Modern devices do not allow you to overcharge them
> It may be convenient to leave the television on standby and wake it up with a press of a button on a remote – but it costs £24.61 per year
Since 2013 EU rules mandated that a television on standby must not use more than 0.5w an hour (and most use less).
That means a television on standby for a year uses 4.38kWh (0.5 x 24 x 365 / 1000).
If British Gas are saying that now will cost £24.61 and not the £1.31 it currently costs with an electricity price of around 30p / kWh then they must have suddenly increased their price to £5.62 / kWh.
That is going to be damned expensive, with households seeing an annual electricity bill of around £20,000.
Or alternatively the article is using out of date numbers to ‘victim shame’ their customers into believing they are the problem for the sky high bills arriving over the next year.
The numbers in this article definitely look a little fishy.
“Shower – 9.80” is the one that caught my eye. The vast majority of electric showers I’ve seen have a standby current of almost nil with the only standby draw being a LED or a neon which is pennies per year even on a standard variable rate tarrif.
My base usage inc devices and fridge is sometimes like 200w or equivalent of about £1.44 a day, or around £500 a year.
I am thinking about solar to take the edge off that a bit… slightly easier than convincing my partner that light switches have an off function as well as an on function.
My understanding was that a phone takes about £1 per year to charge so you need a lot of devices left on /standby to get to this figure. And yeah I included TVs in that since when I bought mine I looked into the Standby draw.
Other than that I have a LED clock and 3 Echo so reckon I’m spending £10 a year or so on standby
Last year, vampire devices would have cost you £80, and next year they’re cost you over £200!
It is almost as if the BBC, and other companies, are deliberately trying to get readers to go in to a panic. Yes, awareness of the drain (mostly negligible) from standby is a thing to be aware of, but this is getting out of hand and will undoubtedly lead to depression/anxiety and other conditions as people become paranoid of their home. As an anecdote, I had a friend at uni that was so cut throat on saving money that he would sleep a full set of outdoor clothes, wouldn’t cut his hair, and eat only red ticketed items, and this was BEFORE energy meters were brought in. How many will fall into the calorie counting trap of trying to run their homes/lives on fumes to ensure they survive (I know many already do). I mean, even the language of “Vampire” isn’t exactly supportive or kind. We don’t need additional anxiety, we all know that energy prices are killer!
​
I have moved into a house with a smart meter and have taken the habit of watching the cost per day and that is starting to bring me down and I am fortunate enough to have a decent salary that should keep me warm and safe. Not many are the same.
​
It is all nice and well to tell people how to scrimp pennies on their energy bills, but what we need is a genuine and impactful process or support system to ensure that those who need help get it, and that everyone else isn’t squeezed dry by the rocketing prices.
​
FFS BBC, I had hoped for better. I shudder to think what the tabloids would have written this up as…
Make sure to rub some garlic on said devices to keep them under check.
Oh yes energy companies. That’s clearly the problem here. Vampire devices.
Fuck off.
So buy a new phone, or Alexa clones and smart switches to turn off dumb devices when you don’t need them.
“There are smart plugs you can buy which will let you check everything is turned off from your phone,”
Guess what, Captain Clever, they need plugged in, and consume power too.
Seems like good advice, but suggesting a smart meter at the end, huge fail. It’s an advertisement for smart meters, not a real article.
I recently discovered I had a smart meter and have really enjoyed figuring out what stuff in my house is costing me most money.
Turns out things like plugs, TV on standby, lightbulbs? Basically negligible. Yeah it adds up, but boiling the kettle once is basically the same as several days of everything on standby.
You know what makes up most of my energy bill? A good **quarter** is standing fees that I can do literally nothing about. The rest of my electricity use is almost entirely the electric hob and oven. The gas is 99% heating.
These little money saving tips are all well and good but they try and distract from that fact that unless you’re unbelieveably wasteful, almost the entirety of your bill will be essentials. Turn off your plugs, sure, but unless you’re willing to freeze or not eat hot food, **it will make basically fuck all difference in the long run**.
This isn’t a crisis we can make micro changes to dig our way out of. It needs serious intervention.
>the equivalent of two months’ electricity charges
That aged well
This article is blatantly wrong.
From the article:
>It may be convenient to leave the television on standby and wake it up with a press of a button on a remote – but it costs £24.61 per year, the research suggests,
Sorry to say but your research suggests that your research is bullshit.
If you actually run the numbers, you will find a TV left on standby will cost £1.31 per year (as explained by u/grapplinggigahertz). Standby mode using negligible amounts of power has been well-known for years now.
