Energy saving for the terminally dim

[Rolfe]

I was going to post this in someone else's thread, but then realised it would be an unjustifiable hijack. The story of how to get an electric car but make so much saving elsewhere that you find yourself in credit to the tune of £800 without a wall box or variable tariff.

I was paying no attention at all to my electricity usage until the beginning of this year, when my previous contract came to an end and the price went up. Even then, though, all I did was try to economise a bit. I had never had a properly working smart meter - although it communicated my usage to Scottish Power, its display to me didn't work. So I had no idea, and I just turned on what I wanted, when I wanted. I think this behaviour was a rebellion against a childhood where my mother was always telling me to put lights off to save electricity and getting bent out of shape if I had to put on an electric radiator to do my piano practice in a cold room. I could afford the bills, so what the hell.

However, I've now got the Scottish Power app on my phone and I'm paying attention.

I now realise that my electricity consumption in the few years up to the end of 2022 was astronomical, and I think for a very specific reason. My sitting room is large and needs a bit of a heating boost over and above the central heating. My LPG living flame gas fire is currently out of service. I was turning on a small fan heater willy-nilly to compensate. I was also leaving a fan greenhouse heater on in the conservatory to coddle the plants. Both of these seem small and innocuous, but they burn a lot of electricity. Far more than I realised. Mother was right.

I realise that one of these devices is burning as much electricity as the car on the granny charger. When the heater is on, usage is sitting around 1.2 to 1.4 KWh. The car on the granny charger putters around 1.2 KWh. The only real difference is that if the room gets up to temperature the heater will cycle off/on. That's an if, not a when.

My central heating is oil fired, and I got a new boiler in 2019 which is a lot more efficient than the old one. Although oil has also gone up in price, as far as I can see it's more efficient to turn the temperature of the central heating up a degree or two in the evening if necessary than to use these fan heaters. I use the heaters very sparingly now. In the past it wasn't all that uncommon for me to go to bed, forgetting to turn off the one in the living room. I'd notice in the morning because the room was really cosy. I think I've done it once in the first half of this year.

So this is more an indictment of how profligate I was before, but actually, I can more than cover the cost of charging the car simply by ceasing to be an idiot with a couple of fan heaters.

As a post-script, I had to call the electrician out this morning because a faulty light fitting had fused a circuit in the house. All fixed, and while he was working I mentioned the granny charger to him - he was walking past it in the garage to get to the back entrance anyway. He said that it would require simultaneous failure of several safety devices for anything untoward to happen with that. There's a 13A fuse in the plug, there's a circuit-breaker protecting the circuit in the garage, and I think other fail-safe features. Also, the garage is a cool cavern, even in summer, allowing any heating in the plug to dissipate efficiently. He was completely relaxed about the set-up.

 

[siteguru]

Interesting stuff. FWIW I think this (like your Car/Pet thread) will get moved to the General Chat board as it's not specifically abut the MG4.

General Chat Forum

Talking about anything you want

www.mgevs.com

 

[Rolfe]

Fair enough. It did occur to me after I posted it that I should probably have started it there.

(I thought I did start the car/pet thread there. Was it moved? I hadn't realised.)

 

[Tig170]

I was going to post this in someone else's thread, but then realised it would be an unjustifiable hijack. The story of how to get an electric car but make so much saving elsewhere that you find yourself in credit to the tune of £800 without a wall box or variable tariff.

Bizarrely, we had something similar, after moaning to the electric company (as they couldn’t initially get my smart meter to connect to their network for 6 months), once it was working they put us on direct debit – whole amount, so we get an actual monthly bill on the same date every month, and they take the exact bill – 14 days later (or that’s what they tell us, only the account is so still much in credit, I haven’t had a bill for over 6 months.) We’re on oil, and its almost down to 50p / litre, which we haven’t seen for 1-2 years?

 

[Rolfe]

I noticed that my Smart meter had taken a reading at midnight that hadn't been applied yet, so I applied it, then followed the recommendation to reduce my DD, and from paying £225 I'm now on just under £180/month.

I actually wanted a bill for what I had used, when I moved on to DD, but they said no way no can do, has to be this way. I had always paid for usage, but by cheque. Then when I went on a 10-week cruise I had to shift a lot of things to DD or else I would have been in trouble for non-payment when I got back. It's convenient, but it uses inertia to trap you in their system.

I've lost out a bit on the oil. If it's now at 50p a litre I don't know about it, because my supplier came and did their routine tank-fill just over a month ago and I was charged 96p. I've hardly used any of it, and indeed they haven't even taken the SO off yet, which I think will be about £550. So I'm sitting here with a tank full of expensive oil, paid for, that I probably won't really start to use until autumn! Annoying, but hopefully it will all even out in the end.

 

[Tig170]

I actually wanted a bill for what I had used, when I moved on to DD, but they said no way no can do, has to be this way. I had always paid for usage, but by cheque. Then when I went on a 10-week cruise I had to shift a lot of things to DD or else I would have been in trouble for non-payment when I got back. It's convenient, but it uses inertia to trap you in their system.

I've lost out a bit on the oil. If it's now at 50p a litre I don't know about it, because my supplier came and did their routine tank-fill just over a month ago and I was charged 96p. I've hardly used any of it, and indeed they haven't even taken the SO off yet, which I think will be about £550. So I'm sitting here with a tank full of expensive oil, paid for, that I probably won't really start to use until autumn! Annoying, but hopefully it will all even out in the end.

