" I live inThe dark" BBC article.FFS.

[Nolongera]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwz0vxl21m3jo

This bloke is wandering around in the dark to save money. No where in the article does it mention how much it actually cost to run a light.

A standard 6w modern bulb costs less than 2p for ten hours. I simply don't believe this is is anyway cost effective.

My mother in law had a fall trying to save money by not switching lights on, when I asked her how much she thought it cost, she reckoned about 50p

Articles like this are part of the problem.

It definitely made me hardy. I don’t think it’s healthy to have the heating on all day long. Like you, I only have it on for a few hours a day. I also air my house every day as I hate a hot and stuffy home.

Yes, this has occurred to me too. I think that they - big corporations and governments alike - know how much income they want in total, so they tweak the prices so that the average consumer will end up paying them what they want them to pay them.

It's a cat-and-mouse game as, if everybody suddenly only started using only half as much of any particular commodity, the (often monopoly) provider can either accept losing half of their colossal income or they can simply double their price per unit... I wonder which one they might choose to do...?

I think a lot of people have no idea how much it costs to run various appliances, and still think that lights are a major consumer of electricity - as they indeed were when incandescent bulbs were used. Since first fluorescents, and subsequently LEDs were introduced they are pretty much a rounding error on your total energy utilisation.

You would hope that simply looking at the change in energy consumption on a smart meter display when you switch lights on and off would bring this home, but then they are often the sort of people to refuse smart meters too.

Exactly that. I was thinking recently that if we really want the elderly to be able to afford their winter bills, we all need to turn on the heating more.

I’m finding this thread confusing now

It sounds counter-intuitive at first, but I would tend to agree. I suppose it's what happens with tech: where it costs a horrendously high amount for early adopters, but the price plummets once everybody is buying one.

This. ^ And it annoys me too.

What really pisses me off is posters on here who refuse to put the heating on even though it's 1 degree celcius windchill, because 'it's only early October,' and they're not putting it on til mid November. No. Matter. What!

Put it on when it's cold. That's what it's for!

Someone made me laugh on a thread about this the other day when they said 'are you really struggling financially, or are you just a miserable twat who likes sitting in a freezing cold house?' 😆

I listen to a lot of radio 4 consumer and money programs.
Whenever they do phone ins on reducing energy consumption there are several callers that say this almost word for word "I'm doing everything I can to reduce my bills, I turn the lights off when I'm not in the room, not leaving the TV on standby, only filling the kettle with enough water for the cup"

Modern bulbs now cost c.£20 a year to run, TV on standby doesn't cost a lot either.
My partner has a bad habit of putting about half a cup less than needed in the kettle and needs to boil the kettle twice which is more annoying and probably costs more than boiling an extra cup.

People don't mention insulation, changing room temperature changing the way they cook, temperature of water, setting for the radiators, length and frequency of shower, washing clothes only when dirty rather than daily...

We do tumble down meals to save money/time/energy. We cook a joint of meat twice a week and use that for several days in different meals. We either roast it or slow cooker it on the first day then turn it into quick meals that can be made in 10 minutes on the subsequent days either quickly on the hob or in the microwave so much lower costs than having the oven or slow cooker on every day. If I have had the oven on I leave the oven open to warm the room.

I haven't turned the heating off since we moved into the house in 2022!* If the house feels cold and it's 17-18 degC I'll pop it on at 19degC for an hour or so. If I feel cold I check my clothing and have a drink, get a blanket and put the heating on if I continue to be cold. We have fans under some of our radiators to improve their efficiency, we have no furniture infront of any of our radiators, all of our rooms have blinds and curtains which are closed as soon as it gets dark. We make sure we dust the radiators where we can and bled to make sure there is no air settled in the radiator, check for excessive sludge too - our previous house had cold radiators as they were full of sludge that we had to flush out to get them working again.

*Thermostat is set to 14degC overnight and 17-17.5degC during the day. I don't care if it's May or September if it's 17degC I'd want the heating on.

I changed the settings on my parents radiators last winter. There house was either roasting or freezing. All the radiators were set to maximum. I went around and lowered the downstairs radiators to 3-4 and upstairs to 2-3 and they were then able to easily maintain a steady temperature and it dropped the energy use too.

Yup.
I have 10m fairy lights on 9 hours a day. This costs, according to usage meter they are on, grand total of £1.60 a year....

Your electrics are ancient = you are using old and inefficient appliances, lightbulbs, electric heaters etc?

Old wiring does not cause high bills, unless you have an electrical fault.

Watched a YouTube clip on children in poverty. This beautiful little boy trying to explain why his father does not work....daddy is depressed.
There is daddy lying on the sofa in front of a big screen telly with a packet of fags.
Little lad had not eaten all day.

Jack Monroe levels of performative poverty. The guy's a nutter.

This is what I thought. He clearly needs solar powered garden lights.

There are two kinds of costs to businesses - fixed costs (eg cost of owning a power plant) and unit costs (eg cost to burn coal to produce X kWh of energy). If people use less then a business doesn’t incur those unit costs but they still have their fixed costs. So yes there is a limit to how far they can drop prices as they still have the fixed costs regardless of consumption.

Yeah, remember how expensive microwaves and TVs used to be??

My TV, which would be plasma in 2008 cca would be smaller (they did not make them this big afaik) and cost approx 7x the price of mine now from what I remember.

It's weird to think about that!

I also thought of Jack Monroe and her performative removing of the light bulbs when I read story!