Electricity bills

[watervole]

I just got my electricity bill. It's a lot less than the comparable bill for the same quarter last year. £30 less.

There's inevitably going to be some random variation depending on when they actually read the meter and when they've estimated and got it wrong, but I'm still pretty confident that the saving is real.

The usage was 686 kWh as opposed to 1201 kWh

That's a reduction of over 40%!

I'll wait and see what the bill is next quarter before I cheer too loudly, but it looks as though the measures I've taken to cut the electricity usage (without reducing our standard of living) may be having a real effect. That's a lot of carbon dioxide saved, as well as hard cash.

The gas bill is also well down, but the weather has been very mild, so I don't yet know how much of that saving is due to the double glazing and other insulation work.

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

What measures have you taken?

I know I am quite bad in some areas - and am about to go on a >12 hour flight tomorrow... but there are some things I should do - such as turn off the telly and not set it to standby!

[watervole.livejournal.com]

What measures have you taken?

View all my entries with the tags finance and climate change.

Getting a new fridge and switching off the stereo at the wall were probably the biggest gainers, but things like painting a 'one mug' line on the kettle all help.

We now have two 40W cicrcular light fittings in the lounge. They look great, give loads of light and are a lot less expensive to run than the two 150W bulbs we had before.

Getting a little meter that I could plug into sockets to find out what gadgets were actually using was an excellent investment. It told me what was cheap to run and what was expensive -and the answers weren't always what I expected.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

oooh - what sort of meter was that?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Ask Alex Holden - he told me where to get it.

It was only around a tenner in price. If you hunt back on my finance posts, you might possibly find the reply where he gives the web link.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Cheers - I will look through your tags since you took the time to enter them.

plug in electricity meter

[johnrw.livejournal.com]

I've seen the electricity usage meters in B & Q, but these were more expensive than the tenner watervole mentioned. However the folded/compact fluorescent lights are definitely a good energy saver as they are direct replacement for ordinary bulbs. for example I replaced the three sixty watt bulbs in the sitting room with eleven watt fluorescents and, assuming four hours daily, saves over two hundred kilowatt hours or about £20 in a year.

Re: plug in electricity meter

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I use them wherever possible already. I only have a few incandescent bulbs left - where the energy saving ones wouldnt fit.

Re: plug in electricity meter

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I found that changing the light fitting so that you could use an energy saving bulb was cost effective. We got a flush fitting that took a circular energy saving bulb in the lounge. Gives more head room and will pay for itself in two years even given the cost of the new fitting. Looks very nice too.

Re: plug in electricity meter

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I basically have two lightshades which are too small - one in the front room which I will change soon, and one in the bathroom which I will leave as it is.

Re: plug in electricity meter

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Half the problem is the word "shade". Think of it as blocking a significant proportion of that light you are paying for. Glass ones have a lot going for them, but if you can find a fitting that uses a circular flourescent tube (which may also come with daylight spectrum light if you get the right one) then you have no light blocked at all. B+Q do some nice ones.

Re: plug in electricity meter

[johnrw.livejournal.com]

There was once a formula for deciding whether a given light fitting/source was appropriate for a given situation (this was before compact fluorescent bulbs were easily available). It was really for industrial or commercial settings and factored in the cost of fitting any replacement support equipment. It went something like less than 1 1/2 hours per day - leave it be, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours switch to Halogen bulbs 3 hours and up switch to standard fluorescent fittings.

Now the cost of compact fluorescents alters the equation.

After last night's comment I stopped and worked it out, given that we've replaced many of the incandescent bulbs (and all those which have a high usage) the saving is somewhere between five hundred and fifty and seven hundred and fifty kilowatt hours per year. We haven't noticed it as electricity prices have been climbing in rough step with our reduction in use!