Watching What We Use

We don't normally give the energy we use a second thought, apart from when a huge bill lands on our front door mat. Energy suppliers are often in the news for all the wrong reasons, with NPower and Southern Electric exposed recently for mis-selling. Indeed my relationship with my supplier has been a rocky one and we were forced last month to lodge a complaint with NPower which saw them admit they had mis-sold us our energy product last year. I have to admit that they were actually quite good about it and up front about admitting liability. They did pass us back to our old supplier Eon and refunded everything we had paid them during 2012.
Now were are back with Eon, there is a renewed focus on how much electricity we use and how much it is costing us.

We now monitor our usage thanks to a nifty little meter that sits on my desk, and our online account records and tracks each Kwh of electricity we use telling us if our consumption has gone up, or down. It even tells us our carbon footprint in miles driven by car - our last figure was 8,000.
I like this. I like to know what I am paying for and how much of it I am using. I also know how much electricity each appliance uses and I've been amazed at how much this can vary. For instance, I had always assumed that my three computers and two servers used a lot of electricity but my meter tells me that they don't - just 200 watts in fact.  On the other hand, our beast of a plasma TV uses 400 watts. Our storage heaters, designed to save us money, each use 1kw (1000w) of electricity when they are charging. We have eight of them throughout the house. Our electric oven draws 2kw of power each time it is used and boiling the kettle draws a further 1kw. It's been interesting these last couple of days going round and turning things on and off, not to mention a real eye opener. For the first time ever, there is a level of clarity to this thing called 'energy'. Our move to Eon has also revealed the fast that we have two electricity meters and that we have an 'Economy 10' system controlling our heating. Now I'd never heard of this - I'm familiar with Economy 7 and that's all.
Watching what we use certainly provides an incentive to keep everything to a minimum. Without wishing to turn into my father, it's all about maintaining a balance - keeping on the things that need to be and turning off the things that don't need to be. The magic figure I've settled on is 700w - this is the benchmark I use during the day and evening. There are spikes, i.e. when cooking and these are to be expected though anything above 2.5kw would be unusual.
In a way, I'm quite pleased for the hassle we had with NPower as the results have been very positive. I now have an excellent relationship with my supplier and I pay only for what I use. More importantly, I can see what I am using and when making it far easier to keep things under control.
Electricity just like any other product we buy should be quantifiable. We wouldn't go into a shop and pay for 100 eggs and only take 10, but that's what I've been doing for years - paying well in advance for something I may or not use. It's time things changed, and I'm happy I have.