Who'd have thunk it!

[Bill]

Recently I’ve become totally obsessed with reducing my power consumption and this has led me to discovering some unexpected results.

In our kitchen, we have a huge wall clock so we can always see what time it is. On top of that, four of the kitchen appliances also have built in digital clocks that usually show the wrong time because they’re tricky to set up and too easy to accidentally reset them. They’re all useless and we don’t need them anyway but given they only consume about 6watts each, it’s not worth bothering about.

Electric ovens are usually fed from a dedicated high current supply separate from the ring main, so you’d think they’d be one of the most power-hungry devices in your home. So, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that year on year, the ovens digital clock used more power than the oven itself. Ok, this is probably because we tend to use the microwave more and only use the oven for say half an hour, a couple of times each week.  Here’s my sums.

Oven 2Kw x total 1hr per week x 52 weeks = 104 Kw. Once heated, the thermostat cuts on and off at precisely 50% duty cycle, so the 104 Kw in reality becomes approximately 52Kw (£15.60).

Clock 6w x 24hrs *365 days = 52.56Kw. (£15.77). 😵

And that’s just one of the four useless clocks. Food for thought eh?

 

Bill 😊

 

[Evil Sid]

mrs sid is obsessed with clocks fortunately only the microwave has one that is connected to the mains.

I do wonder though how much the landline phone uses. mine has three handsets that are sat on chargers most of the time, well all of the time really. (two are downstairs and the third is next to my pc so that i can answer it when the cold callers ring.....I always answer as i need a good laugh at times and winding them up is one of the few joys i have at present.)

one thing i always forget about is my printer. Can never remember to turn it off after i have used it. Mainly because the touchscreen goes off after a certain time and I tend to forget that it is still "live".

my daily average electric, according to the smart meter readout, is around £2.70 unless i do a wash which bumps it up a little bit.

it is surprising now i come to think about it just how many things are using the electric. boiler display,router,virgin box and the lights. (which is not that bad for the lights as i have all led bulbs throughout so not a lot of wattage even with  them all on).

The biggest problem is that you tend to get paranoid about turning stuff off, especially around two in the morning when you wake and think "did i turn the ........ off"....🤔

[Bill]

Yep, it’s amazing what eats up your power while you’re asleep and they’ve even come up with a name for the devices that do this, (vampire devices). 😊 Even with everything apparently off, my little vamps are sucking up 60 watts, which at 30p per unit is costing me £157.68p a year.

The simple solution is to just get used to turning things on and off at the mains and where you can’t do that easily enough, put a cheap mains timer on them. It’s taken a while for Mrs Green to get into doing this but after explaining the cost savings over a year she’s started getting to do it.

You might remember a while back I bought a solar panel and inverter with the idea that I could possibly archive a 50% reduction in my electric bill with a payback time of about 12 months. But now having now identified all the areas where potential savings can be made, it looks like these savings will be greater than can be achieved with the solar. The net outcome is during the day, the solar is now producing far more power than we’re using, and this is due in part to these simple savings.

The next stage is to consider storing this excess power rather than sending it back into the grid and not getting paid for it but batteries aren’t cheap and don’t last forever so I’ll hold off on this until I can work out the best way of doing things.

 

Bill 😊