This is shameless scaremongering and frankly falls short of the standards I expect of the BBC.
These numbers are total nonsense for most people which is not surprising as they come from British Gas a company so incompetent that they couldn’t send me an electricity bill for three months and then couldn’t get their head around why my direct debit was out of whack.
Older televisions/fridge freezers (both or separate) seem to be the biggest culprit from people I’ve seen with smart meters.
*Shower: £9.80* *Washing machine: £4.73*
Yes of course, people should turn their shower off at the mains after showering…
Do showers actually use 4W in standby? That’s a lot!
****
Does blaming the victim work, politically speaking? Only when the victim is in a minority, which certainly isn’t the case here.
Call Ronnie O’Sullivan and he can clear it for you
My bills went up by more than that per month. Like. I think maybe vampire devices aren’t the main issue.
I’ve seen a lot of posts suggesting this is “scaremongering” or just mistaken. It’s neither. It is the BBC being the propaganda mouthpiece of the establishment. It is trying to push the responsibility for rising energy costs on to the consumer instead of where it belongs, on the huge profits energy companies are making and the shareholders who demand their high returns continue at the expense of the poor who have to choose between heating and eating.
I read recently that a smart meter costs £80 a year to run (not sure where I read it so apologies I can’t add the link)
Meanwhile:
British Gas retail arm saw profits rise 44% to £118m over the past year
Parent Centrica saw group profits increase to nearly £1bn in 2021
Millions of UK households will see their energy bills rise sharply in April
Bosses at British Gas says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will not affect supplies
Well, isn’t a standing charge, a vampire device also, ie I’m paying British Gas even when I’m not using any, apart from the pilot light in my boiler, which is also a vampire device. So why should I pay a standing charge, as well as burning a gas pilot light 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Sounds like British Gas a hypocrites.
Please for the love of all that is good, don’t turn your router off, it can lead to issues with the way the connection operates at the exchange and its equipment
It uses minor amounts of energy and it’s like your fridge, turn it off, spoil the product.
​
Signed – a tired former tech support call centre worker
My series x standbys at 13 watts. Same as series s. Now i either use 1 or the other. The plugs literally right there so i swap and change between the two and i turn off the socket when im not in ie work. Tho a 10 min thing i leave them on as usually i just slipped shome shoes and a hoodie on to pop to tesco
Not being funny but I’m not resetting the clock on my microwave every morning
Then these assholes at the energy companies and government (and a few well-meaning but evidently well-salaried people on this sub) flip their shit at people burning wood to warm the house up in winter.
Odd statement considering these energy companies are sucking the blood and life right out of us.
The real bloodsuckers are the energy companies and the Tories, not leaving your TV on standby.
Centrica is a private company with shareholders. It retained the trading name of British gas to fool millions of customers that they were still buying gas off the good old gas board.
The only serious contender for the title of vampire device is old refrigeration.
Lighting, “it’s like Blackpool balloominations in this house” used to add up to over 1 KW with old bulbs and your mum was right to nag. But 10 led lit rooms uses only 100 Watts these days.
Turning small devices off is just another way to make the already beleaguered public think they are helping poor “British gas” get through the nasty russian gas crisis.
Me and my partner halved our energy bills last month. Here is what we did.
Don’t have TV on in the day or when using our phones. TV would always be on in the background.
Turn everything apart from the fridge off at the plug unless being used
Put on dressing gowns instead of the heating which was always set at 16-18
Using the usb sockets on the TV to charge phones and Vape (not sure if this makes a difference) instead of them all having a separate plug.
We went from £170 the previous month to £90 in march to April 19th.
We also cancelled TV licence, went on SIM only contracts and next plan on buying a slow cooker.
£147 a year saving will really help with the £3000 bill.
Have an engineer for a father and you’ll NEVER leave any electronic shit on standby ever.
Kinda sucks cos I can’t “save money” by doing this, cos I already do it lol
I’ve got solar panels, then added more and more panels. Got nearly 8kw now. Got 11.5kWh of house battery storage. The solar does the house, the overnight use, the hot water heating, the electric car miles. My costs are < £50/month for electricity and gas now. People should be persuaded to get solar – where possible.
They say turn off your modems- do not do this. This is actively terrible advice. The network provider will read this as an unstable internet connection and automatically throttle your bandwidth because they’ll assume they are overloading it and your modem cannot keep up with such a strong connection.
This article is shite.
