Electricity prices, There aving a larf...

[devonwoody]

Here are my details, 2 bedroom detached bungalow insulated sides and top.

Workshop not used in winter.

Every appliance known to man in home.

I'm with Staywarm a special section of Eon for pensioner contract set up.

Last year they bumped me up to £86.98 per month.

I did an electric meter reading for days and I was averaging 17 units a day over the year.

Couldn't work out the gas because the pippers do that conversion thing from the meter reading to Kws?.

The cost of use doesnt alter for 12 months and then they assess me for a new contract again each year. They told me after much negotiation and my buying tactics that they did not do a lower figure than £86. 98 per month for anyone and that was the starting rate. (be interesting to know if that is true :wink: )

Perhaps the forum could organise a poll for each type of residence and company being used.

BTW sometimes the wife asks if the heating can be turned off and sometimes I have to put the air cooler on, and sometimes its the other way round.

 

[lemonjeff]

I've just switched from EON gas and Southern Electric £30+£80 per month.
To EDF Dual fuel £26+£51 per month, fixed rate until march 2011.
Plus I switched using Topcashback for £80 cashback.

Jeff.

 

[devonwoody]

I've just switched from EON gas and Southern Electric £30+£80 per month.
To EDF Dual fuel £26+£51 per month, fixed rate until march 2011.
Plus I switched using Topcashback for £80 cashback.

Jeff.

Thanks lemonjeff, I have bookmarked that one and will be getting my telephone moving later today. :wink:

I suppose you had to give them your consumption figures to get that quote?

 

[lurker]

I realise that our 4 bed house and our consumption would indicate high fuel usage, but I don't think our usage compared to our old house is drastically higher to warrant such high bills. We have a plasma in the living room, but it's used for maybe three hours a day. In fact the only difference between the two houses is the workshop and the fact that this house is bigger. I really don't believe that my workshop is creating 40% of the electric bill.

Anyway. We're moving, so this is all moot

Wizer

You have whined about this before :roll:

Here are a few facts
Normal people have their heating on time clocks
Normal people have the stats set at about 19 degrees
Every degree rise adds 10% to your lecy costs edit :gas
Proportionally if you won't change your habits then your new gaff will be expensive to heat too.

Our annual lecy is £600 & gas about the same, mainly due to SWMBO who insists heating the whole house & would not be seen dead in a cardy or pullover

 

[jlawrence]

I'm in a 5 bed victorian semi. 2 kids and I'm at home most of the day.
Heating is on all day - never at night. I think gas is around 50/60 a month and elec similar.
In my previous house I used to run a full rack of servers and a fullblown cisco 5K switch (which used elec like it was going out of fashion) all backed up with 3 x 3K ups's - these were all on 24/7. Cost then was still only about 120 a month for elec. What the heck you'd need to be running to hit 450/qtr I don't know.

 

[stevebuk]

Thanks for the replys guys, there certainly is a mixture of stuff in there to get to grips with.
They say from the readings given i am currently using 25Kw per day, surely a small bakery dont use that much, and now i am really bothered in case they dont find a fault and i have a massive bill at the end, and to top it all i haven't even considered the gas yet.
Usual usage is about £80 quarter for the missus and me, so god knows whats happened here.
I do want to change from our OLD style meters to something more modern though, and i think i may start doing DD on both energies.
I must admit, i did not mention i have a cabin full of tools outside, as more often than not i am not in there, but i bet when the engineer calls around next week he will think i am trying it on.

many thanks for the replies, will let you know what happens..

 

[lemonjeff]

I've just switched from EON gas and Southern Electric £30+£80 per month.
To EDF Dual fuel £26+£51 per month, fixed rate until march 2011.
Plus I switched using Topcashback for £80 cashback.

Jeff.

Thanks lemonjeff, I have bookmarked that one and will be getting my telephone moving later today. :wink:

I suppose you had to give them your consumption figures to get that quote?

Don't do it over the phone, use a comparison site like this
http://www.energyhelpline.com/ in conjunction with this
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilit ... lectricity

You don't need consumption figures, just your monthly spend
Online tariffs are by far the best deals.

Jeff.

 

[devonwoody]

Thanks lemonjeff, I am on my way.

Had a quick look and its like my other post this morning, when you enter the post code they know who is calling so they have got some details to spam you with?

But will still be going in tho.

 

[wobblycogs]

Steve, your usage of power is within the realms of believable but only if you are doing something that uses a lot of power for a good few hours a day.

Your reported usage of 25kWh/day works out as a constant draw of about 1kW through out the day and night. Assuming you are only using significant amounts of power for 12 hours a day (you do sleep don't you?) then during those hours you must be averaging a draw of about 2kW.

My lathe draws about 1kW, the extractor 1 or 2kW depending on the setting. So if you were turning for 4 hours a day with extraction you could be talking up to 8kWh.

