Due to the new Putin tax on electricity, I did a full household review on what I don't need switched on. My 'TV' has been on standby for a decade, with my FireStck plugged into the HDMI socket. I thought I would no longer leave it on standby, and when not watching, I removed the power from the socket. However, this caused me a major hassle in developing a 'fault' on my FireStick. On restoring my TV power, the stick went into an endless loop of rebooting, and never came out of it. I tried numerous fixes, changing to a different HDMI socket, re-instating the original power supply plug/cable. Nothing worked. Numerous powering off, repowering. Thought the stick was now toast. Over a day trying to fix it, I finally got it to reboot properly to working order.

Over the years, I've had numerous power cuts, and everything just rebooted without incident. Though I now believe that I instated the error by un powering my TV, BUT, leaving the power on to my FireStick. (During a power cut, power is removed from TV & stick!.

The eventual fix (which sounds simple now, but only of you know it LOL), I removed the electricity from both the FireStick, and TV, then left for 10 minutes. Applied power back to TV, then, applied power back to FireStick - everything then booted up OK!

Dam you Putin! 🤣

Message that just kept appearing on a loop...

1 hour ago, StephenFord said:

I did a full household review on what I don't need switched on.

To be honest, you may save 20p per month switching your firestick off, but will almost certainly shorten it's life by 30% Almost all electronic equipment lasts longer when just left constantly powered, and again most fail on power up. I can understand the need to try and reduce unnecessary energy use, and it may be worth buying a plug-in watt meter so you can see if the saving on an individual item is going to be significant.

Have a look at these  type of things on eBay:

  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144379638276?hash=item219db27204:g:qjMAAOSwjwph6iM1

2 minutes ago, unofix said:

To be honest, you may save 20p per month switching your firestick off,...

I have had an 'Owl' device installed for over a decade, which gives me a live reading of my homes electricity consumption so I've always been hyper conscious of energy usage. I now have no intention of stopping my TV  on standby LOL Have managed to get house rating down to 5p/hour resting, which isn't bad. I also had to replace my 30 year old fridge/freezer a few weeks back and although the new one is cr*p quality, it cut electric use by two thirds!

As you know, could care less about trees/dolphins & planet, but I do hate to spend money when I don't need to 🤣

I decided to do some shredding yesterday.  Had about 12 months worth of paperwork to do.

10 minutes in, the shredder just stopped!  No warning, no slowdown, no smoke, just nothing.  Wouldn't reverse either.  Unplugged it to clear the paper.  Still nothing.  Tried plugging and unplugging a few more times...still nothing.  Left it for about half an hour, assuming it to be knackered.  Gave it one more try before putting it away and it worked perfectly!  The old off & on routine works surprisingly often! 

 

On topic, how many watts does your house idle at out of interest?  I bought a cheap version of the Owl last month to see how much I could cut down.  My flat idles at 44w...no idea if that's good or bad.  Powering the tower with my phone charger, laptop charger and Xbox adds about 30w to that, so I keep the tower off when they're not in use.

29 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Gave it one more try before putting it away and it worked perfectly!  The old off & on routine works surprisingly often! 

 

On topic, how many watts does your house idle at out of interest?  I bought a cheap version of the Owl last month to see how much I could cut down.  My flat idles at 44w...no idea if that's good or bad.  Powering the tower with my phone charger, laptop charger and Xbox adds about 30w to that, so I keep the tower off when they're not in use.

Having worked in an office for some years, I can confirm that domestic shredder motors have a continuous working capacity of about 10 to 15 minutes, then the motor heats up, and needs to cool down which takes about the same time. It's not a fault, just the way they are. Proper office shredders which can chew up 10 or 20 sheets of A4 all at once can go on forever LOL

As for the idle, my current KwH is 25p (38p next month!), so if it's displaying 5p, that's about 200W, so your 44W is pretty impressive!

I dread to think what even our 'resting' wattage is! 

I'll try and remember to have a look at the free meter thingy first thing tomorrow morning when I'm the only one up and before I switch the kettle on 😀

6 TVs, 3 Xboxes, 1 freezer, 3 fridges, a couple of aquariums etc etc 

3 minutes ago, Turvey said:

6 TVs, 3 Xboxes, 1 freezer, 3 fridges, a couple of aquariums

.... and a partridge in a pear tree 🤣🤣

4 minutes ago, Turvey said:

I dread to think what even our 'resting' wattage is! 

