Your energy is fairly under control…I think gas has recently gone down. I am on Octopus Agile…I am enjoying all these high winds…with electric coming in under 8p kw…sometimes I even get paid for using…my overall cost per kw averaged for October is 12.5p pretty good.
I guess that’s not so bad then. I was reflecting the other day that we have saved so much on our lighting, with the switch to LED bulbs. Just having a Nova gas saved a decent amount on the hifi front too. The only significant things running all the time are the fridge/freezer and a 40W tube heater that we have in the airing cupboard.
I’m looking forward to the Octopus savings sessions that are coming up. It’s really nice sitting with just a candle for an hour or two.
Candles are often made from animal fat.
Just sayin’
If overall the result of using candles to save electricity is more children, probably not too much economical sense in the longer term!
But at a certain point it might be all just funny and jolly good
I hate candles - they are pretty bad for polluting the air inside homes
2 Likes
My electricity consumption last year was just under 6,000kw (large house, but LEDs everywhere).
Hifi on 24/7 (except when I go away for more than a couple of days): about 400kw a year, which means about 6-7% of the total consumption.
Yes, it does matter.
Ours aren’t, but they are made from petroleum, which isn’t great either. We have a candle on the dining table with dinner most nights. It’s unnecessary but a little routine we like. I need to investigate non oil candles, as I now feel guilty!
2 Likes
It’s a great dilemma halibut. I don’t know the answer but I love a nice candle in the room.
In general everything comes with lots of considerations. Synthetical clothing vs ‘real’ stuff like wool, cotton etc is another one for me.
1 Like
I got my smart switches…they are Ghome smart swicthes brilliant…timer schedule,on/off and power usage all controlled by an app. got 4 for £25.85…not bad. It looks like I should be saving about 70w
with these 4 at night…have just ordered another 4 … I recon I will need about 16 in total with all the bits floating around our house…and garage. looking at my energy consumption and what I have left…I might get up to around the 160 - 170w saving with 16. Thats around 500kw a year not bad if this lot switches off at night.
I hope the cheques in the post 
Just an update … after some careful studying…my base energy load was hovering around 580 - 650w…I have now installed 8 smart switches and I am achieving around 400w at night. Obviously I have to switch equipment on during the day… I intend to buy another 4 switches…which will reduce this by anther 15-20w. Ultimately I have my eye on my 24 port cisco switch…I am going to buy a small poe switch which will run all my network critical stuff like cameras etc…and then buy a simple unmanaged 24 port switch which uses around 35w. At night…I will leave the poe on and switch off the big 24 port switch… this could potentially be a big save… I will let you know.
We no longer have our Cisco 2960, but a much simpler modern unmanaged Cisco instead, which cost about £40. Its power use is very much lower.
Out of interest, do you really need cameras etc? Are you in a high crime area and have loads of easily nickable stuff? This craze for cameras, movement sensitive lights, fancy doorbells etc is very weird. Environmentally they are really bad, with power use and all that plastic, and just play to people’s paranoia. In my opinion of course! Getting rid of that stuff could save you a lot.
1 Like
In ecological terms for the planet my guess is that if every Naim user switched off their systems when not in use it would have zero impact.
The ‘green’ movement is absolutely vaild and with valid and justifiable scientific concerns for the safety and future of our planet. If only scientists and the authorities had listened to these people 40 odd years ago then things would be very different now. But they were largely viewed as misguided hippies with nothing better to do than prattle on about things that didn’t matter.
Unfortunately, beyond the real and valid concerns has grown a movement that propogates all sorts of false information - the ‘green police’. These people would have you believe that you are saving the planet by remembering to turn off unused lights in your house. They are misguided people who perhaps get a kick out of this and of course various commercial concerns have jumped on the bandwagon eager to make a buck from various green devices.
It’s imortant to keep things in perspective. These little things may impact on your household bills but they will have negligible effect on the big picture - what happens to the planet. They are a drop in the ocean compared to energy usage overall.
Therefore don’t feel guilty about leaving your system switched on.
1 Like
It all adds up though and individual responsibility is good, the collective impact is what’s important here
3 Likes
At the time of writing this (10:20), the UK’s electricity is made up of 2.3% Coal and 53.6% Gas. That’s quite a lot of kill-the-planet energy. Both of these are used as top-up sources of power, so anything we do to help that, has a 1-to-1 effect on reducing that bad energy.
