I am hoping someone can give me some pointers to reduce my electricity usage; particularly my peak time

[Guest]

I am with OVO and in May used 118.82kwh at 21.60p off peak and 128.44kwh at 38.49p. Standing charge41.67 a day.

I am a pensioner and at home all day.

[Karen]

An ideal solution to this problem I found is a heated throw, especially for folks living alone. They are very effective and economical to run, costing about 4p an hour. As its cold here today, I'm making full use of mine as I'm typing you this text!

[Sheila]

How and what do you cook? Using our air fryer instead of the oven and using the microwave or slow cooker has reduced our electricity usage. LED lighting has also helped to reduce our electricity bills. We live in what can only be described as a dark house, so we have to have a light on almost all of the time especially as I have some sight issues too.

[Mark]

Check your light bulbs, before all the electricity price increases, I’d already started swapping my bulbs to LED bulbs, for information a 6watt LED bulb is about as bright as an old 60Watt bulb a 9watt LED bulb the same as a 100watt old school bulb.

I learnt the hard way back in Feb for 4 weeks my ouse was empty, everything turned off, except the Fridge Freezer, internet modem and a smart plug.

When I came back to the house (Yes it was freezing 6DegC inside when we got home at 2am), I worked out my electricity usage, expecting it to be about 25p a day (£7 for the month) to run the fridge etc.

It worked out at £61 for the month and no one was here..

What had happened is the boss thought it would be a good idea to leave a light on, so she left the landing lights turned on 24/7, it turned out these lights were old school 100watt bulbs and there was 2 of them.

200watts an hour 24/7 = 4800 watts a day or 4.8kWh a day, which is 4.8 x 35p = £1.68 a day or £47 over the 28 days.

If I had fitted 6watt LED bulbs the cost would have been £2.82

You can pick cheap LED bulbs up from all over the place, B&Q often have them in their reduce creates or if you have a Screwfix or Tool Station close buy they do packs of 4 for less than £4.

I wish you the best of luck hunting down the Electricity vampire.

[Col]

If ur a regular tea/coffee drinker boil the kettle and fill a flask. Saves on repeated use of kettle. Every penny counts.

[Sarah]

Are you purely an electric house?

That's about 8kWh a day. Which is average - although it sounds like you are a smaller than average household.

However, most people also use gas for heating water, and maybe cooking. Plus heating over winter. If you are doing everything on electricity, you are doing quite well, imo.

Things to look at: ensure water heating is set to E7 times - and this accounts for both BST and GMT clock changes.

Depending on how you feel washing machines, plus dishwashers and tumble driers, set to go overnight. There are several safety warnings about leaving theses types of machines running when you are sleeping or out, however.

Then you are looking at smaller savings: more energy efficient appliances when you need to replace them, switching stuff off etc

[Inge]

Do things like washing etc in the off peak hours, I do my washing etc as soon as the off peak kicks in , don't sleep as well as I used to. Or if not earlier in the morning, my husband often will put it on as soon as he gets up in the off peak hours. Immersion heater is on a timer for one hour every night , lasts us all day easily with a well lagged tank. We just documented everything we use and worked out what we could switch to the cheaper hours. We try to use as much as we can on that rate, and we do use flasks for hot drinks during the day but we both drink a lot of herbal or fruit teas and use a teapot, bit old school here loose teas, no tea bag in a cup for us doesn't taste the same.

Shower early morning for me too.