apologies if it's already posted, I need a fan on every night, I've tried to do without but can't sleep (menopausal). It's on around 10 hours max and it's 22w.

If it's 10h a day at 22 watts, that's 220 watts, or 0.22kwh daily - on a rate of 34p/kwh, that's just under 7.5p a day.

Thank you so much! Worth it!

Can anyone help me work out how much this would cost to use? Would be hearing a very small room

Eco heater

It's 0.7kwh, so ~24p/hour to run at full whack.

Can’t grumble at that!! I bought it last year and haven’t used it much but seems very reasonable! Thank you