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Post by jimnastics on Sept 8, 2023 10:30:00 GMT
Yeah, that's pretty damn high. Would work out at 6 units per day, which is often my total usage. Fook. defo some energy vampires in the house then! |
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Sept 8, 2023 10:30:28 GMT
It's not the lightest. My heaviest usage this week has been 2.74kwh for all of Tuesday and, based on what you said, you seem to hit about 65% of that just overnight.
When I'm in bed, all I have on is my wifi, fridge freezer and alarm clock.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Sept 8, 2023 10:31:24 GMT
Yeah, that's pretty damn high. Would work out at 6 units per day, which is often my total usage. Fook. defo some energy vampires in the house then! Not to be too invasive but are you sure your kids are actually going to bed and not just late night gaming? |
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Post by Reviewer on Sept 8, 2023 10:33:52 GMT
Aye, does seem a bit high. That's like £100 a month just on electricity if you include standing charges. You must've had absolutely horrible bills before you switched to the tracker tariff! You can add a couple of hundred watts if they're playing on consoles, so could be 300w (ish) per kid. Probably still worth doing a bit of a reccy and seeing if you can find any obvious energy vampires. Tbf, that's what mine was on the price cap. If not a bit more. Even on the tracker, last month was £80 (average of 12kwh) for 32 days On the same tariff our combined gas and electricity was only £60 for August, it’s an odd month though as the kids were home for half of it and we were all on holiday for half. 6kwh per day average on electricity. Definitely liking the tariffs compared to the alternatives. |
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nexus6
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Post by nexus6 on Sept 8, 2023 10:38:37 GMT
Fook. defo some energy vampires in the house then! Not to be too invasive but are you sure your kids are actually going to bed and not just running a cannabis farm in the attic? |
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Post by jimnastics on Sept 8, 2023 10:56:03 GMT
Fook. defo some energy vampires in the house then! Not to be too invasive but are you sure your kids are actually going to bed and not just late night gaming? No they're only 8 and 10, no consoles or even TVs in their bedrooms. Other than small things like alarm clocks, the only power use over night I can think of are:
2 x microservers (both approx 35w idle)
1 x gaming PC (son usually leaves it on... seems to use around 50w idle) Fridge freezer TVs and Sky boxes on standby
The boiler only fires up for an hour at 5am.
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Post by jimnastics on Sept 8, 2023 11:13:31 GMT
Not to be too invasive but are you sure your kids are actually going to bed and not just late night gaming? No they're only 8 and 10, no consoles or even TVs in their bedrooms. Other than small things like alarm clocks, the only power use over night I can think of are:
2 x microservers (both approx 35w idle)
1 x gaming PC (son usually leaves it on... seems to use around 50w idle) Fridge freezer TVs and Sky boxes on standby
The boiler only fires up for an hour at 5am.
Jesus christ I've just realised what it is... each bedroom has a fan on through the night for both heat and white noise purposes. Looking back to when we went on holiday earlier in the year the house was idling between 0.05 0.1kWh, so we're using 0.1kwh+ just for the bloody fans.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Sept 8, 2023 11:36:51 GMT
That'll do it. Set them on a timer. Or just have lighter bedsheets and open windows.
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Psiloc
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Post by Psiloc on Sept 8, 2023 17:07:15 GMT
Our house seems to pull 0.15 - 0.25 when everyone is asleep but I’ve never really thought much of it. The only thing that stands out as abnormal is the koi pond equipment and the fact we have two fridges. Plus a million things charging or on standby
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sport✅
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I want to claim my tits
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Post by sport✅ on Sept 8, 2023 17:14:47 GMT
This thread  |
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Psiloc
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Post by Psiloc on Sept 12, 2023 10:49:23 GMT
I'm not used to switching energy supplier. Am I supposed to do the switch during the last month of my fixed term, or do I wait until I'm switched to the variable tariff and then sort it out?
To be honest I'd assumed I could choose a start date on my new supplier but Octopus aren't giving me that option. Either way it looks like I will pay two energy bills on one month
EDIT: Nevermind, found where I enter the start date.
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Psiloc
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Post by Psiloc on Sept 12, 2023 11:15:18 GMT
Anyone heard of heat and hot water cylinders? heatandhotwatercylinders.co.uk/I'm not entirely sure I get it... is the idea that you can use the hot water cylinder like a battery, heat it off peak and then use some of the residual heat in the central heating system? My main question is that is it really worth running the immersion heater, even off peak, instead of just using gas? |
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Post by technoish on Sept 12, 2023 12:17:22 GMT
Probably not.
Some people suggest a thermal buffer as part of heat pump systems (which would be much more efficient than using gas), but other think it only increases complexity of the system (bad) and the efficiency.
Definitely would need to run the numbers, but instinctively it is a no. I had a quick look and didn't see any case studies to show the value...
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Post by henroben on Sept 12, 2023 12:38:17 GMT
Anyone heard of heat and hot water cylinders? heatandhotwatercylinders.co.uk/I'm not entirely sure I get it... is the idea that you can use the hot water cylinder like a battery, heat it off peak and then use some of the residual heat in the central heating system? My main question is that is it really worth running the immersion heater, even off peak, instead of just using gas? I'm presuming it'd only be worth it if you have solar panels and basically free electricity? I guess if you're producing more than you can use & store via a battery in a day then it might be worth using the excess to heat up a big ol' tank of water? Rather than selling it back to the grid for pennies. IDK, it sounds on the face of it like something that will only ever be of marginal benefit and just be another thing to go wrong... but who knows, perhaps it is the future! |
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Psiloc
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Post by Psiloc on Sept 12, 2023 12:55:57 GMT
Just realised - they're not going to make a song and dance over it as it would hurt adoption, but it's probably really for heat pumps. You can run your heat pump off-peak and store heat for later, reducing how hard it has to work when you call for heat and therefore saving energy. Renewables just help a bit; solar PV isn't going to have much spare for this during the winter. I have an above average sized system and it would take an exceptional winter's day to fill the batteries and the hot water tank.