I'll try and remember to have a look at the free meter thingy first thing tomorrow morning when I'm the only one up and before I switch the kettle on 😀

6 TVs, 3 Xboxes, 1 freezer, 3 fridges, a couple of aquariums etc etc 

My idle is taken without the fridge compressor running tbf.  So it's TV and radio 'standy' (technically off but with remote functions), router, house phone, cooker clock and hardwired smoke alarm.

Whilst analysing consumption- electricity costs about 4 times as much as gas per kWh.  So why have so many of us including me got an electric oven? I know some buildings don’t have gas supply but huge numbers do.  I have a gas hob and electric oven.  It is very common. But I reckon roughly my elec consumption for the oven is probably as much as all other elec consumption added together. But the availability of gas ovens is virtually no choice.  Look at gas ovens and electric ovens on ao.com for example. I know installation is more expensive for approved gas fitter but if the gas hob is being installed he/she is already there doing the pipes. 

And when I first bought a washing machine a lot of them had connection for hot and cold water.  It will fill from hot water which was cheaper from your gas boiler and meant was cycle was quicker.  They don’t seem to have hot fill connection on them now. So wash cycle is longer and you pay loads more to heat the water in it.

46 minutes ago, isetta said:

And when I first bought a washing machine a lot of them had connection for hot and cold water. 

I spent months looking for a hot/cold fill machine to replace a 20+ year old machine. Couldn't get one! I'm still angry at having to heat bl**dy water in the machine when I have hot water sitting in my immersion tank - St Greta can go screw herself! Also, in Northern Ireland we have no 'gas' infrastructure as during the troubles no investment whatsoever was made here to install it. Everyone here has electric hobs/ovens, not by choice, but by no choice... Oh, I stopped using my proper oven 2 months ago, now just use my 600W MicroWave.

Heating water for the washing machine doesn't cost much in all honesty.  It's literally a couple of litres at the very start of the cycle.  Most of the water used is cold for rinsing.  I took my first months readings yesterday to work out the rough monthly average on the new rates...

High rate is roughly an hour of cooker/hob, an hour of xbox, and some TV & fridge compressor each day.  Plus a 60c wash + tumble dry cycle 2-3 times a week.  (Previously washed on cheap rate but can't manage to put laundry away later in the day now, was expecting much more cost difference from this change).

Cheap rate is pretty much all hot water immersion heater, plus a small amount of storage heating & convector heating over the last month.  Then vacuuming and charging phone/laptop etc and a couple of hours of TV per day. 

High rate - 3Kwh per day average.  Low rate - 13Kwh per day average!! 😮  The immersion heater really does rinse through electricity.  Cooker, washer and tumble dryer pale into insignificance comparatively.  Not intending to use any storage or convector heating for the rest of this month, so will be interesting to see how much difference that makes.

45 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

I spent months looking for a hot/cold fill machine to replace a 20+ year old machine. Couldn't get one! I'm still angry at having to heat bl**dy water in the machine when I have hot water sitting in my immersion tank - St Greta can go screw herself! Also, in Northern Ireland we have no 'gas'

What you need is one of these ......

https://www.ebac.com/washing-machines/hot-fill-explained/

Made in a factory in County Durham 😀

6 minutes ago, unofix said:

What you need is one of these ......

https://www.ebac.com/washing-machines/hot-fill-explained/

Made in a factory in County Durham 😀

I actually discovered these after I bought my cr*ppy Hotpoint! Bit pricey, but I would have definitely bought one at the time...

On 5/1/2022 at 3:45 PM, Turvey said:

I dread to think what even our 'resting' wattage is! 

I'll try and remember to have a look at the free meter thingy first thing tomorrow morning when I'm the only one up and before I switch the kettle on 😀

6 TVs, 3 Xboxes, 1 freezer, 3 fridges, a couple of aquariums etc etc 

Hovering around the 1kwh mark before any kettles etc switched on 😳

1 hour ago, Turvey said:

Hovering around the 1kwh mark before any kettles etc switched on 😳

You must have a big house? LOL My resting is 200W (0.2KwH) and young Tom has 44w (0.05KwH)...

