How much electricity do you use?? (Am I mad)

[b0rn2sk8]

Led light strips are more like 5w/meter, I can’t remember how many bulbs it is typically a meter but it’s quite a lot, perhaps 40, if not more.

 

[Puzzled]

Even better, tell her my 18 month old's room gets as low as 11 degrees on a very cold night. We have a thermostatic oil heater in there two which I have programmed to come on at intervals. He's yet to die of hypothermia.

Is the nursery in the garage or something? 11 degrees is a bit extreme for a bedroom, I lived in a place with terrible insulation that went down to about 13 and that was pretty miserable.


Need to have a look at our energy use as well, got a bit lazy with leaving things on and I know the price rises are going to hurt. It's surprising how much even low powered devices add up when left on 24/7.

 

[katie279]

Led light strips are more like 5w/meter, I can’t remember how many bulbs it is typically a meter but it’s quite a lot, perhaps 40, if not more.

Yep, does vary a little based on density, but I think mine were 14.4W per metre (fairly high density) - think about 20m running at the top and back of all clothing units and six LEDs. Pretty low usage I'd say in the scale of things - have a sensor that turns them on when I enter the dressing room and switches them off after ten minutes of inactivity.

Re UK energy - don't get me started. Did electrical engineering at uni around 2000 and recall lecturer stressing that nuclear was the only cost effective grid option and that if we didn't urgently shift towards it, we'd have sky high bills by 2020.... Well he was two years off.....

 

[dl8860]

Yep, does vary a little based on density, but I think mine were 14.4W per metre (fairly high density) - think about 20m running at the top and back of all clothing units and six LEDs. Pretty low usage I'd say in the scale of things - have a sensor that turns them on when I enter the dressing room and switches them off after ten minutes of inactivity.

Re UK energy - don't get me started. Did electrical engineering at uni around 2000 and recall lecturer stressing that nuclear was the only cost effective grid option and that if we didn't urgently shift towards it, we'd have sky high bills by 2020.... Well he was two years off.....

Yeah fair enough, those strip lights sounds fine.

Couldn't agree more on nuclear. Even though I'm a big proponent of wind too, it is just so so maddening how many governments are steering away from it.

 

[theone8181]

Yeah fair enough, those strip lights sounds fine.

Couldn't agree more on nuclear. Even though I'm a big proponent of wind too, it is just so so maddening how many governments are steering away from it.

They should stick a turbine on the houses of parliament, plenty of hot air to power it there. I guess the issue with nuclear is always the NIMBY approach, and I suspect slot of it is to do with Chernobyl.

 

[katie279]

Yeah agree - wind has loads of advantages for the UK, but we should see it more as a cash cow, rather than a source of energy - much like we'd never agree to have wind as our source of house energy. One of the key facets of grid supply is stability, not volume, so if you take the total annual supply level, you can only use the absolute minimum (to avoid brown outs/grid collapse), so something highly volatile and geographically consistent like wind (ie when the wind is very strong, it's usually the same across the whole country) isn't that useful as an energy base.

If we'd gone heavy on nuclear with wind - we'd have a order of magnitude lower cost of energy, plus we'd all be laughing on windy days as we export energy like the Norwegians with oil.

Not entirely sure re the NIMBYism, certainly up in Anglesey, people are crying out for it (the local economy has depended on it) - agree some sites are more controversial, but think the PR is terrible - much like if we used Russian Soviet deaths to justify whether we should use cars, aircraft, mines etc etc. Having a failed state as an example of anything is a strange baseline - whereas complete car crashes like Fukushima show we should be far more terrified of evacuation procedures than radiation....

https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima

<off my soap box>

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Don’t worry the nimbys around here (East Anglia) are even protesting the off shore wind too. Firstly it’s spoiled the view, then it was bad for the environment etc etc.

They are even protesting the route of the onshore grid connector because of the ‘environment’. It’s a 6m wide trench they are digging to bury it, would they prefer it on pylons? Nope. Then they started going on about the EM radiation impacting his health, at that point I was done.

 

[throwaway4372]

Inspired by this thread I decided to turn monitor sleep on. I saw your other threads about it not working properly, and I can +1 that. My monitor usually does turn off, but...
- Some programs prevent it from turning off (e.g. WhatsApp Desktop).
- Sometimes it turns back on by itself for no apparent reason.

 

[katie279]

Hmm, still can't get mine working - switches off fine, just can't turn my monitor on again! Just have to hard reset which means everything I haven't saved is lost!

I don't know of there's some BIOS setting I've tweaked to turn off recognising mouse/keyboard movements or something... Maddening!

 

[b0rn2sk8]

An old gigabyte board I had wouldn’t take from sleep, I managed to fix it with a bios update in the end.

 

[Gammawolf]

Don't know if its been mentioned but you can buy a power meter for really cheap and measure average power usage of anything with a plug to get an idea of power use. Looking at power figures on labels can be misleading as it depends on what the device is doing and its load. For instance a "2kW" oil heater may not use that power all the time, that is typically peak power that it'll use on cold start up and lower down to once it gets to temp.

You usage does seem high though i'm in a 4/5 bedroom house (2000sqft) with 2 adults and a child, i have a dehumidifer on in a cloak room, a fairly beefy server, vmware server, and intel nuc, networking kit - all on 24/7. My work setup on most the day, gaming pc on in the evening and weekend, 6+ monitors, TV, amp, subwoofer, several desktop speakers, 10+ alexa devices on/onstandby when not in use. 2x printers on standby when not in use. We are not particually effective at turning off lights, bathrooms with powerful extractor fans that have over runs so are probably on for an hour or two a day. A light out the front of the house that on all night, several lights in the hallways on all night. The shower my and my wife use is a power shower so has a large pump that drives it. We're typically stay at home people so spend a lot of time in the house. Theres probably a few other bits but all that is a yearly usage of around 6000-7000kWh. One thing we do avoid though is any form of direct heating activity with electricity (electric heaters, clothers dryers, immersion heaters etc).

