Help me reduce our electricity usage, please ....

[Marvin]

I have been feeling increasingly guilty at our wastefulness on electricity, but also pretty lazy (translation - overwhelmed by other things).
What things are likely to give me the best improvement in reducing electricity, for a managable input in time / my energy / managing our life ....
How about a 1 - 6 list of the top 6 best things I could do, and I'll do one every day or week and aim for continuous improvement.
We are really pretty evil in how we use our electricity, but don't know what is worthwhile doing and what makes so little difference....

You need an electricity monitor - LIDL had them on sale a week or so ago......very useful for pinpointing the real electricity eating culprits in your house. In ours it was the shower and halogen downlights in the kitchen.....

Hey Marvin

It would help if you could give us an idea of what sort of house you live in, how it's heated, what appliances you have, that sort of thing.

But as a general guideline, we've looked at energy consumption in a number of houses, and typically the things that drive high consumption are:

1. heating devices that run for a while. Particularly electrical space heaters/hot water heaters, tumble dryers and washing machines which you run hot. Turning all of these down a few degrees can make quite a difference, and shouldn't be overwhelming. Ovens can be quite hungry too: try microwaving if possible

2. the lots of little things running for a long time effect. Do you have a lot of kitchen downlighters, for example? Do you always leave lights on all over the house? How many standbys are you running all the time? Look for things that are permanently on, and don't need to be.

3. broken and inefficient appliances: is your freezer door shutting properly? Does your oven run hot?

This is an area that interests me professionally, so I'd be very interested in hearing how much other people know about their energy use, and how much they'd like to know!

gizmo thanks. Here are the answers to your questions.

Home: ancient and odd 4 bed semi with about 8 - 12 rooms depending on what you count as a room, with decent looking insulation in the loft but slightly draghty wooden windows. storage heating (there are six in the house but we only use two which are pretty low - in bathroom and downstairs hall) plus oil aga which makes a huge different to home temp and is great for cooking plus wood burner we use only occasionally. I have 3 boys, who are all at home most of the day. DH also works from home quite a bit (hence all the computery things below).

Appliances: lots of computers / routers / broadband links etc. two TVs plus sky boxes. tiny fridge. medium sized freezer which is in a cold cupboard. dishwasher (run daily). toaster and kettle. washing machine (1-2 times each day at 30C). tumble drier 1-2 times per day (has 'sense' which turns off when dry - things from it are barely dry when I take them out and NEVER seem warm - I have recently started hanging towels and bed linen, but can't deal with the volume of clothes to hang dry the kids clothes). immersion heater in small hot water tank. instant hot water shower. lots of lights of every type you can imagine - house is terribly gloomy and needs light in most rooms throughout the day (what is a downlighter? we have lots of lights with little spotlight-type bulbs in).

I don't use the electric oven or hob when the aga is on which is most of the year.

I know our energy use is high. However, I know VERY LITTLE about what things are relevant and what have little impact. And I am usually well informed about things. I would like to know more (hence the posting!)

Lights and standbys are the obvious culprits. Are they really likely to be energy-heavy?

Wow. I can see you're going to have problems, but I'm not sure they're going to be easily answered by behavioural change.

Lots of little things are going to have a big impact if they're on 24/7. Just try going around the house and counting how many there are.

If you have 4 computers (like our house ) at 60 watts, running 24 hours a day (computers in standby mode use the same amount of energy), that's 178.5 kWh per month (or nearly £20), just for the computers, not including routers, modems etc etc. And that's assuming computers have the same energy requirements as a lightbulb - some are more.

But I think the largest portion of your bill is going to be found in the heating component: especially the hot water heaters, tumble dryer and storage heaters. Is there any way you could convert the aga to help with some of your hot water requirements? Alternatively, could you look at something like solar thermal panels on your roof? They'll heat water for you and are one of the few domestic level forms of alternative energy that stand a chance of paying for themselves in the UK climate.

Just a word about the shower: one guy we were monitoring used an electric shower, which was 20% of his energy usage during the weeks we saw!