IIRC all that's on tick over here is...

2 x thermostats, 2 x hard wired smoke alarms, 1 x house alarm (sensors on battery power). Built in microwave oven displaying time. Fridge freezer and a security camera ( webcam type) and a smart meter device that plugs into socket.

Currently showing 50w.

Our biggest draw is the Fridge Freezer, switched it off for 10 mins and the power consumption dropped to a steady 19w 😮

Edited May 4, 20224 yr by Wino
Additional information.

Oh dear, why did I look in here, lol

Forgot to mention the wifi dongle which is plugged in too.

So now gone through the whole house and switched off what was left on.

So we have 2 x thermostats, 2 x hard wired smoke alarms, 1 x house alarm (sensors on battery power). Built in microwave oven displaying time. Fridge freezer and a security camera ( webcam type) and a smart meter device that plugs into socket. Turned off the wifi dongle and our draw is now 17w until the fridge freezer kicks in then it goes up to anything from 50 to 112.

fridge is set to 5 degrees and freezer set to -17 as per recommendations.

Today is starting to feel like Apollo 13..............

3 minutes ago, Wino said:

Today is starting to feel like Apollo 13..............

Make sure you have a roll of duct tape on standby! LOL

Further looking into the Fridge Freezer which is now 8 hrs old and cost us roughly around £480 IIRC with a 10yr warranty on the compressor.

It's a Samsung blah blah blah with a digital inverter and LED temperature settings.

When we purchased it it was rated A. I've put the model no onto google and it now comes up as E rated lol.

I know the A to G usage tables were changed a while ago so I've looked into a "new greener" one and the best selling one is a Miele A++ a mere snip at £1700 😲 and compared the annual consumption figures 256kw to 233kw from our current one to this and the difference equates to 23kw. 

Not a lot of difference overall unless I'm reading the figures wrong and 23kw is a huge amount 🙈

20 minutes ago, Wino said:

Further looking into the Fridge Freezer which is now 8 hrs old and cost us roughly around £480 IIRC with a 10yr warranty on the compressor.

It's a Samsung blah blah blah with a digital inverter and LED temperature settings.

When we purchased it it was rated A. I've put the model no onto google and it now comes up as E rated lol.

I know the A to G usage tables were changed a while ago so I've looked into a "new greener" one and the best selling one is a Miele A++ a mere snip at £1700 😲 and compared the annual consumption figures 256kw to 233kw from our current one to this and the difference equates to 23kw. 

Not a lot of difference overall unless I'm reading the figures wrong and 23kw is a huge amount 🙈

My new Beko fridge/freezer I got last month uses 130w, so that's 3.2KwH/day, so at 38p/KwH, that is now over £400/year. My old 35 year old one I had to dispose of used about £400 electric / year, so all the energy 'saving' I thought I'd gain has been totally negated by price increases LOL You gotta laugh...

My fridge freezer is only a year old and 'total no frost'...it's crap tbh, doesn't keep good temp, has a poorly designed defrost system that warms up the fridge, things don't freeze evenly (can see some things have defrosted in there!), and having a modern variable motor just means that it's running much more often than the old style.  Yes, it uses less power when it is running, but spends so much more time running that I can't imagine it being much cost difference over a year...and that's before adding the heater element every other day!  Suggested annual consumption is 262kWh.  Gotta laugh at AO's estimated yearly cost though...15p per unit!  

Annual Energy Consumption                                    262 Kwh

Annual energy cost based on 15.40p/unit     £40.35

4 hours ago, StephenFord said:

You must have a big house? LOL My resting is 200W (0.2KwH) and young Tom has 44w (0.05KwH)...

4 grownup kids with little chance of being able to afford their own places any time shortly, 3 bathrooms with heated towel rails (think I'm going to look into getting timers fitted) going to try and get one of the 3 fridges emptied and turned off (been used to keep mum's meals etc in but she has recently moved into a care home so no longer needed) 

Really can't see much else we could do without being too much of a hassle.