Save Money With An Electricity Usage Monitor
How Can An Electricity Usage Monitor Save You Money?
Each of your household electrical appliances consumes varying amounts of electricity which is measured in watts or kilowatts. Your electricity supplier charge you a specific electricity price for each kilowatt hour of electricity that you use and these charges will vary from company to company, but the industry average according to Energy Saving Trust is 12.12 pence per kilowatt hour. An electricity usage monitor can help you to plot your usage of electricity and identify ways to reduce this, either by replacing energy hungry appliances with a more energy efficient type or by changing your energy using habits. Either way you are likely to make significant savings on your electricity bills.
There are different models of electricity usage monitors on the market but they essentially work in the same way. You insert your electricity usage monitor into a mains plug socket. You then clamp a portable transmitter around the mains electricity cable that supplies your property. This is a very safe and easy job and you are supplied with a plastic clamp and clear instructions. The whole set up process takes around 1 minute to complete and anyone can do it, it does not require prior technical knowledge.
The transmitter then intercepts the electricity signal to the mains supply and displays the readings on your electricity usage monitor which is positioned inside your house. You electricity usage monitor then displays the total electricity you are consuming at any given time and by turning on or off your appliances you can monitor exactly how much each and every electrical appliance consumes in and around your house.
Understanding Your Electricity Usage Monitor
Your electricity usage monitor will generally display a number of key values that will help you monitor how much electricity you use, with a view to saving money on your annual electricity bill.
1. Reading Now – This feature will display the current amount of electricity being consumed right now and this will be displayed as a number in either watts or kilowatts. This number will change every time you turn off or switch on electrical appliances around your home.
2. Electricity Usage Change – This feature is usually located just below or next to your current reading and will indicate whether you are consuming more or less electricity than a few minutes ago and if so by how much. This is great for monitoring your day to day electricity habits.
3. Graphical Display. This feature usually records your previous day’s usage and displays it in a useful little graph by morning, afternoon and night. You can then see how your electricity usage today compares with yesterday. This is a useful method of checking your electricity using habits on a daily basis.
4. Last 7 Days. This is an excellent feature and displays whether you have been using more or less electricity in the past week, which can be viewed as a number for example +900 watts or -900 watts.
Working Out Individual Electricity Appliance Costs
By turning on or off your electrical appliances around your home you can see the increase in electricity usage on your electricity usage monitor in either watts or kilowatt hours. This handy feature allows you to go through each of your appliances and work out exactly how much each costs you to run each hour. So for example an average kettle will consume around 2.2 Kilowatt Hours of electricity per hour, depending on the model and make. To find out how much this costs you per hour simply multiply this number by the unit cost that electricity companies charge you. Electricity prices will vary between electricity suppliers. You can check your last electricity bill to find this number or use the industry average which is around 12.12 pence per kilowatt hour at present, according to the energy saving trust.
So 2.2 x 12.12 = £26.70
This means constantly boiling your kettle for one hour would cost around £26.70.
Our to put it another way every minute you boil your kettle costs around 44 pence.
Changing Your Habits and Saving Money
Once you have used your electricity usage monitor to work out how much electricity you consume around the home, the next big task is to use this information to help change your electricity using habits. For example many electrical appliances consume between 50 and 90% of the power that would be used if they were switched on. This means that even in standby mode they are using vast amounts of electricity. Energy usage monitors can help you to monitor where there are electrical appliances currently in use, which enables you to locate and turn them off if they are not needed. So if you have left on light switches upstairs you can tell from your electricity usage monitor and do something about it. One of their best uses is at night time. Just before you head off to bed, use your electricity usage monitor to identify electrical appliances that are still switched on. By turning these off at this point you could be saving yourself almost 8 hours of wasted electricity usage, which is a significant saving during the course of a year.
Personal Computer Electricity Usage
Personal computers or PC’s are now in almost every home and they are increasingly used for a variety of multi media purposes from surfing the internet, sending emails, listening to music or radio or watching DVD’s. This increases the impact on your electricity bill but there are some simple measures you can take to reduce the impact.
Ensure that you activate your screen saver function. This can help slightly reduce the power output required to your screen and help you make some small savings.
Replace old monitors. Whilst you may not want to spend money on a new monitor this could cost you money in the long term. The cost of purchasing new monitors has reduced drastically especially with the introduction of flat screen technology. This new technology also brings with it significant reductions in the cost of running your monitor all of which contributes to reducing your electricity bills and lessening the impact of electricity prices having risen so dramatically.
Kettle’s
Kettles are one of the biggest consumers of electricity because of the amount of electricity consumed in powering the heating element which quickly boils the water. A typical kettle will consume around 2.2 Kilo Watt Hours of electricity each time it is boiled, that‘s around 44 pence. Compare this to a microwave which will consume around 750 watts and it’s not hard to see how regular boiling of your kettle for drinks can significantly boost your electricity bills. If you are boiling hot water for one person consider using your microwave instead. It will heat your water more quickly and uses almost a third less electricity. Alternatively if you can’t bring yourself to boiling your water in a microwave and decide to use a kettle then only boil as much water as you need. This will ensure that your kettle is only in use for the shortest possible time and save you money on your monthly electricity bills.
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