What ideas have you had for reducing Electricity consumption

[Spectric]

Both saving energy and protecting our enviroment / planet have a lot in common and will require us to change our lifestyle and habbits. It won't be a few big changes but probably many smaller changes which will be needed and maybe this energy crisis has been a wakeup call to put the brakes on our wasteful energy usage. The modern lifestyle is highly energy dependant and everything we do causes energy to be used somewhere, to get water into our homes is using electricity, to get the waste out and treated uses more energy and maybe many don't see the bigger picture.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yes, I'm waiting for water bills to rocket.

 

[johna.clements]

Yes, I'm waiting for water bills to rocket.

The biggest cost for water companies after depreciation of assets is labour. They spend about a third of the amount of labour on materials and consumables.

I would expect labour to increase by close to maybe a bit less than inflation.
Materials and consumables will be higher, plastic and steel etc plus electric to heat the office. That has gone up a lot in the last year, much more than general inflation.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

I have a nice collection of old fashioned oil lamps.

They give a good light and the lamp oil is dirt cheep and plus a few going will not only light the room. But give of a good bit of heat.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The biggest cost for water companies after depreciation of assets is labour. They spend about a third of the amount of labour on materials and consumables.

I would expect labour to increase by close to maybe a bit less than inflation.
Materials and consumables will be higher, plastic and steel etc plus electric to heat the office. That has gone up a lot in the last year, much more than general inflation.

Certainly - I was thinking of power and fuel costs, though.

 

[Thingybob]

Good idea! Did you have to remove the cooker hood to change the diameter of the holes for the gu10 fittings? On the face of it the diameters do look similar.

No the hole size was the same i was lucky just fitted new sockets and bulbs

 

[Phil Pascoe]

One more thing I should have said was as well as a new f/f and a Foodi we turned down the immersion. It was set a bit high when there were three of us because it's not all that large.

 

[HamsterJam]

The biggest cost for water companies after depreciation of assets is labour. They spend about a third of the amount of labour on materials and consumables.

I would expect labour to increase by close to maybe a bit less than inflation.
Materials and consumables will be higher, plastic and steel etc plus electric to heat the office. That has gone up a lot in the last year, much more than general inflation.

I suspect they consume a modest amount of electricity too. Pumping stations, treatment works etc all powered by electricity and running 24/7

 

[Terry - Somerset]

The issue is wider than the water companies.

Workers will demand/desire pay increases to enable them to cope with their cost of living increases which includes energy.

Suppliers of new equipment will have increased costs of materials, labour and energy which will need to be recovered from the water companies. Alternative is reduced investment (but we want leaks fixed, sewage discharges eliminated). Equipment manufacturers could accept a loss (unlikely).

Follow the cost chain back a bit further - material extraction and processing needs energy.

Not quite sure where all this leads - but reliance upon energy is fundamental to the well-being of humanity - whether expressed in material wealth or health.

 

[johna.clements]

I suspect they consume a modest amount of electricity too. Pumping stations, treatment works etc all powered by electricity and running 24/7

Electricity is a consumable.
Consumables and materials was about a third of the amount of labour.

Assume a water company spent £30m on labour and £10m on materials and consumables.
Labour costs 10% more and, materials and consumables 100% more on average.
Then £33m gets spent on abour and £20m on materials and consumables.
A £13 increase from £40m combined or 33%.

 

[HamsterJam]

Electricity is a consumable.

Understood.
The industry I work in consume a lot of energy and we treat it separately.
Our costs are rising way more than 100%. Going to be some interesting times ahead.

 

[Spectric]

The industry I work in consume a lot of energy and we treat it separately.

Surely energy cost are part of the product and must be met by someone somewhere and only so much can be passed on to the customer, and only so much absorbed by the company so how can you treat them as seperate.

 

[johna.clements]

Surely energy cost are part of the product and must be met by someone somewhere and only so much can be passed on to the customer, and only so much absorbed by the company so how can you treat them as seperate.

How you list your business costs does not make any difference to who pays you for it.

A handmade furniture maker could list electricity in with their premises cost in the headline figures.
Wood maybe listed separately to other materials.

You will list your costs in a way that reflects there relative importance. If the furniture makers is using expensive hardwoods then that could be a major cost whist they do not use much electricity.

 

[artie]

The price of materials has doubled, the price you charge has doubled, so profit has doubled.

The price of electric hasn't quite doubled.

What's the problem?

 

[Spectric]

What's the problem?

The customers put the job on hold until the prices stabilise.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The price of materials has doubled, the price you charge has doubled, so profit has doubled.

The price of electric hasn't quite doubled.

What's the problem?

Some commercial businesses electricity has gone up by four or five hundred percent - it's not capped.

 

[artie]

Some commercial businesses electricity has gone up by four or five hundred percent - it's not capped.

I didn't know that how do they justify that much of an increase?

 

[1steven]

One more thing I should have said was as well as a new f/f and a Foodi we turned down the immersion. It was set a bit high when there were three of us because it's not all that large.

What temperature Is it at now?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I've not measured it but I would think about 45° - a bit too hot to bath in.

 

[GweithdyDU]

to get the waste out and treated uses more energy and maybe many don't see the bigger picture.

Not if you dung in a bucket as we do. I mean for those of a delicate nature, "we use homemade composting toilets". The contents of said buckets gets covered in horse dung, left for a year or so and the conglomerate dung is then fed to my tree saplings. Not sure how much energy I'm saving though and as soon as I can afford a domestic sewerage treatment plant, I'll have one. Mind you, you can get non-electrical one of those as well which is what I'll be fitting.