Money Tips
EnergyFood shoppingFrugal livingBillsAnything whose job is to make heat is expensive. Everything else is not, however guilty the advice makes you feel about leaving it on.
Most published energy advice is worth pennies a year and is repeated because it is easy to write. A small number of things genuinely move a bill, and they are all about heat. Everything here is checkable against your own meter and your own unit rate, which is on your bill and is the only number that is true for you.
What it covers
Every tip in energy
Heating the house, heating water, and the four appliances that make heat: the kettle, the oven, the tumble dryer and the shower. Standby power and phone chargers are a rounding error.
Look for "unit rate" or "p/kWh" on the bill or in the app. That number, not the headline cap figure, is what every running cost on this site should be recalculated with.
For most homes, heating only when you need it is cheaper. The exception is a badly insulated house with a damp or condensation problem, where steady low background heat can be worth it for reasons other than the bill.
Only if you are on a time-of-use tariff such as Economy 7. On a standard tariff the rate is identical at three in the morning and at six in the evening.
Kilowatts times hours times your unit rate. Divide the watts on the rating plate by 1,000, multiply by hours used, multiply by pence per kWh.
Unplugging chargers, switching off at the wall, turning the router off at night and worrying about LED lighting. Together they are worth a few pounds a year at most.
Energy figures are worked from the Ofgem price cap on the date shown and from typical power for the appliance class, not from a named model. Your own rate and your own rating plate are the ones that count. Full disclaimer.