Energy saving

  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    Just a quick tip, ladles and jellyspoons.

    I guess that most people have already converted to LED for lighting and are already saving money on their electricity bills but I just wanted to give a word of warning. Not all LED lights are created equally.

    Most lights come with two ratings. Wattage and Lumens. Wattage is the amount of power the light uses. You will often see an info box on the packaging that says x Watts and then y units per 1000h. I'm looking at a GU9 LED replacement right now which is about 2.7W, or roughly 3kWh (units) per 1000 hours. Looks great as I am replacing a 25W halogen lamp. But...the lumens, or amount of light is only 300 lumens. Or a shade over 100 lumens per watt.

    That's an energy rating of E. Which is not the best rating in the world, but about as good as it gets in GU9 format.

    A pack of 5 LAP brand from Screwfix cost me £16.99 so about £3.40 a bulb. 10000h life.

    Bell make a similar bulb. 3W but only 200 lumens so less lumens per watt. Exactly the same price. Energy rating F. 20000h life.

    Crompton make a 2.5W bulb but at only 210 lumens, or 84lumens/watt. That's a G rating, but it is only £2.50. But also only 6000h life.

    Philips make a 2W version at 220 lumens, or 110 lumens per watt, so rating E, but at nearly £6 ago, is more expensive. 15000h life.

    I've not found GU9 rating D or higher.

    So, LED saves money compared with old fashioned bulbs, but they do vary wildly by efficiency and price.

    You need to do the sums on lumens, Watts, price and hours. It seems that the Screwfix jobbies have the best bang per buck, in my opinion, for GU9. For a similar bulb that lasts twice as long, the Bell looks ok, but will use more power over it's lifetime for less light output. That 0.3W over 10000 hours equates to 3kWh, or about another £1.05 in electricity.

    Regular ES or BC light bulbs have a much wider spread of energy ratings. Some cheaper supermarket or pound shop specials are really dire, compared to 'branded' bulbs, and rarely manage their rated lifespan.

    You pays your money and takes your choice.
    Last edited by retrotecchie; 03-11-22 at 19:26.
    Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player. I DON'T work for or on behalf of EON.Next, but am willing to try and help if I can. Not on mains gas, mobile network or mains drainage. House heated almost entirely by baby dragons.
  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    @retrotecchie

    If I was about to buy some then I would have used your analysis to do some research. I have about 15 GU9s in the house which were 50w each and just went out and bought a load of LED ones without any consideration. I think they're about 5w each and deliver loads of light so I'm happy enough anyway at 10% of previous consumption.
    I'm an Eon Next dual fuel customer with no particular expertise but have some time on my hands that I am using to try and help out a bit.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    @JoeSoap

    Bottom line is, you will save a chunk of back pocket. And better efficiency than an old halogen capsule, no matter E, F or G. The 50W halogens are a rating of G because that is as low as the scale goes. But at around 10 lumens per watt...nuts.

    My parents moved last year (madness, they are both pushing 80) so I acquired some of their old 'tut', which included the 3 bulb GU9 light fitting I put in my front room in this hovel. They should know better as I tell them often enough, but they had 3x 40W halogens in it. That's a space heater, not a light fitting!

    When I swapped it for the single pendant with a bare 9W led BC bulb, I switched it on to try it out and I swear the impulse light on the meter was flashing like a strobe light.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    @JoeSoap

    Incidentally, they moved in June last year from their old house but their 'new build' wouldn't be ready until August.

    I took a couple of runs to the old country in the van in order to help declutter their garage and empty the loft, on the premise that we had no problem with storage and we could happily help out with temporary storage or just **** clearance.

    I'd only been back a couple of days and decanted the van when our landlord came round for the annual inspection...and gave us our eviction notice. Not only did I then have to schlepp all our our clobber between houses and/or the tip, but all their junk too 🤬

    Not what I call 'energy saving', but at least I was only paying £1.20 a litre for diesel back then...happier days.

    Last edited by retrotecchie; 03-11-22 at 20:05.
  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    … but at least I was only paying £1.20 a litre for diesel back then...happier days.
    Who would have thought we’d be saying only £1.20 a litre. I remember when petrol hit 50p a gallon and we could hardly believe it.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    Who would have thought we’d be saying only £1.20 a litre. I remember when petrol hit 50p a gallon and we could hardly believe it.

    I can, of course, remember gallons but I think my earliest memory of actual prices was 63p/gal for four star. My first motor vehicle (and that's stretching a point as it it was a Puch Maxi moped) took about 45p to fill up. We'd just gone over to litres then and about the same time the garages seemed to stop doing the motorbike pumps where you dialled in your ratio of 2-stroke to petrol and just put premix straight into the tank. I'd often fall foul of the rule that stated 'minimum delivery two litres' on the ordinary pumps.

    My garage in the next village has an old photo on the wall of the MOT reception from when it was a Shell, back in the early 80s. You can pretty much date it by the cars pulled up at the pumps (an Austin Aggro and a Mk4 Ford Cortina), but the sign had prices for four star and two star, by the gallon. To the penny, the same prices for a litre of diesel and unleaded about a month ago.

    I did have a Rover P5b fairly recently (this century, at least) that ideally demanded five star leaded. Long gone in 2001 at the pumps, but very much still available to small airfields as 100 octane low lead avgas. I worked on an airfield at the time and I'd fill up on a Saturday morning alongside random Cesna and Piper aircraft, for a premium price of course...about 20p a litre more than super unleaded.
  • Mailman's Avatar
    Level 60
    Just a quick tip, ladles and jellyspoons.

    I guess that most people have already converted to LED for lighting and are already saving money on their electricity bills but I just wanted to give a word of warning. Not all LED lights are created equally.

    Most lights come with two ratings. Wattage and Lumens.

    and don't forget another important factor in choice of LED - color temperature (in Kelvins). I think all of mine are at Warm White circa 2800-3000K apart from the outside porch light (which is higher). Too high and you think you are in an operating theatre.

    Agree with everything else 👍
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    @Mailman

    Having worked in an operating theatre, I know exactly what you mean!

    The warm white ones more closely resemble the old tungsten light. I've not yet found anything that can recreate the slightly sickly colour rendition of a cheap Compact Fluorescent. I remember about a month after I joined OVO, back in around 2010, they sent all their customers a five-pack of 'energy saving' CFL lamps.

    I still have a couple of those in a cupboard somewhere...museum pieces now.

    LED still has a way to go before it can match the efficacy of the old sodium SON lamps in terms of lumens per watt but who needs that garish sodium yellow glow in their living room?! Very High efficiency LED lamps do exist, but rarely in a form factor that fits a table lamp. My outdoor LED units I used to replace an old PIR floodlight are mega. Two at 12W a pop give twice as much light and a better coverage than the old 250W unit that used to barely illuminate the garden. And they can still sear your eyeballs if you look straight into them by accident.
    Last edited by retrotecchie; 03-11-22 at 22:50.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    A rather technical guide to saving money with your kettle habits, and why you should never use a microwave to heat water for a cuppa.

    https://community.eonnext.com/thread...ll=1#post24458
  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    I use this thread to detail how my energy saving is progressing so I have something to refer to. I started trying to save energy in earnest at the beginning of August when my tariff changed. I have just used my IHD and Bright App statistics to see how I'm doing after four full months and can report a 21% reduction in electricity usage and 40% reduction in gas usage over the same period last year. My monthly bill is due in a few days so I'll use that as the acid test but the IHD and Bright app have proven to be pretty accurate when logging consumption. Now it's cold and dark, so let's see how the savings progress.