A kWh of power costs about 17p* at the moment so your daily cost should be around £4.25 which gives a quaterly bill of about £390

As an aside, considering the price of electricity I've ofterned wondered about generating my own by burning gas. Gas is about 3.5p/kWh so if the generator was 50% efficient I would still be generating electricity at about 7p/kWh and there would be significant waste heat (I realize this doesn't take into account lots of other costs but it's certainly food for thought)

*most companies operate a two tier system of around 20p for the first 1000 or so units and 10p per kWh there after so this figure is a guessed average for the year.

 

[devonwoody]

Interesting figures there wobblycogs.

Could you do standby figures for the following

2 lsd flat screen tvs
3 recording systems
2 telephone extensions(those mobile phones)
Oven clock

then
1x freezer in garage outside
1x fridge in kitchen

All above on 24 hours a day.

Computer XP around 3000 with 2gb memory and 26" wide screen monitor.
on 10 hours per day

I'll buy you a drink next time we meet. :wink:

 

[Deejay]

Mornin' Steve

Are you on an Economy package, where you get cheaper electricity for some hours of the day?

If so, check the time displayed on the meter.

FWIW, I had this problem (the clock was reading an hour earlier than GMT) and Scottish and Southern seem to be being reasonable about it.

They have changed the meter and promised to get in touch about a rebate.

Cheers

Dave

 

[wobblycogs]

dw, the best I can do is give you a rough guide because the standby usage of devices varies widely. The best use less than 1W on standby but some of the worst use around 25W.

So, I put together a spreadsheet for you. It's not formatted terribly well here so you can download it if you want (and add other items): http://www.crazysquirrel.com/images/power_consumption.xls.

Count Power Total Hours/Day kWh/day
TV 2 1 2 24 0.048
Recording Device 3 4 12 24 0.288
Telephones 2 3 6 24 0.144
Oven Clock 1 5 5 24 0.12
Fridge 1 35 35 24 0.84
Freezer 1 35 35 24 0.84
Monitor 1 110 110 10 1.1
Computer 1 125 125 10 1.25
Other Computer Bits 1 25 25 10 0.25
Total kWh/day 4.88

That monitor is rather nice but it's sucking some serious power. The computers power draw might be a little high, a lot depends on how you use the computer. If you are running one of those distributed computing programs or gaming the processors draw will be close to it's maximum (say 90W) but if you are surfing the web it will be just a few watts.

 

[Jake]

2 lsd flat screen tvs

That explains everything! Stop licking your screens!

 

[bugbear]

Might be worth getting one of those "green" electricity meters that lets you monitor the usage more easily - one of theseperhaps?
At least you can check you're proper meter is working properly...

Agreed - those can be very informative.

They're cheap(ish) to buy too.

Particularly interesting when plugged into items with thermostats (ovens, freezers, fridges).

BugBear

 

[lurker]

This might be a load of old rubbish - can someone confirm.

I believe that freezers in cold outhouses (below about 5 degrees) are running like the clappers in comparision with one in a nice warm 15 degree room

 

[bugbear]

This might be a load of old rubbish - can someone confirm.

I believe that freezers in cold outhouses (below about 5 degrees) are running like the clappers in comparision with one in a nice warm 15 degree room

Doesn't seem likely - a freezer is a device for pumping heat energy up a temperature gradient.

The gradient is from the inside (circa -20C) to the outside.

Lower outside temperature should equal lesser temperature gradient = less work to do.

If the outside temp is -20C, the freezer should have no work to do at all (Reductio ad absurdum).

BugBear

 

[wobblycogs]

Just in case you don't trust logic I did the experiement ...

We had no heating in our house during the cold snap last month and I can confirm from observation that when it's cold in the house the fridge and freezer do a lot less work. The fridge never came on and the freezer only came on once in a blue moon.

 

[bugbear]

Just in case you don't trust logic I did the experiement ...

We had no heating in our house during the cold snap last month and I can confirm from observation that when it's cold in the house the fridge and freezer do a lot less work. The fridge never came on and the freezer only came on once in a blue moon.

It's always nice when a perfectly reasonable explanation and the physical world agree ;-)

BugBear

 

[wobblycogs]

In our house we always try to obey the law of physics

 

[stevebuk]

Your reported usage of 25kWh/day works out as a constant draw of about 1kW through out the day and night. Assuming you are only using significant amounts of power for 12 hours a day (you do sleep don't you?) then during those hours you must be averaging a draw of about 2kW.

My lathe draws about 1kW, the extractor 1 or 2kW depending on the setting. So if you were turning for 4 hours a day with extraction you could be talking up to 8kWh.

A kWh of power costs about 17p* at the moment so your daily cost should be around £4.25 which gives a quaterly bill of about £390

.

hi WC
i am assuming your structure means 4 hours a day of constant use every day, i used my lathe last week for the first time for about 3 hours of 1 day, i only get into my cabin wed/thurs of any week and for the last several weeks i have been using the scroll saw.
Yes i definately sleep too.
Could it also be a fact that i have 5 2tube lights on in there, would this be expensive?