What reductions in electricity have you made?

[kenneal - lagger]

Power prices on the wholesale market change every 1/2 hour and yesterday (25th) prices ranged from 1.809p/Kwh at 04:30 to 7.552p/KWh at 17:30 i.e. the 17:30 price was 317% more than the 04:30 price. Until they give out this info the grid is going to peak at 17.30 every day and large inefficiencies will result.

The wholesale price might change but the retail price is constant. Most people wouldn't bother to change their useage as they pay the same all the time. The supply companies would have to change every meter in the country to get a system of variable charging to work.

If the nation went onto flexi time many things would improve, such as traffic congestion. Same if mum's walked their kids the mile to school (another topic). If the TV companies varied their times for commercial breaks, there wouldn't be a spike as the kettles went on. Do we legislate for it? Even if we did legislate for flexi time, how many people would actually change their habits?

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Maybe this should be on the 'confessional' thread but I've no idea how much electricity I'm actually using. We do keep all the bills filed away so could check, we pay a monthly direct debit of ?39.00 and have recently started using a few long-life light bulbs and will switch to these for all main lighting as the old ones pop. TV gets switched off at the wall, cos the switch is broken, my 20 year old hi fi separates are sometimes left on accidentally, only ever switch on 3 out of the 6 units anyway. Mrs Mustard then undoes all my light switching efforts in one go by occasionally leaving the oven on, alas. I'm now checking this.

Turning the gas central heating thermostat down and wearing a fleece, no real hardship there. It's been a while since we switched gas and electric suppliers, maybe with doing that and attacking the bad habits some more we can get worthwhile savings.

But all the neighbours seem to have every room light going, one of those households is on welfare benefits too. So energy must still be relatively cheap, but maybe my own habits are deeply ingrained as a kid growing up in the 70s being constantly told to shut doors and switch off lights. Or is it just that I'm a parsimonious old git these days.

[biffvernon]

Mrs Mustard then undoes all my light switching efforts in one go by occasionally leaving the oven on, alas. I'm now checking this.

That's checking up on Mrs M that she's turned it off, or checking as in "I'll do the cooking, dear, you put your feet up"?

[stumuz]

Cabrone wrote,
''I would like to see power companies putting in real time price feeds into everyone's house. If everyone had an easily visible meter that showed how much power was currently being used and a current pence per kWh figure showing how much it was costing I think that usage patterns would be altered''

What a fantastic idea! Imagine if people could see the PRICE they had accumulated so far. As soon as the bill was paid the new bill starts ticking away in real money terms, not a clock with random numbers but pounds and pence. That would have a serious reducing effect on domestic usage.

Philips eco bulbs are still 49p each at netto. Quick calculation if you replace a 100-watt bulb with a 9-watt it should pay for itself in about 40 hours
[/b]

[Joules]

Is there any benefit to boiling water with a gas hob kettle rather than an electric one? The hob kettle seems to take quite a bit longer, but I can't decide whether burning gas is better than electricity...?

[MacG]

Is there any benefit to boiling water with a gas hob kettle rather than an electric one? The hob kettle seems to take quite a bit longer, but I can't decide whether burning gas is better than electricity...?

In the UK where you have gas, it's probably much better to use the gas to boil water than to use the gas to make electricity and use the electricity to boil water. This due to the rather terrible losses during generation and transmission of the electricity. But when the gas runs out, it wont matter very much anyhow.

[Cabrone]

Kenneal

If the Italians, Swedish, Canadians, Dutch, Australians and Californians can manage it why can't we?

The Italian situation is that the Italian state power company Enel began replacing traditional electromechanical meters with electronic meters (AMM technology) in 2001. The full project involves rolling out 30 million meters over 4 years. By July 2005, 24.6 million meters had been replaced with the new AMM system. Of these, 21.7 million are being remotely managed and 21.6 million are being bi-monthly read. About 40,000 meters are being installed every day.

[Ofgem report]

Come on UK power companies!

[MacG]

In my own home, we are pretty efficient. No TV or tumble dryer and CF light everywhere. The equivalent of ?20-25 per month. For the home of my SO, I just chopped up a couple of cubic meters of firewood. It was a couple of dead and completely dry firs which had come down during the latest storm, so the only reason to cleave the logs is to fit them in the furnace. That will save quite a lot of electricity since the ordinary heat source is electric, and any fire in the furnace reduce the need for electric heating.

