Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

Surveyor said:
If you're on the Energy Price Guarantee prices the standing charges alone are roughly £18-£24/month depending where you live. Would you care to eleborate on how you use so little energy?
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SDK^ said:
As the others above noted - that monthly cost for energy just about covers the standing charges.
-> Either you're on a super cheap fixed deal from a couple of years ago still, or, are on current tariff rates and using no energy, or you have your use & costings wrong with your supplier, or possibly have solar powering and heating everything !?!

Which one is it ? :p
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I was confused as well so I just logged into my account and checked - my November energy bill is actually £89.83 but then the HM Government Discount Energy Bills Support Scheme adds £66 into my account each month which reduced the bill down to just £23.83.

No I'm not on a fixed deal and I dont have solar power either.
 
Curlyriff said:
Aye working on the 5950x and 6900xt with a 34" 1440p HDR monitor is pulling 175watt to 200watt and when gaming about 250watt so not awful and deffo cheaper than travel for work but yeah adds up quick. Will be more so for those thet need hesting on whilst WFH too which I don't have.
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bensonchi said:
My wife work from home and use my old gaming as office PC, I am seriously thinking of building a more up to date PC for her as I see a 5-6 kwh more when she is at home. She works 8am till 8pm on her PC daily.
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Just for comparison have 2 systems both on default settings / windows balanced power system 1 an old i5-4570s, 12GB ram ATI 5450 couple of SSD’s and 2 dell U2412 24inch monitors uses total between 75 – 85 watts / Monitors on standby power drops to 45 watts.

Other system Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G 32GB ram couple of SSD’s and 2 dell U2412 24inch monitors uses between 85 – 95 watts / monitors on standby drops it to 55 watts.

Interestingly on both systems enabling a second monitor only adds roughly half the power usage of the first monitor even though they are both identical settings is that a windows thing primary always uses more?
 
Curlyriff said:
To note that even if I had a laptop with say a 3080 to do my work the power drawer is more like 150watt. That is a much larger amount to the claimed 30watt. A laptop ideals around that or for basic office or Web browsing.
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I didn't specifically quote you and say your machine used 30w, it was just a general statement that most peoples WFH machine will be around that. The reality is that WFH usage is quite low since most jobs can be done on a standard laptop. Standard laptops now days even have quite good performance for a lot of CAD related activites as long as they are speced with enough RAM. In my last place most our Autodesk users had slightly beefed up standard laptops (basically modern laptop i7s with more RAM and large renders were done on the cloud). Obviously you are are outlier with a full desktop for WFH with discrete graphics and will use more energy because of it.. even with that higher end usage i suspect for most people its cheaper to work from home than any kind of travel arrangements unless you lived within walking distance to work - in which case unless you actually want exercise, the time taken to walk is probably not worth the 70p saving, and you have your cost for shoe wear to take into account :p.

For reference my work laptop, docking station, webcam, headset and 2x 1080p screens "idles" at around 45w with common ms office apps, web browser, few other IT related tools (like putty, rdp tools etc) and several management tools/portals open. Lets round up to average 55w to account for burst usage when open apps, heavier loads etc, which for me is 0.44kWh for one work day of 8 hours. Others will even manage much less if they aren't using dual monitors and a dock.
 
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Gammawolf said:
I didn't specifically quote you and say your machine used 30w, it was just a general statement that most peoples WFH machine will be around that. The reality is that WFH usage is quite low since most jobs can be done on a standard laptop. Standard laptops now days even have quite good performance for a lot of CAD related activites as long as they are speced with enough RAM. In my last place most our Autodesk users had slightly beefed up standard laptops (basically modern laptop i7s with more RAM and large renders were done on the cloud). Obviously you are are outlier with a full desktop for WFH with discrete graphics and will use more energy because of it.. even with that higher end usage i suspect for most people its cheaper to work from home than any kind of travel arrangements unless you lived within walking distance to work - in which case unless you actually want exercise, the time taken to walk is probably not worth the 70p saving, and you have your cost for shoe wear to take into account :p.

For reference my work laptop, docking station, webcam, headset and 2x 1080p screens "idles" at around 45w with common ms office apps, web browser, few other IT related tools (like putty, rdp tools etc) and several management tools/portals open. Lets round up to average 55w to account for burst usage when open apps, heavier loads etc, which for me is 0.44kWh for one work day of 8 hours. Others might even manage much less if they aren't using dual monitors and a dock.
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Sorry was just following order of messages so looked like reply too.

That fair but at the last three companies they have all been desktop. The cost difference of the laptop to the desktop for relative spec is almost double so our remit is to still provide towers and monitors for people.

But yeah Lumion rendering and VR capture and such we do generally means we better for those users to further pay for a higher end system that no laptop generally achieves but I do conceide course that a large number of WFH users could have a basic laptop at much lower usage. These are done by local users though rather than cloud because lumion is relatively fast, it just needs some solid horsepower.
 