Its crackers in this day and age with instant billing only a few of the energy companies allow you to pay the exact amount each month! (we use EDF)-

I used to have a single local supplier (or boiler juice), but the lorry driver strike / ukraine war (strange how they could always deliver / drop off 500 litres when the price was high, but in covid (early days it was 30p?)/lorry strike / ukraine , they just couldn't deliver )- ment that i needed to shop around - the oil-club for myself is by far the best system for our needs, in normal times.

 

[Martinonline]

@Rolfe, your granny charging KW seems a little low. My Trophy draws 2.25KW. The attached picture shows my granny-chargers in its waterproof box (no garage) with an inline power-meter.

The App says that it is using 1.95KW so there are 300W being lost in the charging process.

 

[Rolfe]

Hmmm, I'm seeing about 1.85 on the app and about 1.2 on my energy consumption. Not sure how to interpret that, I'll need to pay more attention next time I charge the car, which will probably be on Sunday/Monday.

Any enlightenment gratefully received.

 

[Tig170]

Its all dependent of your local grid conditions (whether its voltage from your DNO or from your home system)

 

[Martinonline]

Please elucidate and you may be correct. But as far as I have gathered from @Rolfe's post no home system (assumed solar panels/batteries/generators) is involved.

 

[Rolfe]

This is a granny charger plugged into a 13A socket in the garage. Straight into the normal house electricity supply.

 

[Alb]

Moved to the General Chat forum

 

[Rolfe]

Fine, I should have started it there anyway, I only realised after I posted it.

 

[Rolfe]

@Rolfe, your granny charging KW seems a little low. My Trophy draws 2.25KW. The attached picture shows my granny-chargers in its waterproof box (no garage) with an inline power-meter.

The App says that it is using 1.95KW so there are 300W being lost in the charging process.

I'm thinking, the electricity shown on the Scottish Power app is the electricity I'm being charged for. So if the app is showing a higher figure, why would I worry? Or am I missing a trick here?

 

[Alb]

Fine, I should have started it there anyway, I only realised after I posted it.

The mods tend to pick up on most stuff posted in the wrong place anyway but you can contact us at any time if you want something moved as it's a pretty simple thing to do

 

[Rolfe]

I didn't realise that, thank you.

Mind you, I seem to remember that a thread move was why I left the Golf GTi forum in the autumn of 2010. I had set off on a very long road trip to Germany with my new Mk6, and started a thread in the Mk6 forum to tell all my friends about it. There was a lot of posting before I went (including, can you go via Wolfsburg?) and requests to post pics. As it happened there was no internet at my hotel, and this was before I had a smartphone that could have done the job, so I took a bunch of pictures of the car posed in great places in Bavaria, to post when I got back.

I discovered that in my absence the thread had been moved to the General Chat forum, and had died the death. I hoped it might revive if I posted some of the pictures, but no joy. Nobody who had been participating in the thread in the Mk6 forum seemed to read the general forum, and the thread died forever with nobody apparently seeing my photos.

Shortly after that someone else posted a similar thread about a road trip in the Mk6 forum that was allowed to stay there, and got lots of people watching and commenting. I drifted away from the forum after that, sad.

So sometimes it matters.

Not this time though!

 

[smokie]

the thread had been moved to the General Chat forum, and had died the death. ....

Exactly right. This is quite common in other forums, as you know. I only look at two forums here, which is plenty along with the other rubbish I try to read regularly. I mod on a further two sites and do really try hard to not spoil the flow by moving stuff, or editing heavily (only when site rules are broken).

Anyway back to your original point - I still have some billing info from 2012, when I used 5110 units. I was with Eon at the time and they had some ongoing initiative to help you understand what contributed to usage, and by 2018 this was down to 4244 units (pre-EV). 2022 was 5413, which I expect is largely accounted for by the EV. (My figures are always a bit skewed by my modest solar array).

This is why I have trouble understanding (e.g.) how someone in another thread can have a monthly cost of £500 - it sedems a massive amount of energy to me, but I realise everyone is different. I recall the Beeb having a vox pop on energy bills a few months back and a bloke in a one bedroom flat was saying he won't be able to afford the £300 pm - which is when I though maybe education on usage (and more so wastage) could pay back just as well as subsidising those bills. I'm currently slightly underpaying at £120 pm in a 3 bed semi, though I do have a few bits of tech helping, along with nearly three months holiday abroad in the cooler parts of the year, and I'm probably tending towards extreme in some controls. But it's hard to see where more savings could be made...

 

[Gomev]

I noticed that my Smart meter had taken a reading at midnight that hadn't been applied yet, so I applied it, then followed the recommendation to reduce my DD, and from paying £225 I'm now on just under £180/month.

I actually wanted a bill for what I had used, when I moved on to DD, but they said no way no can do, has to be this way. I had always paid for usage, but by cheque. Then when I went on a 10-week cruise I had to shift a lot of things to DD or else I would have been in trouble for non-payment when I got back. It's convenient, but it uses inertia to trap you in their system.

I've lost out a bit on the oil. If it's now at 50p a litre I don't know about it, because my supplier came and did their routine tank-fill just over a month ago and I was charged 96p. I've hardly used any of it, and indeed they haven't even taken the SO off yet, which I think will be about £550. So I'm sitting here with a tank full of expensive oil, paid for, that I probably won't really start to use until autumn! Annoying, but hopefully it will all even out in the end.

If your heating is oil what the heck are you doing to use all that much electricity ?

 

[smokie]

Wacky baccy plants don't grow themselves you know!!

 

[Rolfe]

If your heating is oil what the heck are you doing to use all that much electricity ?

I told you, a couple of fan heaters to avoid turning up the central heating temperature. This was a bad idea, I totally admit it.

It's a big house, but having said that, since my mother died and I'm living alone, I'm only living in hald of it and only heating half of it. If that.