The Current Cost Energy Monitor
The Energy Monitor provides a very useful way to assess how you use, or waste, electricity in your house but it needs to be interpreted in a structured manner. When it is first switched on it is easy to keep glancing at it and making uninformed assumptions about your bill.
Firstly a reminder on how electricity charges are calculated. The usual way that we pay for electricity is by the Kilowatt-hour - so one unit of electricity is 1000 Watts used for an hour and Scottish and Southern Energy's January 2009 cost per unit was 12.9 pence.
It is easy to investigate how much power each appliance uses by simply turning off all electrical appliances and switching each one on at a time then checking the current usage figure on the monitor. We suggest that you check how much power appliances use whilst they are left on standby - you may be surprised!
After finding out the power consumption of your appliances, it is worth being aware of how much wastage takes place by unnecessarily leaving the appliances on. For example a PC and peripherals uses about a unit every four hours. Televisions, particularly large screen plasma and older cathode ray tube ones, can be high users of power.
