NPower fitted my free smart meter on Sunday morning which was nice of them. Its quite scary to see how the pennies mount up each day. I'm as careful as they come but last night it nearly hit £2. I suppose that'll be offset by it being a lot less in the summer.
5 quid with the oven on the other night. Weve unplugged the screen as it was upsetting.
And here's me looking at ways of cutting back on the £30,00 over the last month and £15,00 for 3 months of leccy.
I was thinking of getting a smart meter but we are already reasonably careful with our consumption of electric and gas. I don't want something reminding me how much I'm spending when there's little I can do about it!
Working from home I really wouldnt want to see how much leccy is used when my labs are spinning at full tilt let alone when the oven is on aswell.
My monthly payment for gas and electricity is £55. I have LED lighting all through the house, the combi is set on 2 (out of 5), loads of insulation in the loft, double glazing etc. I have solid walls which is a bad thing though. I'm not sure I could do more to save energy. I have a log burner but no supply of free wood. When i do run it though I turn the combi off.
Its an eye opener how expensive heating is! The oven doesn't get used a huge amount but the space TV gets used every day.
I didn't have a choice with having it done (other than not answering the door when they turned up!). The good thing is that it stops you having to send in meter readings and they bill on a daily basis i think it is. You can also monitor your usage over the week or month and see trends etc.
good thing is that it stops you having to send in meter readings
Yup, but they still come round once a year to check you haven't bypassed it 🙂
It's not possible to extract the data out of ours, I assume EDF have the data somewhere but I'm not sure how to get it.
My monthly payment for gas and electricity is £55
I'm on £61 - loft insulation isn't great (150mm) and we have a load of air leaks in the floor. Hopefully that will translate to £72 savings a year when we sort it but I'm not holding my breath. Oh, and CFL's as well, LED's can do one until they start getting into the realms of sensible prices.
Working from home I really wouldnt want to see how much leccy is used when my labs are spinning at full tilt let alone when the oven is on aswell.
I'm assuming not a meth lab as that would be connected to street lighting...
The computer, CCTC, NAS, TV etc don't use a huge amount. Its the gas boiler, microwave, oven etc that eat it up. My bean to cup coffee machine uses around 2p worth to make a mug full!
Our Leccy bill is about £0.80 / day (3 bed terraced Victorian house).
Last 10 months bills plotted..
[url= https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/379/31646569911_a96e5ddde0.jp g" target="_blank">https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/379/31646569911_a96e5ddde0.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/QduWFH ]Energy Costs[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
Biggest guzzler in my house I think are the living room lights. Uplighters, halogen. I have them dimmed to half, but still must be at least 100W each.
Which I think is what tips my leccy bill over £60 a month for a small flat (occasionally they keep trying to push it up to £80).
Heating isn't an issue. Gas bill is a fraction of that.
Undecided on the smart meter. The benefit to me is slim. A gadget that tells me what I'm using isn't that great a deal as it doesn't tell you per device, just the house as a whole. It's of benefit to the companies though. Saves money on reading meters but more importantly to them it paves the way for peak/off-peak and more granular charging, possibly even tailoring rates specific to individual patterns of use so making it very difficult to compare rates.
But they tell me my meters are "unsafe" if I don't change them. They're modern, digital meters and probably 15 years old at the most. Yeah, unsafe my arse.
Glad not to hear Horror stories - ours it getting fitted Thursday
But our supply looks a bit old skool as it goes into the existing meter
Not sure if they are going to object connecting it up.
LED's can do one until they start getting into the realms of sensible prices
Really?
Screwfix are currently doing a multipack of GU10s that would pay for themselves in just over a month under normal use. How cheap do you want them?!
Don't look at how much electricity you used on Christmas Day. I guess with the oven on for hours, a house full of people, lights on all day it adds up, rather rapidly...
Had them installed in September to an old type fuse board that I had replaced the fuse wire holders with plug in breakers. No problem with the whole thing especially as I now get free leccy between 9am and 5pm on a Sunday.
LED bulbs are now cheap enough that you will save money within a year compared to 50w halogens.
Anything that provides heat is expensive to run be it on gas or elctricity. Smart meters make you think about how and when you use your power.
Just to clarify my £55 a month is for gas central heating, ho****er and hob and electric everything else (as was my £1.80 ish for last night).
All my GU10's are Phillips, I think they cost around £3 each from Tesco. They are the right colour, as bright as Halogens and a nice wide beam. There are a lot of different options out there though so choose carefully.
Deadkenny - depending on the type of dimmer switch you are using it might not actually be saving you anything - old ones just add resistance into the circuit and dissipate the excess energy as heat. If you have a more modern Triac switching type then it will save money (but not as much as you would by using a lower wattage bulb in the first place).
They're "energy saver" halogens, but that just means they're 230W instead of 300W. Though see there are lower but still over 100W and I've got a few of them to light the room.
I need to replace with some other lights really. I know there are LED halogen strips but they look rubbish and reviews are rubbish plus bulky and probably won't fit.
What's good for eco uplighters these days, that actually provide sufficient light and don't look cheap?
But they tell me my meters are "unsafe" if I don't change them. They're modern, digital meters and probably 15 years old at the most. Yeah, unsafe my arse.
IIRC a meter is only designed to stay within calibration for 10 years, so they swap them all out every 10 years or so, I'm on my second meter, and coming up for it's renewal....
Not bothered by smart meters as I have already had all the benefit fitting an induction based meter which I backed on Kickstarter. It even attempts to guess which appliance is being switched on / off (although it's not always right).
[url= https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/693/21427094454_de0d917d04.jp g" target="_blank">https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/693/21427094454_de0d917d04.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/yDrsF1 ]Neurio Energy By Minute[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://c2.staticflickr.com/1/626/22049910425_64e8cd3eaf.jp g" target="_blank">https://c2.staticflickr.com/1/626/22049910425_64e8cd3eaf.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/zAtyap ]Neurio Energy By Day[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://c6.staticflickr.com/1/677/21863062509_35507e2276.jp g" target="_blank">https://c6.staticflickr.com/1/677/21863062509_35507e2276.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/ziXUMB ]Neurio Energy By Appliance[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
wow, were paying about 50 quid a month in elecy alone! then up to 140 in winter with the gas on!
Just checking back to this thread as we did get ours fitted a couple of weeks ago. No real issues during the installation of the meter(s) I was only really thinking about the electric but of course there is one for gas also.
They (Southern Electric) give a little wireless monitor with a running total of the amount spent that day. Need to find instructions for the monitor as it appears to do other stuff.
We are on about £5 a day for a cool day and heading just over £7 for a bad cold day at the weekend.
so heating is our biggest variable - slightly confused by our boiler being serviced a week later and losing all the timings and temperatures.
I need to look at the kitchen cabinet lights as I now realize that they contain some halogens - had been using the cabinet lights as the dim kitchen lights option - but using more power than the main lights. 😳
N
