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Hacks to reduce energy costs

Eyewatering price. You insert the whole cooking pot into the bag, so need one without long handle ( i.e. not a standard saucepan). Available from that amazing emporium.

Same principle as the old haybox my grandparents used.
 
It's a hay box by a different name, basically. I don't know about this one, but hay boxes are very good. I suggest googling how to make a similar products.
 
Oldvatr said:
Eyewatering price. You insert the whole cooking pot into the bag, so need one without long handle ( i.e. not a standard saucepan). Available from that amazing emporium.

Same principle as the old haybox my grandparents used.
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An ordinary ovenproof casserole dish will do, I often use my casserole dishes on the stove top. Yes same principle as the hay box, lot less messy though lol. I agree they are on the expensive side and they may be cheaper elsewhere but as long as your food is on a bubble boil which will take about 5 minutes on a stove top then it uses no more power so if you use it regularly it will pay for itself. It is a considered purchase though
 
I have a device which is basically a tall stock pot you heat up on the stove with the food of choice in it and then you place this inside what’s effectively a giant flask and leave it to cook it it’s own heat (much like the device above). It does have a plug for a household socket and another for a car cigarette lighter. I bought it for camping and travel purposes years ago in Australia but for the life of me can t remember it’s brand name or even the generic name. Might come in handy
 
If anyone wants to pursue the haybox idea - I used one when very young, very poor and living in a grotty bedsit - a cheap and clean-ish way is to use a cardboard box lined with more cardboard, crunched-up newspaper or any polystyrene tiles left over from a previous project, put the hay in an old pillowcase or two, put it in the box, and make a hollow to sit the cooking pot in. You need as much hay under the cooking pot as over it. Covering with another hay-filled pillowcase rather than just a cardboard top keeps the heat in, and putting a cardboard top over that keeps it neat (the top doesn't have to fit). Make sure any meat is cut up small so it cooks through. Charity shops and jumble sales are a great source of old pillowcases.
 
Brekkie said:
Dunno where to get hay in London near the city...
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Pet store? Horse Guards Barracks? Alternative is poly worms or innards from bean bags. As has been said, polystyrene ceiling tiles. Cork flooring tiles coire matting.
 

How to bake without using an oven

Whether you're looking to save time, money or both, create your favourite baked goods including cakes and bread without turning the oven on...
www.bbc.co.uk
Not my scene really, but relevant to this discussion
 
Toast and crumpets by the fire? chestnuts. baked potatoes. Marshmallows er, perhaps not. Get salad things. Tins of tuna / corned beef. I can see a problem with some of the cakes/ mug cakes etc which need to be eaten straight out of the [suddenly silenced] microwave. But the OP I raised is really regarding saving energy / moolah from leaving my pocket on its way to the energy companies. Power cuts are inconvenient, but actually support the OP, inconvenient as they are.
 
How about this one? Turn the wick down on the toaster. OK the toast is a bit anaemic looking, but so long as it melts the butter - eh?
 
This is an old chestnut. It has safety implications for children going to school in the dark.
I find the existing adjustment was actually also dangerous because it meant that I had two period during the change when I was driving into the low sun for longer.
 
Personally, I'd rather be on GMT all year round. It's the same amount of daylight whatever the clocks say, and when did children last walk to school?
 
Outlier said:
Personally, I'd rather be on GMT all year round. It's the same amount of daylight whatever the clocks say, and when did children last walk to school?
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We do not have daylight saving here in Queensland where I live, it's great when it starts getting light at 4:30 am in summer as it's a lot cooler to start work or play golf, surf or swim etc.

Only the southern Australian states have it, I think they save it in to drums or something for later use.

Some of the local kids walk to school and back, but there are school buses for the kids that have a fair distance to and from school.
 
And when I lived an hour south of you I hated the lack of daylight saving. I had no wish to get up at 0430 and would have loved an extra hour daylight in the evening to socialise whilst seeing what I was doing. Not to mention the crazy stories of cows being confused when to sleep and curtains fading more. Each to their own
 
We are in an artificial haiatus where the energy prices are high due to a conflict occurring in Europe which has sent prices soaring as well as reducing access to basic fuels. We have no sight of the endgame yet, so must assume that this phase could endure for some time. But if and when it does get resolved, there is another phase coming down the tracks - decarbonisation. This will have the same effect and will also push up energy prices severely. so the days of cheap energy are fading into history as I write.

So I need to take this on board and prepare for this eventuality, This means making investments now to cut my consumption and dependancy on both gas and electric power. This goes beyond making little tweaks here and there.

