Keeping track of how much energy your home gets through is a very useful thing to do when you start to look at reducing your home’s carbon footprint. By measuring how much energy you get through you can accurately measure how much CO2 your home generates and you can also track the effects that energy efficiency measures have.
The two energy inputs for most homes in N16 are, of course, electricity and gas. First up we’ll deal with measuring your electricity consumption.
Start by digging out your old electricity bills going back as far as possible for the house you are in. If you can’t find them, they might be available on your account on your energy supplier’s website.
Ignore any readings that have “E” or “Estimate” or similar beside a reading as these are guesses made by your energy supplier. By looking at only the customer readings or official meter readings or a combination of the two, you know you’re looking at the actual consumption over that period.
Each unit represents 1kWh (kilowatt hour) of electricity consumption (I’ll be doing a post on the maths and physics behind energy, power etc soon – don’t worry it’s quite simple!)
This historical bill data will give you a coarse picture of your electricity consumption – it’ll be low resolution but it’s something. You can take this data and work out average electricity consumption per day across a period and you might be able to see that your electricity consumption is generally a bit higher over the winter months than it is over the summer. But meter readings taken infrequently like this don’t give you a very good picture and you can do much better.
The simplest and cheapest way of tracking your electricity consumption is to take a meter reading once a week and make a note of it. Even better, upload this information along with your historical meter readings to a website such as The Carbon Account or imeasure. These will automatically convert your electricity and gas meter readings into CO2. I use the Carbon Account as it’s a very nicely presented website and it also allows you to track your transport emissions.
If you want to pay more detailed attention to your electricity consumption you can purchase clip on electricity meters. These are nifty little devices that clip on to one of the cables coming out of an electricity meter. The box measures the electricity flowing through the cable and transmits a signal to another box which you can take from room to room (mine sits by my TV).
The accuracy of these devices is so so, maybe to 10W (Watts) or thereabouts, but the main purpose is to see how your home’s electricity consumption changes in real time as you turn things on and off and you can get an idea of how often your fridge’s cooling cycle kicks in and out. Some people leave it by the door so they can easily see if something’s been left on. Don’t expect to be able to detect every device’s standby consumption with these – it’s really to highlight where the big hitters are.
If you want to measure individual appliances more accurately then you’ll need a plug in electricity meter. These often display down to 0.1W, although again the accuracy of these can be a bit iffy so you shouldn’t read too much into the readings. You can also leave them plugged in so that you can measure consumption over a day or a week (important if you’re measuring appliances that operate on a cycle like a fridge or washing machine).
Electricity Monitor is a useful website that allows you to compare the features of a selection of clip on meters and then buy them. You only really need to have one in your home for a month or two before you’ll have a very good idea of where your electricity is going and then you can pass it on to a friend or neighbour. Alternatively some libraries are now offering them on loan which is a magnificent idea – you can borrow them in Islington and I might see if I can persuade Stoke Newington library to look into it too.
Simply measuring your electricity consumption won’t reduce it of course. To do that you need to change your habits – turn off the lights when not in use, don’t run the half empty washing machine, switch things off standby. Alternatively you might see that the old freezer in the corner is munching through the electricity or those last few light bulbs which you haven’t changed yet are getting through more electricity than you thought.
By making simple changes such as these you can do a lot to cut electricity consumption, but knowing what to change is the first step.
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