Our Electricity Consumption
Its difficult to reduce the amount of electricity we use without knowing what is using what.
Like
most houses, ours is full of all kinds of electrical goodies including the usual
TVs, DVD players, CD players, computers, dishwashers, mobile phone chargers etc
etc. With some rooms looking more like Dixon's the thought of trying to
find out much electricity each thing uses was daunting!
So, to make things easier we grouped everything into one of three categories.
· Things used occasionally.
· Lighting.
· Things used regularly.
Things used occasionally
These are things we do use but only every now and then or for short periods at a time or both! Examples include hairdryers, toasters, microwaves, vacuum cleaners etc.
Lighting
Obviously we have all the normal ceiling lighting as you would expect but we also have various lamps and some security lighting.
Things used regularly
This
is the stuff that's used daily, often for long periods of time probably using a
large amount of electricity in the process. It includes things like washers,
tumble dryers, fridges, freezers, oven, dishwasher, kettles etc.
We also included here anything that’s left plugged in, or on standby when not in use i.e. TVs, Videos, DVD players, Sky boxes, PlayStations, computers, printers, mobile phone chargers etc.
Recording Electricity Usage
To record how much electricity something uses we bought a plug in electricity monitor. It looks like a plug in timer but, rather than switch things on and off, it records how many Volts, Amps and Watts an appliance uses. And, because you can program it with how much you pay per electricity unit, it can tell you how much that item costs to run over a period of time.
So armed with this we started to see what used what.