I got big bills and I cannot lie

New house, new home, new bills.

And by “new” I mostly mean “bigger”. So it’s finally time to spend some money finding out where all the gas and electric are going.

For a while now I’ve had a Current Cost “EnviR” monitor, reading my electricity usage and sending it to a box next to my PC that I can collect data from and analyse. Except that for as long as it’s been doing its bit, I’ve not done mine – I’ve hardly even looked at the screen and I’ve certainly never looked at the raw data. Tut tut.

So today I’ve decided to change that. I’ve ordered some “Individual Appliance Monitors” (IAMs) from energymonitors-direct.co.uk – they seem to be pretty much the same price anywhere but Energy Monitors Direct have a free shipping option and – even better – they offer 10% off if you blog about it. They only cost £40 (for three, delivered), so that makes this blog post worth about the same as large Starbucks coffee (and less pleasurable) but “every little helps” as Tesco would say!

When they arrive I’ll have so real data that will tell me whether leaving the TV on standby is comparable to leaving the freezer on.Is leaving a light on for a couple of hours when you’re not in the room worse than leaving a phone charger plugged in 24/7? Maybe I’m due a few surprises!

Sadly the gas bill is twice the electric bill, but at least that’s easier to track down.

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