So I am looking at the new Smart Tariffs that energy suppliers are starting to offer. These offer an agile cost hopping tariff that follows daily price fluctuations and matches them to consumption fluctuations using Smart Meters which are being rolled out. But the name Smart Meter is a misnomer. The meter is dumb, and all it does is report your readings back to your supplier over a telemetry link, so your supplier gets to know your consumtion on a half hourly basis. The smart bit is in the house display, where it too can get the consumption readings, and match that with the current unit price so it can display your running costs. The meter does nothing to control our consumption or limit power so it is merely a monitoring device. we the humans complete the cycle by using information to make informed choices regarding our energy use. ECO use is limited to the efficiency of appliances, and our ability to control switching them on and off and making choices about what functions the appliances do. We become the decision maker. The alternative is to automate these decisions as best we can, and to find a way of linking these automata to the Supplier agile tariff. That is the stage I am at now. So I will continue in this theme in following posts as it is an interesting journey for a nerd like me, but feel free to continue posting hacks you come across
 
My first problem that I have encountered is that there is no Plug n Play solutions available. There are entrepreneurs working with the power suppliers to build something useful, but not yet at the stage where you can buy an off the shelf solution Also smart devices all speak different languages, so a power switch might work with Alexa, but not Siri, or one may be Zigbee connected, and the other Bluetooth so again will be incompatible even though they are all 2.4Ghz radio devices. I have just purchased some Smart Power outlets to control some appliances, but find I have nothing that I can connect to sensibly. I find I have to buy a Nest hub for them, but that will knock out my Echo hockey puck. I will need to replace my hockey puck anyway since I will need an Echo 4 to drive my switches and do the conjoined command strings necessary for automation. Its a minefield.
 
Now the expensive bit - My phone needs replacing. It is a simple Nokia that does what a phone is expected to do, but nothing else. It is steam radio (3G) and no internet functionality at all. It does not run Apps. Up till now my daughter has done the deed on the apple iPad. I have tried to use my laptop (windows based) to do the setup and control, and I have Alexa running on it, and I can see my central heating status. But I cannot edit anything, or connect zigbee devices since the software does not exist for Windows. So I now have to purchase a Droid phone just to advance in my quest. This will open up the door to the world of Apps but as I said above, there are no Home Solution Apps off the shelf. But I will be able to play with the hocky puck (or her replacement), and control my central heating over the 'net.

I am forced to buy this new phone for another reason - next year this area converts to 5G wireless and all the towers will be converted to 5G. We will no longer have 3G access, and my current phone will need to be retired. I think also that since my Smart Meter also uses this same network for communicating with my supplier, then I will need to have it replaced. So I am in a rocky hard place already.

So far I am not exactly saving money by this venture. Just hope I live long enough to see the benefits of my investments.

Edited to update: I now have access to my daughters old phone so can start messing around with alexa (sounds dodgy, that)
 
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Recently invested in 3 fleece jumpers. Cheap from Millets. They are light to wear but extremley warm. When it's cold you can put on more layers and when you get hot remove a layer or two. I have fingerless gloves which are a godsend on seriously cold days and my hands are painful. Also have hot handies which is lovely to feel some real heat. I feel the cold so do take it seriously when temp starts to drop. Or wet/damp weather.
 
Brekkie said:
@Oldvatr once you have a new phone you will be App happy
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I will not go new, but I am considering a refurbished phone to help save the planet. I think I may also be getting my daughters old phone since she had upgraded, Just need to add a Sim contract and I will be off, hopefully.

Apparently my heating will link [sort of] to my alexa, I can turn it on and off but I cannot control temperatures because foolish me tried to be clever and went for individual zone control which alexa does not understand. Apparently she does not have the relevant skills. She can apparently understand the new Octopus dialect so can alert when the price changes but it is still up to me to manually flick the switches. So I have some functionality through my hockey puck. I can also write my own instructions in Python to create my own applets for an IFTTT controller such as a Raspberry Pi or Arduino controller. But that is a daydream at the moment.

But the major setback I found out today is that most of the smart Home integration work is responding only to the electricity price, and no one is considering the gas price. So I may have difficulty altering my heating based on gas pricing. However, while electricity is pegged to gas prices, it may still work out.
 
Just discovered an enormous winged creature flapping about in the emolient. When I sign up to the Smart Tariff from my provider, they slap on a 45p a day charge on top of the other standing charges. Kind of defeats the object of gambling on energy prices being lower than the cap unit price for much of the day, and taking care not to use anything when the smart price goes up towards 100p a unit which is their self imposed cap on the Smart tariff. I understand that today the electricity unit charge on the tariff did actually go negative for a short while today, but, blink and you miss it. So must have some automation in place. But if I am halfway through a wash cycle on an appliance, and the price rises, then the automatic routine will switch it off mid cycle, and then I will have a half finished load sloshing around in the machine. So I can see that I could end up doubling my washing load suddenly, so where is the saving in that?. I really need a Pause Cycle command, but my appliances are not internet savvy and only respond to a dirigible digit in the right place. My idea for power switches to inhibit appliances when the price is high has some unfortunate side effects.
 
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