Martin Lewis thinks this is a bit of blame game by energy companies to make us feel like we’re to blame for high bills. Makes sense as most people have highly efficient devices that don’t suck much power even in standby
36 comments
Modern devices do not allow you to overcharge them
> It may be convenient to leave the television on standby and wake it up with a press of a button on a remote – but it costs £24.61 per year
Since 2013 EU rules mandated that a television on standby must not use more than 0.5w an hour (and most use less).
That means a television on standby for a year uses 4.38kWh (0.5 x 24 x 365 / 1000).
If British Gas are saying that now will cost £24.61 and not the £1.31 it currently costs with an electricity price of around 30p / kWh then they must have suddenly increased their price to £5.62 / kWh.
That is going to be damned expensive, with households seeing an annual electricity bill of around £20,000.
Or alternatively the article is using out of date numbers to ‘victim shame’ their customers into believing they are the problem for the sky high bills arriving over the next year.
The numbers in this article definitely look a little fishy.
“Shower – 9.80” is the one that caught my eye. The vast majority of electric showers I’ve seen have a standby current of almost nil with the only standby draw being a LED or a neon which is pennies per year even on a standard variable rate tarrif.
My base usage inc devices and fridge is sometimes like 200w or equivalent of about £1.44 a day, or around £500 a year.
I am thinking about solar to take the edge off that a bit… slightly easier than convincing my partner that light switches have an off function as well as an on function.
My understanding was that a phone takes about £1 per year to charge so you need a lot of devices left on /standby to get to this figure. And yeah I included TVs in that since when I bought mine I looked into the Standby draw.
Other than that I have a LED clock and 3 Echo so reckon I’m spending £10 a year or so on standby
Last year, vampire devices would have cost you £80, and next year they’re cost you over £200!
It is almost as if the BBC, and other companies, are deliberately trying to get readers to go in to a panic. Yes, awareness of the drain (mostly negligible) from standby is a thing to be aware of, but this is getting out of hand and will undoubtedly lead to depression/anxiety and other conditions as people become paranoid of their home. As an anecdote, I had a friend at uni that was so cut throat on saving money that he would sleep a full set of outdoor clothes, wouldn’t cut his hair, and eat only red ticketed items, and this was BEFORE energy meters were brought in. How many will fall into the calorie counting trap of trying to run their homes/lives on fumes to ensure they survive (I know many already do). I mean, even the language of “Vampire” isn’t exactly supportive or kind. We don’t need additional anxiety, we all know that energy prices are killer!
​
I have moved into a house with a smart meter and have taken the habit of watching the cost per day and that is starting to bring me down and I am fortunate enough to have a decent salary that should keep me warm and safe. Not many are the same.
​
It is all nice and well to tell people how to scrimp pennies on their energy bills, but what we need is a genuine and impactful process or support system to ensure that those who need help get it, and that everyone else isn’t squeezed dry by the rocketing prices.
​
FFS BBC, I had hoped for better. I shudder to think what the tabloids would have written this up as…
Make sure to rub some garlic on said devices to keep them under check.
Oh yes energy companies. That’s clearly the problem here. Vampire devices.
Fuck off.
So buy a new phone, or Alexa clones and smart switches to turn off dumb devices when you don’t need them.
“There are smart plugs you can buy which will let you check everything is turned off from your phone,”
Guess what, Captain Clever, they need plugged in, and consume power too.
Seems like good advice, but suggesting a smart meter at the end, huge fail. It’s an advertisement for smart meters, not a real article.
I recently discovered I had a smart meter and have really enjoyed figuring out what stuff in my house is costing me most money.
Turns out things like plugs, TV on standby, lightbulbs? Basically negligible. Yeah it adds up, but boiling the kettle once is basically the same as several days of everything on standby.
You know what makes up most of my energy bill? A good **quarter** is standing fees that I can do literally nothing about. The rest of my electricity use is almost entirely the electric hob and oven. The gas is 99% heating.
These little money saving tips are all well and good but they try and distract from that fact that unless you’re unbelieveably wasteful, almost the entirety of your bill will be essentials. Turn off your plugs, sure, but unless you’re willing to freeze or not eat hot food, **it will make basically fuck all difference in the long run**.
This isn’t a crisis we can make micro changes to dig our way out of. It needs serious intervention.
>the equivalent of two months’ electricity charges
That aged well
This article is blatantly wrong.
From the article:
>It may be convenient to leave the television on standby and wake it up with a press of a button on a remote – but it costs £24.61 per year, the research suggests,
Sorry to say but your research suggests that your research is bullshit.