Admittedly he was a single guy, taking a lot of showers and not using a great deal of energy elsewhere, but the thing to note is that instantaneous water heating using electricity burns a lot of energy. Basically it's boiling a kettle for a long period of time.

Thanks - we have at least 3 computers, maybe more as some double as routers. Plus the printer / copier. So I should:

• turn OFF the computer when I finish now;
• is it right that I need to turn off AT THE WALL the TVs / Sky boxes / digital radio
• try to turn off one of the two storage heaters still on, and hope DH doesn't notice

• instead of my shower, wash in the boys pre-used bathwater?? Or (more seriously, knowing what the boys do in their bathwater) might having a bath from the immersion heater be better than using the shower (very small bath compared to moderate length shower - it's not a power shower)? The boys all bath together.

I really don't think the Aga can generate hot water. We looked into hot water from the wood burner when that was fitted by the pipe routing made it unfeasible. Would be interested in solar thermal panels but not sure how easy to get permission to put on listed building though we might be able to mount them in the garden (DH fancies ground source heating). If it won't get much better by 'behavioural change' I guess we should do something specific with the stuff we've got.
Thanks - what do you do gizmo, that leads to your knowledge and monitoring?

Yup, I think your summary of potential actions sounds about right. The bath/shower thing is tricky - although an immersion heater may be more efficient in heating the water, the bath will require more water than the shower, so it's a trade off.

I'm guessing you have no gas central heating? So while your 'leccy bill is high, it represents most of your utility bill? Problem is that 'leccy is a very expensive (and inefficient) way to heat things. If you did have gas I'd recommend waiting for a year or two then getting a combined heat and power boiler, which would probably be perfect for your needs.

A GSHP can deal with all your space heating needs and can probably be used to pre-heat water, so you'll require less energy to get all your hot water needs. But do remember you will still need electricity to run the pump. You can probably work on a heating co-efficient of at least 1:4, ie for every unit of electricity into the system, you get four units of heat out. So a key question when considering its effectiveness is whether the heating/hot water is such a large portion of your energy use that the pump's energy requirements will be less than the energy displaced by not having to heat things electrically, IYSWIM. While it's more reliable than solar thermal, the trade off is that it is much more expensive, because of the ground works needed.

I'm sure you can get ground mounted solar thermal panels - have a look here in fact you can probably rig up a system yourself with some black painted radiators, but it won't be as pretty or efficient!

Ranty rant...I do quite enjoy this stuff, though . I'm a bit of an energy nerd, basically - my company does research and development of new products for the cleantech market, so I'm constantly spending my time chatting to engineers about the numbers associated with energy conservation and generation.

No piped gas within miles of here. The leccy bill is HUGE but that and the annual oil delivery are our ONLY energy bills (we've not yet paid for wood). we use the heating very little in addition to the oil aga, so I'm not convinced the storage heaters are the only culprits for hemoraging money to the electricity company!

We have an oil tank, and could get oil central heating. From the bit I've read on GSHP (it vaguely touches on the field I used to work in) I got the impression it would be best in a new-build, and is tricky retrofitted. We are considering putting in central heating and / or upgrading the heating somehow and would be v interested in a 'greener' source, so the solar options are interesting.

Thanks!

Marvin, you know you could manage without a tumble drier if you got yourself organised with airers etc. You have a big enough house. How many in your family?

We are 4 and I do one load of washing per day. We have a 6kg machine. Always on 40 or 60, though. We have a clean duvet cover once a fortnight, sheets and pillowcases once a week, bath towels once a week, hand towels every couple of days or so. We all wear clothes more than once if they are not noticeably dirty (excluding undergruds and socks of course!!!). The children have a bath or shower together every other night.

I use the tumble drier maybe once a week for 30 mins in the winter just to catch up if I've run out of drying space. Not at all in the summer.

