Greener living all year round- How are people reducing energy?

Hi @JNeve, brilliant, that saves you having to take manual readings twice a day (as I was doing for 13 years before my smart meter arrived!).

That’s by far the biggest energy-saving step, I find, ensuring your OVO account (or other energy provider?) is set to receive half-hourly meter readings.  That way, every few days, you can accurately monitor your usage (gas and electricity, but mainly electricity). 
 

We are a retired couple living in a smallish mid-terrace, so we can be flexible around our energy consumption, in a way that many households cannot be. There are loads of good tips in this forum from various folk on various thread, definitely worth a good explore! For example, my wife and I routinely use a smallish rechargeable battery-power vacuum cleaner and reserve the big mains one for very, very occasional use.  Loads of tips on here from different users, so you’ll have fun exploring around! If you have specific queries as a result of digging around, or indeed at any time, I’ll be delighted to respond as best I can, and there are plenty of folk on here who are infinitely better qualified than I am who are very helpful. 
 

We got PV panels ten years ago, and if that’s something that might be on your mind, I have ten years of PV data for our small set-up here in Sunderland (not the sunniest spot in the UK by any stretch!), and it’s not always easy to find actual solar panel data from an actual user over such a long period from an actual smallish NE terraced house! So let me know if that sounds relevant to you?

Last Autumn we took a bit of a financial gamble and I obtained a small LiFePo4 battery (24 volt 100 AH, equates roughly to 2.5 kWh capacity, though, as with any battery, not all of that is available) and a small inverter, which recharges during the day, and at night for 17 hours solid powers the entire house (small, of course, but it does have a ‘fridge/freezer, small chest freezer and all the usual background stuff of mains alarms, landline handsets, router etc. - plus led TV and lighting before we go to bed) from 1600 hrs to 0900 hrs. During the winter months in daylight (“daylight”!!) the PV panels only provide about 1kWh (sometimes, on the very worst and darkest days they might provide nothing), so we need to buy between 1 and 1.5 kWh daily on average during Nov, Dec, and Jan, the hardest months with the shortest days with the sun (when it’s there!) at its lowest angle. Before the battery, in the winter months we bought around 1kWh during the nighttime alone between 2200 and 0800. So even a small battery like ours (most people talk about battery storage of minimum 5 kWh) makes a big difference. 

Lots of other smaller outlays which can eventually have a huge impact, such as getting a plug-in energy monitor to gauge the consumption of your various appliances. The smart meter IHD is brilliant, but there is that half-hour or so time lag.  

And this brings me to my final point for the moment (hope you’re wading through all this OK! Apologies for the wordiness!): Previously we’ve always concentrated on daylight versus nighttime consumption and on being really disciplined at all times on what we use, when we use it, and on replacing old kit with newer kit when we can afford it. But since the OVO Power Move initiative we additionally now factor in our Peak Hours consumption and reduce it as much as we possibly can, which can earn you an extra £15 in your account every month. That’s not a fortune, but it makes a nice contribution: in effect it’s getting your entire electricity standing charge for the month paid off, or, it’s the equivalent of around 50kWh of free electricity.  That’s about a week’s worth of electricity for an average household. Plus, being extra rigorous with Peak Hours consumption has raised our awareness enormously and is good for all our community.

All the very best of luck to you, let us know what occurs!