The cost of electricity

[Sinewave]

Hello all. Given that our hobby surrounds the use of electricity, I wonder how some of our fellow forum members are coping with the cost of electricity?

Last night I received an email advising me that I'll soon be paying 30p per kW hour! I'm now starting to get a little uncomfortable, even though not long ago it shot up from around 10p to 20p per kW/h.

I'm aware that my coffee machine uses a lot, I suppose. My desktop computer uses a lot, laptop is probably more economical. I usually have one or two amateur radios on monitoring the bands also, that may have to be reconsidered, maybe get it down to one radio! The soldering iron is on too, using a bit, probably not a lot. Most of my lights are LED, but not the cheap ones which plague the amateur bands with noise, I can have my lights on and not get noise on the bands.

So, how are we all coping?

[ppppenguin]

All too true. Electricity and gas are expensive now and will soon be even more so.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilit...price-cap/

Even at those prices it may not even be covering the wholesale cost. At 20p/kWh each watt, usued continuously for a whole year costs about £2.

Any discussion of this is likely to get very political very quickly but as a general observation we don't want to buy gas or electricity. We want to be warm, comfortable and have the conveniences of modern life. The UK has abysmal standards of buildimg insulation, hence we use a lot more energy to heat our buildings than we should.

[Radio Fixer]

Yes! Jeffrey but how can you improve the insulation safely of a 70's house with cavities? OK got the double glazed windows but cavities? Not letting any cowboys squirt anything into mine. At the time, about 10 to 15 years ago, over 70's could have it for free. they thought I was most odd not leaping at it

Neighbour did and they put so much in that it over flowed everywhere. The result was running condensation when he went in the loft 6 months later .

And it goes against every thing restorers try to do: have a way back ...

Gary

[Mark Hennessy]

Earlier today a letter arrived to tell me the bad news.

It's not just the energy cost that gets me, but the standing charge too. It's basically doubled to what amounts to £175 per annum.

My first memory of electricity prices was in the late '80s, when it was 5p per unit. Happy days!

There's a fair few incremental savings that can add up considerably. Not just moving to LED lights, but changing habits about leaving things on, or in standby. I've got a lot of gear from the 1990s and 2000s that is much less efficient than modern gear - such as a hi-fi tuner that takes 8W, whether in standby or actually on. Wouldn't have thought twice about it once upon a time - but it's impossible to ignore today. Annoyingly, said tuner forgets its presets after a week without power - perhaps I might be able to modify it...

With that sort of thing in mind, can anyone recommend a power meter that is accurate at low power? I have a basic plug-in type that does a reasonable job, but I've got doubts about its accuracy in the sub-50W area that's so important today. I know Big Clive likes his Hopi.

[Sinewave]

Modern houses have fantastic insulation, the way it's fitted during the build is far superior to retro-squirt insulation and without the problems too. The house we spend most of our time in is a 60s build and does lose a bit of heat, but I've made improvements where I can, we also have a new build which personally I get too hot in and whilst we're not there we might as well switch the heating off.

[Pye Man]

I was already bracing myself for a hefty rise. The current situation is likely to make the situation worse but I think we have to swallow that. The effects of Covid had already greatly changed and curtailed my plans and the fall-out from current crisis will only exacerbate the situation. (Unfortunate expression: let’s hope there’s no fall-out in the original meaning of the word.) At least we have our homes and are not living in the cellar.

I think we will go back to how things were when I was a child. We lived in a reasonable property. The only rooms that were heated were the kitchen by the range cooker which also gave us hot water and the living room and so in winter we lived in two rooms. I did my school homework and my early excursions with a soldering iron on the kitchen table. In the depths of winter I hated getting out of bed and envied the dog who slept under the kitchen table. Sometimes  we decamped to the front room at Christmas and it was a novelty to be in different surroundings and see the fire blazing away in there instead.

Looking back we have lived very cheaply in recent years and have been fortunate to experience the greatest time of plenty and luxury since humans emerged out of the swamp. My grandparents were born in the 1870s and of course are very long gone. The height of modern tech for both couples was ownership of a ‘wireless’. I often wonder what they would make of the luxuries of modern life we have taken for granted.

[Kalee20]

That's a cosy picture you painted, Nick!

But heating and cooking from a kitchen range - other rooms being unheated- I can't see that somehow. (My bedroom is unheated, incidentally!). And use of coal for domestic heating is largely a thing of the past, firstly coal mining in this country is virtually non-existent now, and secondly clean air, less smoke - it's now a fraction of what it was 40 years ago, and health is the better for it.

The last couple of decades have just been too good. Luxuries have become essentials; personal car ownership for 2 or 3 household members; consumerism that the economy has built up around.

As mentioned, the standing charge increases have come as an unwelcome surprise! While energy costs doubling I can understand, the standing charge is a pain - especially as my two workshops are both metered separately and this is more than the cost of electricity itself.

Oh well...

[ppppenguin]

As treasurer of the BECG I signed up with a fixed price 2 year contract with Octopus for our newly acquired premises. 21p per unit. (+5% VAT but we're registered so we get that back). Looks like a bargain at the moment. Standing charge is just under £1/day but we have a 3phase 100A feed so that's fair enough. I dare not look at what we'd have to pay if we were starting now. Quite likely twice that, as there's no cap on commercial tariffs.

[Pye Man]

That's a cosy picture you painted, Nick!

But heating and cooking from a kitchen range - other rooms being unheated- I can't see that somehow.

The range wasn’t an Aga! It had a small grate, oven and a hot plate and some means of heating the water. There was no radiator system. The living rooms and bedrooms each had fire grates but I never remember a fire being made in my bedroom. Hot water bottles for bed were the norm in winter and I still have the ceramic ones. I also have the lidded bedwarmer with a long handle but I don’t recall it ever being used! (Though clearly from the interior it had been at some time.)

I was in and out of the houses of other kids in the locality and they were all the same though we did hear of people who had modernised with something called ‘central heating’. The properties did have bathrooms but the toilet was at the back of the house in a separate block alongside a coal house. I can remember my father building a lean-to between the house and the block which was an improvement most householders made. He converted the coal house into storage and we had a couple of concrete bunkers with sloping swing-up lids for two different types of coal – one sort for the range thing and the other for the fireplace – at the side of the house.

My aunt and uncle lived in a better property but the facilities were the identical other than they had an inside toilet. In fact, my aunt lived to a great age and was living in the house until a few months before she died in the late 1990s. The last time I saw her I called in, as I occasionally did, unannounced when I happened to be passing. She came to the door looking very cold and struggled for a moment to recognise me and then told me that the range thing had gone out. I was wearing a brand new mustard coloured roll neck shirt-cum-pullover and found myself emptying the ashes, bringing in coal and getting the fire going! She had long given up making a fire in the back living room and the heat in there was provided by a two bar electric fire. She mainly lived in the kitchen which was bigger than the one in my childhood house. She had a small TV (I have that now) and when I visited we invariably sat in the kitchen.

The houses were by no means poor properties – this is not an attempt at Four Yorkshiremen – it was just the way it was. I had a happy childhood.

[Nick]

I've just had our GS heat pump serviced and they reckon they can get the COP up to over 4, so I'm happy...

In 16 years we've barely spent a penny on it, but the bill for the upgrades etc. just came it at just over £1,000 - as things stand, we should save that this year.

Bit terrifying really!