Mintyy - I know I can't manage without a tumble drier: Until child 2 (or may have even been been 3) we always hung-dry: didn't have a tumble drier at all. About the time of the new baby, I was simply defeated by the quantity, leading to buying and using a tumbler for the first time in my life, and quantity / lifestyle hasn't improved since then! I wash children's bedding and towels and hand towels weekly, and adults' linen fortnightly, and swim stuff 7 times a year(yuk). DCs clothes are ALWAYS dirty daily. Adult clothes get worn repeatedly until grubby. 1 load per day 'daily' clothes plus adult clothes and linen washes, so about 10 - 11 loads per week. The space I can put an airer is in the 'spare bedroom' which is currently at 14C (which is one reason why the children share rather than sleep in here), so takes days to dry. I can sling big things like sheets / towels over the banisters which is easier and dries quicker - I do usually hang outside in the summer if good weather though. I also cannot see where I would find the time from! But thanks for your comments: I can see where you're coming from .

We have a six-foot ceiling airer (Sheila Maid type) and it dries a load of washing in 24 hours, every single day of the year. Only use the tumble drier for occasional helping out/things needed in a hurry. You might not get all 10 loads on it but it could help lighten the load. It's hung above a big radiator in the kitchen. Truly the best £35 I ever spent.

There is a good book on energysaving and environmental matters here - Without Hot Air. I'm working my way through it, but it's useful because it actually gives accurate figures on what uses the most power.

Second the recommendation that you get/borrow an energy meter - it's really interesting to see how much different things use.

I found two things were energy eaters:

• anything that heats up (kettle, washing machine, dishwasher, oven, microwave). The only way of dealing with this is to make sure you're efficient, so only boil the water you need, turn the oven off 15 minutes earlier, use a haybox for stews etc.

• lighting! I'm completely obsessive about turning lights off, but even so, we use SO much more energy in the evening than in the daytime. Two v obvious things make a difference: energy efficient bulbs and turning lights off when you're not in the room. There are now good low-energy halogen downlighter (spotlight) replacement bulbs - Megaman do nice ones (expensive, but if you have them on for hours each day, they'll pay for themselves v quickly).

Ooooh, second the recommendation for Without Hot Air. David MacKay has done a fabulous job on pulling out the basic numbers in a way that puts all the energy options on an even footing.

If you have no gas and limits on how much you can change your behaviours, Marvin, I'm thinking you may have to invest in insulation first (which might not affect your 'leccy bill much but should bring the oil bill - and your carbon footprint - down) and then investigate the options for dealing with your hotwater needs.

However, to make a real hole in your bills it sounds like you're going to have to upgrade to a wet central heating system of some sort that does something for your hot water too, as I'd bet good money that that is eating large portions of your energy budget. Your options are probably: GSHP (which won't be much more upheaval than a full central heating fix), solar thermal or some form of biomass powered plant. I'm guessing you're nowhere near a decent head of water and I wouldn't touch domestic level wind with a bargepole, so your options for generating on site are quite limited...

For an immediate impact, the best I can offer is keep turning off all the little things!

Thank you for all your kind comments without eating me! I will check out the low-en halogen bulbs - I suspect that lighting is significant. I have turned off and unplugged quite a few things.

Are there organisations that loan energy meters?

What is the best way to consider central heating ideas? The GSHP / solar thermal / biomass options? we don't think we have a sufficient head of water either ....

i was told the older the appliances are the more electricity consumptions it uses. unplug everything everything when not in use too.

Marvin, we have recently looked into a few of the alternatives for heating. At the moment we're oil-fired central heating and Aga, but with solar panels which do all our hot water from about April to end September.

The problem with geothermal under your garden or wherever, is that you need to put in 3-phase electricity. Quote from our local leccy company was £12,000 ...

Biomass option: expensive to install, but you have the space. You don't have to burn the wood pellets they suggest - a friend burns waste oats from the local Quaker factory ...

For both these options you should put in underfloor heating as it's much more efficient for the relatively low heat generated by these methods compared to conventional methods.

Grants for putting in solar are available, at least up here in Scotland. The previous owners put ours in, but we've recently had a quote for another (enough for 2 bathrooms) of about £3,500 (bit vague, but it's through a contractor who's doing other stuff, so we haven't had the full details yet )

HTH