 

[Semple]

They should stick a turbine on the houses of parliament, plenty of hot air to power it there. I guess the issue with nuclear is always the NIMBY approach, and I suspect slot of it is to do with Chernobyl.

One way to combat NIMBYism is to offer extremely cheap tariffs to the local community. I'm talking like 10-20% of cap. I bet you'd have communities racing to sign up.

 

[sovietspybob]

Yeah agree - wind has loads of advantages for the UK, but we should see it more as a cash cow, rather than a source of energy - much like we'd never agree to have wind as our source of house energy. One of the key facets of grid supply is stability, not volume, so if you take the total annual supply level, you can only use the absolute minimum (to avoid brown outs/grid collapse), so something highly volatile and geographically consistent like wind (ie when the wind is very strong, it's usually the same across the whole country) isn't that useful as an energy base.

If we'd gone heavy on nuclear with wind - we'd have a order of magnitude lower cost of energy, plus we'd all be laughing on windy days as we export energy like the Norwegians with oil.

Not entirely sure re the NIMBYism, certainly up in Anglesey, people are crying out for it (the local economy has depended on it) - agree some sites are more controversial, but think the PR is terrible - much like if we used Russian Soviet deaths to justify whether we should use cars, aircraft, mines etc etc. Having a failed state as an example of anything is a strange baseline - whereas complete car crashes like Fukushima show we should be far more terrified of evacuation procedures than radiation....

https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima

<off my soap box>

I work in the nuclear sector and as you say up here on Anglesey people are crying out for new build, there's a very loud vocal minority though which are against it and they seem to get disproportionate attention, especially when they seem mostly concerned about some new pylons. Whenever i tell people where i work 99% of the time they'll go on to say 'i wish they'd build another one there', yeah me too buddy

There does seem to be far more bad feeling about the off shore wind projects in the area compared to nuclear.

 

[katie279]

An old gigabyte board I had wouldn’t take from sleep, I managed to fix it with a bios update in the end.

Hmm, not a bad idea - can't say I've update bios at all - it's not a particularly old one (3 years), but will give it a try this weekend

 

[katie279]

I work in the nuclear sector and as you say up here on Anglesey people are crying out for new build, there's a very loud vocal minority though which are against it and they seem to get disproportionate attention, especially when they seem mostly concerned about some new pylons. Whenever i tell people where i work 99% of the time they'll go on to say 'i wish they'd build another one there', yeah me too buddy

There does seem to be far more bad feeling about the off shore wind projects in the area compared to nuclear.

Agree entirely - nuclear wins in many other dimensions too - eg high tech, long term job creation - so is vital for areas like Anglesey who really have little else. I can see the argument on windfarms given how much of the landscape they need to cover to not even get close to a single nuclear plant, so can see the 'eyesore'/destruction of habitat argument. Think they look quite graceful to me, but at least can see the logic.

I can see Elon Musk's argument of 'if we just taught people how to think', it'd improve a lot of this nonsense...

 

[theone8181]

I work in the nuclear sector and as you say up here on Anglesey people are crying out for new build, there's a very loud vocal minority though which are against it and they seem to get disproportionate attention, especially when they seem mostly concerned about some new pylons. Whenever i tell people where i work 99% of the time they'll go on to say 'i wish they'd build another one there', yeah me too buddy

There does seem to be far more bad feeling about the off shore wind projects in the area compared to nuclear.

It's always the case that those who shout loudest get the most attention (which does normally seem to be the smallest group). I guess the issue with nuclear is its very alow to build one, and it requires planning and forethought something which government and councils seem to lack.

 

[sovietspybob]

It's always the case that those who shout loudest get the most attention (which does normally seem to be the smallest group). I guess the issue with nuclear is its very alow to build one, and it requires planning and forethought something which government and councils seem to lack.

Yeah the frustrating thing is they spent years and years and million upon millions of pounds buying up land, houses etc and doing years of earth works, boreholes, blast tests, mapping, surveying, improvement plans for all the local roads etc etc for the government to just dither so much that the consortium ran out of money and patience and canned the whole thing even though everything was all lined up for construction to start

 

[mid_gen]

I used 3,686 kwh in 2021....and I worked from home with a ridiculous dual xeon workstation heating the place all year, lights on, everything on standy rather than switched off etc.

15k is bonkers...

 

[john_smith]

If you've got an EV being charged most days and you're not really paying attention to your usage then 15k is very easy i'd say.

I run a *very* tight ship here and JS Towers and did 1100units in December. I have an EV and heat my water with electric. I have solar and in December generated 90units. I appreiciate December is a dark cold month but those figures x 12 months would get me to 14,280 units annually.

I fitted a Tesla PW2 at the end of November, this holds 13.5 units. It charges via solar and will also charge from the grid intelligently if you've got a cheap rate. For example Octopus Go.

The last 5 days have been the 1st real period of sun since I had the PW2 fitted. The financial numbers are really encouraging.



Yep, 44p a day cost to run the house. It will only get cheaper when it's sunnier.

Hot water cost me 24p a day. It will only get cheaper when it's sunnier.

101.6 units went into the car. At the current economy it's costing me £0.016 a mile. Once it's not freezing the economy should slightly increase.

TLDR - If you can afford it get Solar + Tesla PW2 + an EV + Octopus Go. Based on the last 5 days i'll be close to £5k annually better off.

 

[theone8181]

I don't yhink you would, I reckon doing 10k miles a year with and electric car might double my house usage to 6Mwh tops.