210 Watts, £560/$700 a year
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With my 'smart' meter and a few days away from home, I've established that my ambient electricity use averages out at a constant 210w, by which I mean the amount of power I'm using not really do anything at all. There could be quite a few culprits - fridge-freezer, two security cameras, broadband fibre pick up, router, network switch, roughly eight Alexas (lost count), some smart light-switches and sockets, sockets with USB sockets in them, a smart meter and heaven knows how many things on standby. All only a few watts each but I guess it adds up. Probably the biggest draw is a small weedy PC I use as a home server running Exchange for a load of email accounts. Anyway, when you add it all up that works out at about £560/year in electricity before you add standing charges and everything else, which would be fair enough if it was my total bill, but this is just the 'before you get started' amount. I was hoping for some comparisons, and knowing CodeProject is filled with the type of people who know exactly what their baseline energy usage is, thought I'd ask here. :)
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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With my 'smart' meter and a few days away from home, I've established that my ambient electricity use averages out at a constant 210w, by which I mean the amount of power I'm using not really do anything at all. There could be quite a few culprits - fridge-freezer, two security cameras, broadband fibre pick up, router, network switch, roughly eight Alexas (lost count), some smart light-switches and sockets, sockets with USB sockets in them, a smart meter and heaven knows how many things on standby. All only a few watts each but I guess it adds up. Probably the biggest draw is a small weedy PC I use as a home server running Exchange for a load of email accounts. Anyway, when you add it all up that works out at about £560/year in electricity before you add standing charges and everything else, which would be fair enough if it was my total bill, but this is just the 'before you get started' amount. I was hoping for some comparisons, and knowing CodeProject is filled with the type of people who know exactly what their baseline energy usage is, thought I'd ask here. :)
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I had a (so called) smart meter* but since it didn't tell me anything useful I switched it off. So I probably saved 50p a year. As to all those devices in your house :omg: - we have two laptops, and a router on the phone line. *I thought the actual meter was the smart bit.
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With my 'smart' meter and a few days away from home, I've established that my ambient electricity use averages out at a constant 210w, by which I mean the amount of power I'm using not really do anything at all. There could be quite a few culprits - fridge-freezer, two security cameras, broadband fibre pick up, router, network switch, roughly eight Alexas (lost count), some smart light-switches and sockets, sockets with USB sockets in them, a smart meter and heaven knows how many things on standby. All only a few watts each but I guess it adds up. Probably the biggest draw is a small weedy PC I use as a home server running Exchange for a load of email accounts. Anyway, when you add it all up that works out at about £560/year in electricity before you add standing charges and everything else, which would be fair enough if it was my total bill, but this is just the 'before you get started' amount. I was hoping for some comparisons, and knowing CodeProject is filled with the type of people who know exactly what their baseline energy usage is, thought I'd ask here. :)
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Rob Philpott wrote:
£560/year
Ha! At our old house, gas and electric combined was close to that per month! X| We're currently on a £100/month DD for electricity alone - no mains gas in these parts! - and it looks like we used around 350kWh in August, which is the only full month we've been here. On the plus side, we now have 20 solar panels, and we inherited the "feed-in tariff" which pays based on how much you generate rather than how much you feed back in to the national grid. During the summer months, it looks like we're generating over 480kWh per month, so they're paying us over £340/month for that. Which is nice. :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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I had a (so called) smart meter* but since it didn't tell me anything useful I switched it off. So I probably saved 50p a year. As to all those devices in your house :omg: - we have two laptops, and a router on the phone line. *I thought the actual meter was the smart bit.
And a fridge, and lots of other things which don't have a proper isolated off switch surely? I like the smart meter, I can look it at it shake my head and then wander around the house turning all the unused lights off grumbling as I go, like my dad used to.
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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Rob Philpott wrote:
£560/year
Ha! At our old house, gas and electric combined was close to that per month! X| We're currently on a £100/month DD for electricity alone - no mains gas in these parts! - and it looks like we used around 350kWh in August, which is the only full month we've been here. On the plus side, we now have 20 solar panels, and we inherited the "feed-in tariff" which pays based on how much you generate rather than how much you feed back in to the national grid. During the summer months, it looks like we're generating over 480kWh per month, so they're paying us over £340/month for that. Which is nice. :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
Richard Deeming wrote:
Ha! At our old house, gas and electric combined was close to that per month!
