Tick, Tick Tick, Make it stop!
There are some things I’ve been nerdy about for a while. Well since 1 December 2006 to be precise. Every Sunday at 10pm (ish) I take an electricity meter reading. Our average use has been 11kWh (Kilowatt Hours) per day. It goes up in summer when we use the electric immersion heater overnight to heat hot water. In winter the daytime power goes up (lighting in darker evenings and mornings etc) but the night goes down as we use the gas boiler for heating and hot water.
So this week: 39 units/week of off-peak, 42 units/week of peak, which comes to 11.6kWh/day, which is a bit above average. That was probably the roast I just did. At Tammy’s suggestion I cooked a gammon joint at the same time as the chicken, that way it won’t need a full cook later in the week…goes the theory.
I use timer switches to make the most of off-peak power. The most common is the dishwasher, which I have set to come on about 5 in the morning. We’re doing quite well at maximising off-peak power but not so good at reducing our overall consumption. Megan didn’t help over the winter because we needed an electric heater to keep the temperature over 17 degrees.
Hello? have you stopped reading yet? No, ok well I’ve finished.
Oh, no, I just remembered. From this week I’m going to weigh the bin bag before I put it outside. The inaugural reading was 3.2kg, but there’s a fair degree of uncertainty in that because the scales were very small and the bag was very big and needed support. Nearly all our rubbish is plastic food packaging and a small amount of cooked food waste.
I’ll stop boring you now and go to bed…
- Sean