Dutch777 said:
Just for comparison have 2 systems both on default settings / windows balanced power system 1 an old i5-4570s, 12GB ram ATI 5450 couple of SSD’s and 2 dell U2412 24inch monitors uses total between 75 – 85 watts / Monitors on standby power drops to 45 watts.

Other system Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G 32GB ram couple of SSD’s and 2 dell U2412 24inch monitors uses between 85 – 95 watts / monitors on standby drops it to 55 watts.

Interestingly on both systems enabling a second monitor only adds roughly half the power usage of the first monitor even though they are both identical settings is that a windows thing primary always uses more?
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If I'm just doing base Revit and outlook open I'm down to under 100watt but it very rare I'm doing that and my machine isn't on standby aloat at all because it's either I'm working or it's off completely with it switched off at socket at wall even.
 
All I use now bar a couple of hours a week when the gaming rig is on is an Intel NUC 8i3.
uses very little power, (12-22w)

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MonkeyBasher said:
Its 17 degrees outside in Manchester at the moment. The people wracking up massive bills are those with the heating on for no reason trying to maintain 21 degrees inside while they sit there in a tshirt. Ive not had my (gas) heating on at all so far and with the subsidy being applied to my electric EON dropped my DD down to £6.50 a month.
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A lot of them on MSE.
 
Kelt said:
Jeebus, that's £200 more than I pay for 12 months!
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Don’t even go there. The house is a sieve, less so since I’ve started insulating it better and fixing things, my biggest issue is the fact that I can’t not put the heating on, my parents are elderly they need the heat. And old houses don’t like being cold and damp. I’m confident my real usage, whilst still high, is circa 450 a month in the winter months.

Next step is to move house. It will be cheaper in the long run, either that or invest in solar and external insulation
 
Don't forget working from home mean making breakfast, lunch and dinner at home. Boiling kettle for tea/coffee etc. All adds up I guess? Still cheaper than paying the train fare and lunch and dinner out in the city.
 
bensonchi said:
Don't forget working from home mean making breakfast, lunch and dinner at home. Boiling kettle for tea/coffee etc. All adds up I guess? Still cheaper than paying the train fare and lunch and dinner out in the city.
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Way cheaper, I would need to use an extra 66kWh per day to cover the cost of daily commute. Not to mention the 3.5 hours of commute time I don't need to endure.
 
bensonchi said:
Don't forget working from home mean making breakfast, lunch and dinner at home. Boiling kettle for tea/coffee etc. All adds up I guess? Still cheaper than paying the train fare and lunch and dinner out in the city.
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I'd have breakfast and dinner at home regardless and my lunch would be the same if I was working from home or the office. I don't drink hot drinks but yes, I get some do but if you only boil what you need it really doesn't move the meter that much. How many cups of tea/coffee does one actually drink when at work?

It's the heating that is the main point of contention but unless you live really close to work, it still probably will not be cheaper to go to the office.

Just on the buying lunch out thing, it actually boggles my mind how much some of my colleagues spend on buying sandwiches and coffee when they are at work. Just a sandwich in Pret is nigh on £6 these days, like hell am I paying that on the daily. I don't think I spend that much on lunch for the work week.
 
I had massive argument with Bulb yesterday.

They want to increase my DD to £140 per month. My total gas and electric usage in September was £70, in October it was £76. Then they get £66 from the government so my net cost is around £10 per month but they want to take £140 from me.

They refused to lower the cost because they said they want my account in credit (it is already in credit). I asked why are they taking my money and earning interest on it for something I'm not using!

I demanded to speak to a manager and they refused. I then threatened to report them to ofgem (doing so means they are charged £500 by the ombudsman for the complaint). They then put me through to a manager who agreed to put me on a variable DD so now I will only be charged for what I use ie around £10 pm.

I told my friend about this today and she said Bulb had also put her dd upto to £140 pm and she is currently £700 in credit!

Bulb are just scam artists
 
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rumple9 said:
I had massive argument with Bulb yesterday.

They want to increase my DD to £140 per month. My total gas and electric usage in September was £70, in September it was £76. Then they get £66 from the government so my net cost is around £10 per month but they want to take £140 from me.

They refused to lower the cost because they said they want my account in credit (it is already in credit). I asked why are they taking my money and earning interest on it for something I'm not using!

I demanded to speak to a manager and they refused. I then threatened to report them to ofgem (doing so means they are charged £500 by the ombudsman for the complaint). They then put me through to a manager who agreed to put me on a variable DD so now I will only be charged for what I use ie around £10 pm.

I told my friend about this today and she said Bulb had also put her dd upto to £140 pm and she is currently £700 in credit!

Bulb are just scam artists
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A lot are refusing to give money back aswell when requested.

Somewhere along the line it's been forgotten that it's OUR money not theirs and if we request it or the DD to be lowered then it's our right to do so.

Good on you for standing your ground.
 
Yeah we're in credit on gas and electricity with BG, like you say, that's sat in their account earning interest at the very least.
 
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