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.

Dark Mornings, Dark Evenings

Winter is well and truly on its way. The mornings are darker and the sun disappears beneath the horizon earlier by the day. There's a chill in the air. I wore my winter coat today. It made me look huge, well bigger than I already am.
It won't be long before we begin buying wood for the fire. We need to have the chimney swept first. We use a local chap, Peter Warrick who is well known in the area. He kindly attended our wedding with his son, dressed in classic Victorian chimney sweeps' attire. They looked great. I'll never forget them.

My son sang a song this evening. As he sang, it felt familiar to me and I realised it was a song I used to sing at primary school many years ago. I remembered the chorus and sang with him 'So we musn't forget, no we mustn't forget to say a great big thank you, we mustn't forget'. How marvellous that my son was able to jog my memory this way.

It was Mum's Birthday today. She is 69. We visited this afternoon after we'd collected our son from school. She had prepared a small buffet which was nice and the lounge was warm and cosy. The log burner was lit and glowed in the hearth. Mum never makes a fuss of her Birthdays but she always makes sure everyone is looked after and has plenty to eat and drink. My Nan was very much like that, always giving. We stayed for a couple of hours.

We have some new curtains. I know this isn't front page news, but it's significant as the previous set had been up for 9 years. It's strange how you get used to things and never give them a second thought. But when they are gone, you really notice it. The new curtains are very nice. My wife has impecable taste when it somes to home furnishings. They match the furniture perfectly and I actually find myself admiring them.

In the news today there is criticism of the government who have met today with energy industry leaders to discuss ways of helping consumers in the current economic climate who are struggling to afford crippling bills. Apparently they have managed to achieve absolutely nothing except to remind us (as if we're idiots) to make sure we compare prices and switch suppliers(!) Are these people really in charge of the country?
I fear for us all...

Happy Birthday Mum, love from us all xxx

Monday energy & things that go bang

I don't know if our home is unique in this, but each week is begun with a spell of what I call 'Monday energy'. It seems to build over the weekend and is motivated I think by a deep desire to make the coming week better than the last. My wife is particularly prone to this. With me, it comes and goes depending on the mood I'm in. This morning was no exception and my wife decided she would sort through and recycle the overflowing waste bin I have in my office. Normally it is gingerly walked past with care not to disturb in case it topples over spilling its load. But today was different - my wife was energized. Now this term would strike the fear of God into any man, and so it should. I've grown somewhat used to it over the years - enough to know that it doesn't last for very long and is soon spent. So to a volley of disapproving tuts, my wife emptied and sorted the contents of my bin. I'm sure she likes to get to it before I do just so she can have a moan. I like to wait until it's full, properly full, for I feel I am making full use of the bin's potential. My wife feels this is just a sign of laziness. On this, I'm afraid we will never agree...

One thing that did decide to give up the fight today was our kettle. It didn't just stop working gracefully. Oh no. Instead it decided to let us know it was going - with a bang. In fact, it fused the whole house. Thankfully we have a clever fuse box that knows when there's something wrong but it still took about half-an-hour to work out the kettle had been removed... That's actually the second thing this week to 'blow-up'. The other thing was one of my computers. I have a few of them and this was the slowest of them all, affectionately named 'Frodo'. The power supply unit looks like it had overheated and blown. I don't think the damage was confined to the PSU as I did try replacing it and there is no pulse. So I'll be salvaging the hard drives just as soon as I can afford a portable IDE drive caddy.

For a bit of fun, I've started running my own competition to see whether we can watch a news bulletin where the upcoming Royal Wedding isn't mentioned once. Today we managed it, well ITN did with their 1.30 bulletin. We'll see if they can do just as well tonight... I doubt it.

It's good to see the sport of Extreme Ironing is still going strong. A guy pitched his ironing board on the middle lane of the M1 motorway. It's closed at the moment due to a fire having damaged it the other day. I did have a good chuckle though and credit to him for doing it!

I'm waiting expectantly for the phone call to invite me to an interview. It'll be nice if they call today as I'm due to sign-on tomorrow and I can give them some good news for a change.

Oh, I've started using paragraphs. I always use them when I type letters to people so the same should apply here. I hope it makes a difference.