Help! Where can we save electricity

[ilkleymoorbartat]

Two adults and two children, adults at home all day working on computers. We're using around 20kw per day of electricity which seems a lot compared to others. I'm fastidious about switching off lights. We're trying not to use the tumble dryer. Dishwasher goes on once a day and a load of washing probably 4 x week.

I didn't think switching off all plug sockets made a difference so I don't do that.

We have a separate water tank that goes on for an hour twice a day.

Ha. You probably do have a backup immersion heater if you have a hot water cylinder - its just that no-one uses them because gas is 1/3 the price ! If there is a switch in your airing cupboard you never touch it is probably that !

Re the dishwasher the jury is out for me. I always have spare hot water in the cylinder, so it makes more sense to use that, plus it is heated with gas at 1/3 the price of the electric.

I think a lot of people don't factor in the cost of the tabs, salt, cleaning for the dishwasher as well - washing up liquid is far cheaper.

Still, I understand that it is a relatively small amount of money gained by not running it, and if you are in a busy household and can fill it to the max each time to get the best value I can see how people would prefer not to use it.

@Cynderella there's. No way I'd hand wash dishes and not rinse them in very hot water. No way.

A dishwasher would save me water & gas without a doubt & be handy to hide dirty dishes in, but for various other reasons I don't have & don't want one.

if you manage it all for 9p, you didn't have many dishes & you don't rinse them 🤮 so to insist it's cheaper is madness.

So an update. The cylinder is literally just a cylinder that holds water heated up by our gas boiler. It has an immersion option, but it's not on , and we don't use it as such.

So we're going to have to get an energy monitor or smart meter to work out where we're going wrong!

I knew you would have an immersion heater !

Well the good news is that you haven't been wasting money heating water up with electricity when you could have used gas.

The bad news is that you've still got something out there that is using one hell of a lot of electricity, and it's hard to figure out what based on what you say.

My suggestion ? Go round your house and make a list of the things you have on in a typical day. Make sure you get everything. If you post the list here then maybe we will be able to figure out what it is.

You don't have an aga do you ?

Underfloor heating? Heated towel rail? They can use stupid amounts of electricity.

It might be worth taking a meter reading every couple of hours on a day when you're in - that way if you've used more than 1kw, it'll help you work out which appliances are using the electricity and if you can cut back on them (if only a little).

If this tank is not an immersion eater, what has the OP been putting on twice a day?

@Nolongera the control panel sets the boiler going to heat up the water in the tank.

Things that make our smart meter shoot up to red are kettle and electric cooker and shower. Dryer and washer don't which I find surprising

So I've just taken a weeks worth of meter readings and we're on 59, which is much more reasonable. We haven't used the tumble drier all week. 🧐

@Nolongera it's the timer for the gas to fire up (I think).

It's there as a back up in case the boiler breaks down.

Two imperial gallons = 9.09218 litres, so not over 10. In addition your calculation doesn't take account of the cost of heating the water, which will cost several times the cost of the water alone. You don't wash up in cold water, surely?

Anything that heats or cools will use a lot of electricity. So emersion, tumble dryer, fridge/freezers etc.

We use a lot of electricity too and decided to invest in solar panels with battery back up. Made a huge difference to our electricity bill.

No, I wash up with water heater by gas.

Despite numerous threads asking about dishwasher costs, not one poster has yet given how much energy they use.

I said that ours uses 0.7 kW on the Eco cycle, which works perfectly well, and about 9 litres of water. That's about half a sink full. So about 25 p of electricity and a max of 10 p for a tablet (we buy in bulk or get Lidl/Aldi own brand all in one and never pay more than that).

You can't wash up a whole dishwasher full of washing up in half a sink full of water. You don't need to pre-rinse either, just scrape off larger bits of food, like you would when washing up by hand.

So it costs hardly anything to use a dishwasher, but I don't care if it costs twice or ten times as much as washing up by hand, it's a huge time saving in comparison.

Sorry, I had missed that, but it does show that oft repeated claim that a dishwasher is cheaper than hand washing is not really true.

People like them, I get it, if you can afford it, why the heck not?

You must have been doing a crazy amount of tumble drying.

A big tumble dryers might be around 2.5kW.

So now you have (59/7)= 8.4 kWh per day.

Before you had 20 kWh per day.

So 20-8.4= 11.6 kWh per day saved.

Divide 2.5kW to get the tumble drier time ... = about 4.5 hours a day !

At the new rates thats £1500 a year on tumble drying. At that cost if you are going to carry on doing that amount, then it might be worth looking at a more efficient tumble drier (condensing) or a spin dryer as well if you have the room.

Another month of readings and we are on 217kwh which seems much more in line with standard usage.

I don't know if that month was just a weird anomaly. However, I'm now terrified of tumble drying. So I'll have to work out exactly how much ours uses. At the moment our gas and electricity with octopus is predicting £860 for January 😬

While I prefer using the dishwasher, I notice a big drop in electricity since we stopped using it. And I do easily wash up a dishwasher load in little water, but I’ve grown up with well water and being lectured not to waste water!

@ilkleymoorbartat

Well if you are going to continue tumble drying for Britain and your tumble drier is very old (C rated?) I'd think about getting something more efficient.

Beko do a good web page on heat pump tumble driers.

www.beko.co.uk/lifestyle/benefits-of-a-tumble-dryer-heat-pump

Each load is about half the cost, so my guess is that you would pay for it with a years use.

I don't know what the best brands are.

Exactly.

I run mine (and various other things) on the E7 overnight rate of 15.18p a kWh, so 0.7 x 15.18p = 10.626p per cycle.

Reduce the water tank to once a day if you can. We did this and were shocked by how much difference it made. But we have electric showers so your needs may be different.

I have just submitted out monthly gas usage to shell energy.

Little bit of central heating (it's been a very mild October), all our hot water for washing up, half a dozen baths (I like a good soak now and then), much of our cooking (gas hob).

110 units, at 10.7p a unit that comes in at less than 12 quid, 40p a day.

All those numbers have been rounded up slightly to make the maths easier.

I am tempted to get a dishwasher since reading this thread as I do 99% of the washing up, but then I do find it cathartic.

@Unseelie

If you have electric showers you might be able to reduce to once every two days.

You need a well insulated hot water tank to do this, but it works for me. I can get 2x showers and 2x washing up out of one 150 litre tank and I heat it up every 48 hours.

If you have a modern tank you should be able to do this. According to the specs, my tank loses about 1kWh of heat every 24 hours which I think is crazy low.