So yes you can have one with a gas boiler but unless off-peak gas is a thing (?) it's usefulness is much more limited.
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zagibu
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Post by zagibu on Sept 12, 2023 21:41:11 GMT
Jesus christ I've just realised what it is... each bedroom has a fan on through the night for both heat and white noise purposes. Looking back to when we went on holiday earlier in the year the house was idling between 0.05 0.1kWh, so we're using 0.1kwh+ just for the bloody fans.
Dude, learn to differentiate between energy (kWh) and power (kW). If the nightly draw is 100 watts from fans, that can't explain your high 24h draw, because this will only amount to less than 1 kWh, unless your night has more than 10 hours. |
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Post by dfunked on Sept 12, 2023 23:14:10 GMT
The octopus readings are in half hour blocks (or at least they are for me), so it may be a couple of units per night instead of 1.
It's probably easier to work out if you just download the data and have a look in Excel.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Sept 13, 2023 1:54:02 GMT
Jesus christ I've just realised what it is... each bedroom has a fan on through the night for both heat and white noise purposes. Looking back to when we went on holiday earlier in the year the house was idling between 0.05 0.1kWh, so we're using 0.1kwh+ just for the bloody fans.
Dude, learn to differentiate between energy (kWh) and power (kW). If the nightly draw is 100 watts from fans, that can't explain your high 24h draw, because this will only amount to less than 1 kWh, unless your night has more than 10 hours. I have no idea about the numbers, or what kind of fans they are, but if they're just basic fans then they shouldn't be using much electricity. |
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Psiloc
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Post by Psiloc on Sept 13, 2023 9:31:27 GMT
I think about 25 - 50w is normal for a fan depending on how meaty it is so it could be right, depending on the number of bedrooms.
But at the end of the day if you like having a fan on, turn the bloody fan on. They're probably costing you about 6p each per night.
And anyway I personally think it's obviously his idling servers and gaming PC that are drawing the additional power, since the numbers he gave add up to 120 watts. That would add up to *grabs fag packet* £26 ish per month if it's a constant 120w.
I think his boy leaving the PC turned on is probably the simplest thing to fix, just configure the PC to go to sleep after a few hours?
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Post by Dougs on Sept 13, 2023 9:32:48 GMT
Yeah, a gaming pc actually running 24/7 and not in hibernation when not in use will do that.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Sept 13, 2023 15:50:45 GMT
For context I played my PS4 a couple of hours recently and my usage has spiked. These things will eat through your electricity.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Sept 14, 2023 4:30:29 GMT
Is there a reason to leave the PC on all night?
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Psiloc
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Post by Psiloc on Sept 14, 2023 10:42:28 GMT
If they're anything like my kids it's as simple as they're not the ones paying the bill so they can't be bothered
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Post by clemfandango on Sept 14, 2023 11:43:46 GMT
Noticed petrol has gone up around 10p around my way over the last few weeks. Looking forward to knock on effect on food, energy etc. in the next few months…
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Post by Bill in the rain on Sept 14, 2023 13:03:33 GMT
If they aren't actually using it for something, you can just set up a task in windows Task Scheduler to shut down the PC at 1am or something. Plus, it'll annoy them when their PC shuts down in the middle of their game of Fortnite 
(last night my PC shut down in the middle of my game of Fortnite  ) |
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Post by jimnastics on Sept 14, 2023 13:07:17 GMT
Is there a reason to leave the PC on all night?
It's in the lounge for sofa gaming action but it's basically only my boy who uses it for Fortnite and Overwatch. No chance he's going to remember (or be arsed to) shut it down whenever he finishes gaming so it's on me, but I never remember. I'll look into the scheduling thing...
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Post by Bill in the rain on Sept 14, 2023 13:31:29 GMT
There are loads of guides, eg: windowsloop.com/schedule-shutdown-windows/You can add more detailed arguments to the scheduled command than that guide mentions though, eg: /s /t 300 /c "Shutdown in 5min" will shut down 5 minutes (300 secs) after the time scheduled, and give an alert "Shutdown in 5min" you can also use /h instead of /s to hibernate instead of shutdown. There are other options if you want something different. |
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Post by dfunked on Sept 14, 2023 13:37:28 GMT
Sod that. I'd just go with "shutdown -s -t 0" if you're doing it at 1am. If he's up playing at that time he doesn't deserve a grace period!
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Post by Bill in the rain on Sept 14, 2023 13:42:24 GMT
U so mean!
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Psiloc
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Post by Psiloc on Sept 18, 2023 11:41:25 GMT
Trying to decide on an Octopus tariff. I have solar and batteries but get no export (it's a rent-a-roof system).
It's between Octopus Agile and Tracker. Having looked at the data it seems that at the cheapest part of the day (2-4AM) Agile is about 2p cheaper than Tracker. For the rest of the day it's either about the same or significantly more expensive. Obviously I can set my batteries to partly charge from the grid at 2AM, but there is always the risk that the next day is a sunny one and I've then missed out on filling my batteries from solar. Conversely, if my batteries run dry later on I'm at the risk of paying the absolute peak rate of energy at 4-7pm.
I'm starting to think the Tracker is a better fit and rather than ever charging my batteries manually I just let solar do its thing and then it's off my mind
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