Energy Prices - are they taking the piss???



Stuff I’ve started doing is
Turning the tv off if I’m not watching it
Washing dishes by hand ,
No more oven on three different times . we either eat the same or it all goes in together at the same time.
Using the tumble dryer as a last resort and hanging stuff on the line again .
All of the above has been extremely easy to do and I’m sure there are loads more I can do in the winter like turning the temp down a couple of degrees .
 
palm 1 said:
Stuff I’ve started doing is
Turning the tv off if I’m not watching it
Washing dishes by hand ,
No more oven on three different times . we either eat the same or it all goes in together at the same time.
Using the tumble dryer as a last resort and hanging stuff on the line again .
All of the above has been extremely easy to do and I’m sure there are loads more I can do in the winter like turning the temp down a couple of degrees .
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Uses more water, you can't win on some things!
I've started using smaller top oven instead of main oven for small quantities.
Turned mine down to 18 from 20 and knocked £35 of my bill in Feb (highest bill of year) from £155 to £120.
 
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palm 1 said:
A bowl of water must be cheaper than the electricity to use a dishwasher
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Didn't say it was, we have a problem with water shortages in this country as well was my point. Next time my dishwasher goes on I'll check electricity usage (if I remember 🤔).
 
den said:
Maybe more emphasis should be put into reducing peoples usage, lots of people do waste energy.
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The emphasis should be on reducing gas usage for energy in the UK. There should be a big push for renewable energy now, not 10 years time. It's the only way to get out of this long term.

National Grid: Live Status - When were using 55% gas to power energy in the UK, the price won't go down.

Until then, caps are the way forward even if it costs more; take the pain now, win in the future - look at the bigger picture.

It's better than spending money buying gas power stations, which we should be making redundant ASAP imo.
 
palm 1 said:
A bowl of water must be cheaper than the electricity to use a dishwasher
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Depends on how your hot water gets heated - full dishwasher is equivalent of several loads handwashed as it uses lots less water than hand-washing for the equivalent amount of dishes, so if you're using a combi boiler which is heating water from scratch for hand-washing that can be less efficient. But I suspect its marginal either way and things like not using the tumbledryer and turning the thermostat down will save loads.

Although their methods were counter-productive, Insulate Britain really did have a point.
 
Scorer said:
I think they tend to adjust the DD if you’re in substantial credit but usually it’s quite high, money in their bank being seen as better than your bank although I think ovo were paying 5% interest on accounts in credit and had a maximum limit of 1.5k.
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They took the money this morning. Good job she didn't spend it on something else 😀😀
 
brir said:
Isn't using the microwave to heat up say soup or beans cheaper than the hob?
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It's not straight forward.
If you're heating something substantial, like a full tin of soup or beans, a gas hob is cheapest, then electric hob, then microwave.

Gas is cheapest because, although it's only 50% efficient, gas is 25% of the cost of electricity, so you may use twice the energy, but it's still half the cost.
Electric hob is much more efficient, but you do need to heat the pan and hob, as well as the soup.
Microwave is less efficient because an 800W microwave oven is giving out 800W of microwave energy, but the oven will consume around 1200W of power to generate that 800W of microwaves.

For small items, like the 150ml of water in a small cup of tea, the microwave becomes cheaper than the hob because only the water gets heated in the microvave, there's no need to heat the pan as well, and, for small quantities, heating the pan becomes more significant than heating the contents.


The margins are quite small.
To boil 1 litre of water consumes about 0.1 units of electricity. At 27p/unit that's 2.7p per litre, or about 1p for your 400g tin of beans.
So, even at today's prices, you could heat your tin of beans for a penny on an electric hob, or a bit over a penny in the microwave.
It's better to concentrate on savings elsewhere.
 

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