Ouch. That's serious.
Richard Deeming wrote:
so they're paying us over £570/month for that
That's insane, and quite interesting. I know a few people who have panels and the gist of it seems to be they can sell 1KWH for 10p or something, then buy it back later at 35p.
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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And a fridge, and lots of other things which don't have a proper isolated off switch surely? I like the smart meter, I can look it at it shake my head and then wander around the house turning all the unused lights off grumbling as I go, like my dad used to.
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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Richard Deeming wrote:
Ha! At our old house, gas and electric combined was close to that per month!
Ouch. That's serious.
Richard Deeming wrote:
so they're paying us over £570/month for that
That's insane, and quite interesting. I know a few people who have panels and the gist of it seems to be they can sell 1KWH for 10p or something, then buy it back later at 35p.
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Rob Philpott wrote:
I know a few people who have panels and the gist of it seems to be they can sell 1KWH for 10p or something, then buy it back later at 35p.
Yeah, the new FIT is not a patch on the one we inherited. :) As I said, we get paid for everything we generate, even if we don't export any back to the grid. And then we get paid an extra pittance for anything we do export, so if we don't use it all, we end up getting paid twice. It pays to buy a house from someone who was an early adopter. :D
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
-
With my 'smart' meter and a few days away from home, I've established that my ambient electricity use averages out at a constant 210w, by which I mean the amount of power I'm using not really do anything at all. There could be quite a few culprits - fridge-freezer, two security cameras, broadband fibre pick up, router, network switch, roughly eight Alexas (lost count), some smart light-switches and sockets, sockets with USB sockets in them, a smart meter and heaven knows how many things on standby. All only a few watts each but I guess it adds up. Probably the biggest draw is a small weedy PC I use as a home server running Exchange for a load of email accounts. Anyway, when you add it all up that works out at about £560/year in electricity before you add standing charges and everything else, which would be fair enough if it was my total bill, but this is just the 'before you get started' amount. I was hoping for some comparisons, and knowing CodeProject is filled with the type of people who know exactly what their baseline energy usage is, thought I'd ask here. :)
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Rob Philpott wrote:
fridge-freezer,
I would be surprised if the major user was not that. Especially if you do in fact have one of each. And the older it is the more likely it is that it uses more power. I believe you can buy a device that monitors it at the plug level. You plug it into the wall and the device plugs into that.
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Rob Philpott wrote:
£560/year
Ha! At our old house, gas and electric combined was close to that per month! X| We're currently on a £100/month DD for electricity alone - no mains gas in these parts! - and it looks like we used around 350kWh in August, which is the only full month we've been here. On the plus side, we now have 20 solar panels, and we inherited the "feed-in tariff" which pays based on how much you generate rather than how much you feed back in to the national grid. During the summer months, it looks like we're generating over 480kWh per month, so they're paying us over £340/month for that. Which is nice. :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
You sure about
so they''re paying us over £570/month
? Your numbers don't look too different to mine (if I pro-rata them for the fact that I have a smaller array) but my payment only comes once every three months - not monthly. I guess you may have a much better deal than I, but three-fold? Better not hit "Send" on that super-yacht order quite yet . . .
Treading on the toes of giants . . .
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You sure about
so they''re paying us over £570/month
? Your numbers don't look too different to mine (if I pro-rata them for the fact that I have a smaller array) but my payment only comes once every three months - not monthly. I guess you may have a much better deal than I, but three-fold? Better not hit "Send" on that super-yacht order quite yet . . .
Treading on the toes of giants . . .
Sorry, I mis-read the dates on the statement. It was actually for 2½ months, so just over £340/month. Still not a bad little perk though. :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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Sorry, I mis-read the dates on the statement. It was actually for 2½ months, so just over £340/month. Still not a bad little perk though. :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
Phew. For a moment I was worried that I got signed up to a really bad deal. At least it will cover your standing charge, with some left over. Just in case anyone else has read this far and is still interested, Richard and Rob's observation that the current deals are much worse than the ones offered in the past is spot on.
Treading on the toes of giants . . .