Making small changes alone may have only a tiny effect, but spreading the word can have great impact. Already thanks just to this thread @Richieroo is saving over 200Watts. I recall a couple of years ago pointing out the high cost of all the halogen bulbs at work, and pointing out the cost savings of swapping them all for LED’s. Changing mindsets is key.
2 Likes
Well indoors, I think that really depends on how diligent people are. After 20 years with Mrs. FZ, I’ve had to accept she will never ever remember to turn off a hall or closet light in her life and the getting on her case about it was driving her nuts. Nothing gets turned off until I happen to go to the same place and discover the lights on - sometimes a day later. So yes, we did movement sensitive lights indoors for all hallways, bathrooms, closets etc. They are over priced but I worked out that the power saving breaks even on them in 15 years at a conservative estimate but in reality closer to 5.
Though as @anon55098131 says, it’s a drop in the ocean against other things. Computers and screens pull a lot and working at home in my specific occupation there are usually eight or more on at any one time. About nine years ago, I moved to ultra low power server processors. They cost a fair bit compared to home PC market processors but they gobble about 1/5th of the power and on the wattmeter it really shows. Ultimately, my month long sampling of everything in the home with the wattmeter under different loads yielded some obvious culprits but also some surprises:
- heating and cooling take the lion’s share. No news there.
- Refrigeration, even with a large fridge is negligible. 12w average over 24hrs.
- Screens and computer came in second after heating and cooling.
- So called “vampire” current from wallwarts and chargers plugged in is a total outdated lie. No charger I had from the past 15 years produced even 0.01w while idle just plugged in - all measure 0.00 over 24hrs. Running around unplugging them or switching off at the socket is a waste of effort. And yet this “vampire” current myth is still reprinted constantly.
- Hifi came in third but a very distant third.
- Washing clothes at 40C with bio detergent instead of hot water and non bio did save quite a bit up front. But bio is so harsh on natural fabrics cotton clothes went threadbare very fast and that cost more than we saved on energy sadly. The generated demand for new cottons for a family of 4 also probably had a larger carbon footprint than the energy we saved on cooler washes.
- modern LED lighting costs… well they are practically a rounding error on the bill in a medium sized apartment.
I managed to slash my bills mainly by tweaking how that home was insulated around the windows. Turning computers off instead of sleep, Carefully adjusting the timers on the AC.
Individual responsibility is key. Saying “everyone should make a 40% energy cut” makes no sense. Everyone is not starting at the same baseline of wastefulness. and inefficiency. One home might only be able to make a 5% adjustment from their already efficient starting point. Their neighbour might be able to make 80%. I think it is important that everyone reduces consumption by as much as they reasonably can. Setting a number rather than “as much as reasonably possible” sets us up for missing aggregate targets as a society since those with the most inefficient starting point are likely stop when their meter shows they’ve hit some household target instead of keep refining the efficiency to it’s optimum potential. Thinking, “I’ve done my bit I can stop now.” is a huge danger.
6 Likes
I’d be interested in seeing a statistical breakdown of who uses what (watt?) when…
3 Likes
There certainly is a bigger picture to be worked on and discussed, but this is a Hi End HiFi manufacturers Forum that doesn’t cover politics, so with that restriction, FWIW I think it’s a suitable discussion.
Well it’s difficult to place Naim system usage in regard to ecology in any kind of meaningful context without considering the bigger picture, which will also include political concerns.
I of course knew that it’s the rich that cause the most climate damage, but I was shocked by the recent figures published by Oxfam on November 19, which reported that richest 1% of the global population - that’s 77m people - are responsible for the same amount of carbon emissions as the world’s poorest two-thirds, or five billion people.
It’s therefore far easier for the rich to make savings than the the poor. And the richest 1% will surely include many of us here on this Forum, and everything we do makes a difference. How many cars do we need? How many flights and cruises? How big a hifi? Every little thing we do makes a difference and we owe it to those whose lives are being most affected by climate change to do what we can. Putting the hifi on standby has to be one of the easy wins.
4 Likes