Sweden is a bit special with all the electric heating going on here. Quite stupid considering all the forests here, but they built to many nuclear reactors in the 70's and had to find something to do with all the electricity. Guess it will change.

[kenneal - lagger]

Cabronne, the only reasons we won't be able to do it are inertia and PO. If we start now on a 4 year project, PO may scupper it before it finishes. No reason not to try but our mainly foriegn owned energy companies are probably making a fortune out of us the way things are.

Ken

[brasso]

Just a quick query - what about laundry? I've read that spin dryers are the most efficient for drying clothes, much better than tumble dryers. I have A+ washing machine and tumble dryer, and up til now have been using the lowest spin setting on the washing machine. Should I be using the highest? And should I replace my tumble dryer with a spin dryer??

[kenneal - lagger]

The most efficient method of drying clothes is a wind powered solar dryer, commonly called a washing line.

If you can air dry clothes, using the slow spin setting on the washing machine and then air drying is the most efficient i.e. uses the least electricity. If you're going to tumble dry them, use the fast spin to get as much water out as possible.

A spin dryer won't get the clothes bone dry as a tumble dryer will. They are not designed to fully dry clothes, just get the worst of the water out of them.

Most washing machines are efficient spin dryers so there's no point in getting a separate spin dryer as well.

[brasso]

Thanks kenneal - obviously the clothes line is the way to go, but our climate seems determined otherwise! Really, I was just looking at which of the various devices was the best choice, as I'd read that spin dryers were far more efficient than tumble dryers, but my experience of them hasn't been great. Thanks for the info!

[kenneal - lagger]

During the winter we use the washing machine spin dryer at full speed and then hang the clothes in our shower room. This has passive stack ventilation, which is humidity sensitive, and underfloor heating so doesn't cause dampness in the house. The passive stack ventilation and u/f heating are quite gentle so don't dump a lot of heat out through the roof.

Using an ordinary bathroom and radiators should work almost as well but you will have to manually adjust the ventilation rate to prevent dampness building up in the house while not heating the neighbourhood. If you've got an extract fan in the bathroom, fit it with a humidistat, which fixes to the window and detects condensation before turning the fan on, and use the fan for ventilating the room.

If you've got gas central heating or, as in our case, wood fired, this is far more energy efficient than using an electric tumble dryer. You can buy a gas tumble dryer which is not only more efficient but also less polluting as it uses gas as a heat source rather than electricity. http://www.ciao.co.uk/White_Knight_BG447_GAS__5693156

[Philip W]

We unfortunately do use a tumble drier (Lots of baby clothes etc). However it's a condensing type (so we are not pumping hot air out of the house) and I put it on first thing in the morning just as the heating is going on. I figure the central heating boiler then does not need to use so much energy as the tumble drier will have heated the house to a limited extent.

This is preferable than having it go on in the middle of the night as any heat given off would have escaped by the morning.

I do realise that this is still not green, but I do try and recyle 'waste' heat in the house. Another very small example is I pour the boiling water from cooked vegetables into the washing up bowl and leave to cool than pour it straight down the sink, or I might leave bath water to cool before pulling the plug.

[Andy Hunt]

We unfortunately do use a tumble drier (Lots of baby clothes etc). However it's a condensing type (so we are not pumping hot air out of the house) and I put it on first thing in the morning just as the heating is going on. I figure the central heating boiler then does not need to use so much energy as the tumble drier will have heated the house to a limited extent.

This is preferable than having it go on in the middle of the night as any heat given off would have escaped by the morning.

I do realise that this is still not green, but I do try and recyle 'waste' heat in the house. Another very small example is I pour the boiling water from cooked vegetables into the washing up bowl and leave to cool than pour it straight down the sink, or I might leave bath water to cool before pulling the plug.

I think this is a good way to think - it might be surprising what a difference 'managing' your waste heat in this way might make.

I suppose it could be an argument for using incandescent light bulbs though - to reduce the load on your central heating boiler!