Caporegime
- Joined
- 7 Apr 2008
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Who's there?
Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)
- Thread starter DXP55
- Start date
Time to cut your neighbours supply off I’d have thought.
I honestly agreed with you until I had a sparky come round and check from the meter feed, I have no idea where the figures come from, aside from cooking, hot water and washing machines my background usage is this:
it's only that high because I run a server for various remote access programs, VPN etc..
here was the first quote, which was hilarious:
then they changed the punchline to this
I live on my own, my old direct debit was £100, how on earth are people supposed to afford these increases, asking for all my friends
I’d advise your friends to turn off the mining rig’s and heat lamps
Pence per hour isn’t the greatest measuring stick. Set it too kWh rather than cost per hour.
That figure is absolutely ridiculous though something isn’t quite right. Do you have a gas supply or are you just electric?
That figure is absolutely ridiculous though something isn’t quite right. Do you have a gas supply or are you just electric?
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Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Oct 2006
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- 3,636
You should change the display to power usage, from 13p an hour you background usage is around 430watts which is high but running a beefy server 24 by 7 is going to cost a lot might be worth calculating if it's cheaper to pay for a server in the cloud with a low powered device in the house for the VPN.
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yeah sadly it's essential I already have lots of servers in AWS and Azure, I've had a server like it for years, so I still can't see where those figures come from
Soldato
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- 23 May 2006
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zero peak................... so for instance yesterday my solar generated around 6kwh. that combined with my battery took me upto 9:30pm before hitting the grid to recharge (and that included 1 washing machine run as well as 4hrs heated clothes airer powered by the sun. I also sold 1kwh to the grid. (4p wooohoo, the beers are on me
). I live near cambridge which is one of the sunnier parts of the uk i believe.however i should have kept my mouth shut... last night our 6 year old had an accident and weed the bed. meant having to wash and dry winter duvet, pillow, all bedsheets as well as the reusable wee mat (which unfortunaltly he was only half lying on.
after all that washing (3 loads) and drying in tumble drier our battery was flat at 8:30am and typically it is dull so far today and the solar has not woken up yet. Already taken 1kwh from the grid and its not even 10am yet
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Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
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find an existing octopus customer and get them to refer you. am sure you have a friend or summat who is with them. you both get £50 then
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Mar 2004
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- 15,985
- Location
- Fareham
I honestly agreed with you until I had a sparky come round and check from the meter feed, I have no idea where the figures come from, aside from cooking, hot water and washing machines my background usage is this:
it's only that high because I run a server for various remote access programs, VPN etc..
You have a smart meter, so your current provider should let you see online how much you use for per day, month etc. You can work it out and compare to their estimates.
Change the meter to watts because if the meter is showing priced in £s and you have the wrong price in the IHD it will be wrong full stop.
Check how much power your server uses and put the figures into a cost calculator.
Electricity Calculator
Free electricity calculator to estimate electricity usage as well as cost based on the power requirements and usage of appliances.
www.calculator.net
Something pulling a few hundred watts 24/7 will cost a lot now.
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Mar 2004
- Posts
- 15,985
- Location
- Fareham
zero peak................... so for instance yesterday my solar generated around 6kwh. that combined with my battery took me upto 9:30pm before hitting the grid to recharge (and that included 1 washing machine run as well as 4hrs heated clothes airer powered by the sun. I also sold 1kwh to the grid. (4p wooohoo, the beers are on me
however i should have kept my mouth shut... last night our 6 year old had an accident and weed the bed. meant having to wash and dry winter duvet, pillow, all bedsheets as well as the reusable wee mat (which unfortunaltly he was only half lying on.
after all that washing (3 loads) and drying in tumble drier our battery was flat at 8:30am and typically it is dull so far today and the solar has not woken up yet. Already taken 1kwh from the grid and its not even 10am yet
Get the lad onto the treadmill to charge that battery back up
I'm still charging my batteries via solar; sun is still covering it all.
November I'll need to use the grid to supplement the solar, only 1.5kw solar connected and 14.4kWh battery.
Changing from a electric cooker to a gas one(propane) made it way, way easier to last on batteries.
Only use off peak from the grid 9.30pm-2.30am
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Check how much power your server uses and put the figures into a cost calculator.
Electricity Calculator
Free electricity calculator to estimate electricity usage as well as cost based on the power requirements and usage of appliances.
Something pulling a few hundred watts 24/7 will cost a lot now.
126w, during the summer it ramps up the fans a bit but it rarely sees anything over 200w
I'm going hunting for the source of the drain, thanks for the advice regarding changing the meter from £ to W
Soldato
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- 25 Mar 2004
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- 15,985
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- Fareham
Based on my usage profile and solar/battery I think I'll start to see more grid usage in peak time creep in as well starting in November.
At the moment, with 4.8kwp and 8.2kwh battery, I am Ok for pretty much solar/off-peak all day long as long as I generate at least a few kwh in the day, about 5-6 is comfortable enough.
On a bad winters day when generation is like 1kwh or less, then the battery will probably run out at some point in the evening.
I can’t run purely off solar at the minute, I only generated 6.2kw yesterday which would barely cover usage yet alone fill the battery. I don’t like running the battery empty due to degradation if I can help it. I’m happy as long as I’m only paying off peak cost that’ll do me fine.
If you can change from an electric cooker, not use an electric shower, now we use the bath shower using the immersion water heated off peak.
Living off the battery is easy for our usage (no kids at home).
Will be charging the batt from off peak only over the winter months, come late Feb solar will cover everything again.
If you're willing to change your usage and usage pattern it will save you a small fortune on the right tariff.
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Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Mar 2004
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- 15,985
- Location
- Fareham
I do make heavy use of off-peak import in combo with the solar though and have done in September, otherwise it would probably run out more often. I'm hoping Octopus generate my October bill soon so I can see how I did on units used and peak/off-peak quantities.
Electric cooker no not really, I could go down to an air-fryer instead but solar pretty nicely covers the big air-fryer (regular oven) most of the year I think, benefit is minimal. don't really want to mess about with stuff like propane.
Combi boiler for CH and hot water so that covers the shower and things anyway
0.3m3 of gas per day for just regular shower and a bit of hot water apparently, or about 3.5 kwh of gas per day baseline, more in winter with CH usage.
Electric cooker no not really, I could go down to an air-fryer instead but solar pretty nicely covers the big air-fryer (regular oven) most of the year I think, benefit is minimal. don't really want to mess about with stuff like propane.
Combi boiler for CH and hot water so that covers the shower and things anyway
0.3m3 of gas per day for just regular shower and a bit of hot water apparently, or about 3.5 kwh of gas per day baseline, more in winter with CH usage.
here was the first quote, which was hilarious:
then they changed the punchline to this
I live on my own, my old direct debit was £100, how on earth are people supposed to afford these increases, asking for all my friends
The quote looks fine based on a 12300 kWh usage a year. However that usage is insane for one person unless you are using electric to heat space/water, in which case good luck
. If gas isn't an option and a heat pump is too expensive then you could go down the route of split air con unit (Air con units are heat pumps and most will work in reverse so effectively an air to air sourced heat pump), which should pay for itself fairly quickly given electric costs. For refernce the quotes usage is assuming you will be using an average of 1.4kWh of electric every hour for an entire year.I also run several servers 24/7 in a 3 person household and am expecting an electric usage of around 3000kWh a year (heating and hob done by gas)
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