Wednesday 20 January 2010

Energy savings

You may remember at the time of Copenhagen we invited Warm Zone to check on our preparedness for energy saving. At that time we seemed to be on top of most of the obvious things without major financial investment. Warm zone loaned us an electricity monitor which revealed some anomalies. After the Christmas lights bonanza had ended I started to look more closely at what it was showing us. The electric kettle for example at 3.1 kilo watts was one of the biggest users of electricity. I like my cupa tea. During the night we were still using approx 190 watts and even allowing for clocks on cooker micro wave and bedside this seemed high to me. On investigation I found we were using a number of extension leads which contained warning lights. I have now replaced these with no light versions which I had in my little electric store and I am getting a saving of 40 watts per day. Warm zone supplied us with an Eco kettle which is only 2.2 Kilo watts. The time to boil is slightly longer than the old model but nowhere near a third longer. The other advantages of this little beauty is it has two water compartments a larger storage one and the heating compartment with a clever little devise on the lid which enables you to fill only the amount you want to heat. Because of the large window on the heating compartment you can see very clearly when it boils and although it contains an auto cut off I have not used that yet because at 2.2 KW, seconds are expensive. I almost always allowed the old kettle at 3.1 KW to auto switch off.
We have ordered an energy monitor from British Gas which will monitor all our energy. I wonder what else we are going to find.
Has anyone had any experience with Halogen cookers? On the face of it these seem to show a substantial energy saving. I have found dealers on the web but have not been able to find a store that stocks them. I want to have a look and feel before investing in one of these.

3 comments:

Gerry said...

I have a halogen Hob which I
Have found to be very good. but the price I paid for it was very steep, a cooker
price might far outdo what you save. Gerry

Nanson said...

I use an energy monitor too! It's a Current Cost one - who makes the one you're getting from British Gas?

I have saved almost £500 a year, my DD has gone from £95 a month to £65 (I think?!) Using an energy monitor is well worth it!

Bob the Black Country Brummie said...

Thanks for your comment Nanson. I don't know the make yet still waiting for British Gas to del;iver it.