Energy usage

[Why Not Indeed]

I can't think of anything I could do with the info to help save energy.

A counsel of despair if ever there was one.
For example, I found with a plug in monitor that my previous toaster used 10W doing nothing at all. When the carriage mechanism started to jam, I decided not to bother attempting to repair it and go straight to a new toaster, because the knowledge that it was wasting so much energy would bug me forever.
The microwave uses 27W if the door is left open [incandescent bulb]. The family have been repeatedly nagged about this and it seems to happen less often, so hopefully some energy has been saved.
If you don't measure, you won't know.

 

[Deleted member 18243]

A friend has done just this after finding his Volvo seats to be the most comfortable he's ever sat it; 50 quid for a seat, mounted on an old office chair roller wheel set; heated, reclining, bargain. Tip, try and get a passenger seat - they're less often sat in and not quite so knackered

If you were to get the matching car door from the scrappie you could wind the window down when it gets too hot.

 

[JohnW2]

As for our electric use, and our heating is Gas, I would suggest we are about 330 a month. I have kept all my energy use weekly for the past 15 years, so it is interesting to make comparisons .... You can tell the fine effort we are making from the chart below, the green is the long term average. Red is the current year

It appears that your 'fine efforts' have had only a fairly modest effect on Summer usage, but has almost completely eliminated the ('expected') progressive rise during the Winter months that you have seen over the past 15 years.

I wonder which efforts have resulted in this elimination of increased usage during Winter. Does it perhaps at least partially reflect a fairly recent change from a lot of) incandescent lighting to LEDs?

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

For example, I found with a plug in monitor that my previous toaster used 10W doing nothing at all. When the carriage mechanism started to jam, I decided not to bother attempting to repair it and go straight to a new toaster, because the knowledge that it was wasting so much energy would bug me forever.

If that concerned you, did you not consider turning off the power to the toaster when it was not being used?

I must say that I have to wonder what a toaster would be doing with 10W of power when it was "doing nothing at all" - for about a decade the EU has required that TVs etc. do not consume more than 0.5W when in standby mode!

If you don't measure, you won't know.

That's true up to a point, but the ability to measure very small levels of energy usage can distract some people from the context/perspective of the 'big picture'.

Opinions will undoubtedly vary as to how concerned one should be about a 24/7 10W usage (about 7.4kWh per month) but those who are concerned may need to be reminded that a saving of a similar magnitude could be achieved by reducing the total duration of showers per day (with a 10.5 kW shower) by not much more than one minute - it can be a bit like smokers worrying about the very tiny risk associated with having a jab of a vaccine!

Kind Regards, John.