If you actually run the numbers, you will find a TV left on standby will cost £1.31 per year (as explained by u/grapplinggigahertz). Standby mode using negligible amounts of power has been well-known for years now.
This is shameless scaremongering and frankly falls short of the standards I expect of the BBC.
These numbers are total nonsense for most people which is not surprising as they come from British Gas a company so incompetent that they couldn’t send me an electricity bill for three months and then couldn’t get their head around why my direct debit was out of whack.
Older televisions/fridge freezers (both or separate) seem to be the biggest culprit from people I’ve seen with smart meters.
*Shower: £9.80* *Washing machine: £4.73*
Yes of course, people should turn their shower off at the mains after showering…
Do showers actually use 4W in standby? That’s a lot!
****
Does blaming the victim work, politically speaking? Only when the victim is in a minority, which certainly isn’t the case here.
Call Ronnie O’Sullivan and he can clear it for you
My bills went up by more than that per month. Like. I think maybe vampire devices aren’t the main issue.
I’ve seen a lot of posts suggesting this is “scaremongering” or just mistaken. It’s neither. It is the BBC being the propaganda mouthpiece of the establishment. It is trying to push the responsibility for rising energy costs on to the consumer instead of where it belongs, on the huge profits energy companies are making and the shareholders who demand their high returns continue at the expense of the poor who have to choose between heating and eating.
I read recently that a smart meter costs £80 a year to run (not sure where I read it so apologies I can’t add the link)
Meanwhile:
British Gas retail arm saw profits rise 44% to £118m over the past year
Parent Centrica saw group profits increase to nearly £1bn in 2021
Millions of UK households will see their energy bills rise sharply in April
Bosses at British Gas says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will not affect supplies
[source](https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-10546897/British-Gas-owner-rakes-HUGE-profits-bills-rise.html)
Well, isn’t a standing charge, a vampire device also, ie I’m paying British Gas even when I’m not using any, apart from the pilot light in my boiler, which is also a vampire device. So why should I pay a standing charge, as well as burning a gas pilot light 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Sounds like British Gas a hypocrites.
Please for the love of all that is good, don’t turn your router off, it can lead to issues with the way the connection operates at the exchange and its equipment
It uses minor amounts of energy and it’s like your fridge, turn it off, spoil the product.
​
Signed – a tired former tech support call centre worker
My series x standbys at 13 watts. Same as series s. Now i either use 1 or the other. The plugs literally right there so i swap and change between the two and i turn off the socket when im not in ie work. Tho a 10 min thing i leave them on as usually i just slipped shome shoes and a hoodie on to pop to tesco
Not being funny but I’m not resetting the clock on my microwave every morning
Then these assholes at the energy companies and government (and a few well-meaning but evidently well-salaried people on this sub) flip their shit at people burning wood to warm the house up in winter.
Odd statement considering these energy companies are sucking the blood and life right out of us.
The real bloodsuckers are the energy companies and the Tories, not leaving your TV on standby.
Centrica is a private company with shareholders. It retained the trading name of British gas to fool millions of customers that they were still buying gas off the good old gas board.
The only serious contender for the title of vampire device is old refrigeration.
Lighting, “it’s like Blackpool balloominations in this house” used to add up to over 1 KW with old bulbs and your mum was right to nag. But 10 led lit rooms uses only 100 Watts these days.
Turning small devices off is just another way to make the already beleaguered public think they are helping poor “British gas” get through the nasty russian gas crisis.
Me and my partner halved our energy bills last month. Here is what we did.
Don’t have TV on in the day or when using our phones. TV would always be on in the background.
Turn everything apart from the fridge off at the plug unless being used
Put on dressing gowns instead of the heating which was always set at 16-18
Using the usb sockets on the TV to charge phones and Vape (not sure if this makes a difference) instead of them all having a separate plug.
We went from £170 the previous month to £90 in march to April 19th.
We also cancelled TV licence, went on SIM only contracts and next plan on buying a slow cooker.
Edit: [Post I made about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/u7uoyb/with_a_little_mindfulness_me_and_the_misses_have/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
£147 a year saving will really help with the £3000 bill.
Have an engineer for a father and you’ll NEVER leave any electronic shit on standby ever.
Kinda sucks cos I can’t “save money” by doing this, cos I already do it lol
I’ve got solar panels, then added more and more panels. Got nearly 8kw now. Got 11.5kWh of house battery storage. The solar does the house, the overnight use, the hot water heating, the electric car miles. My costs are < £50/month for electricity and gas now. People should be persuaded to get solar – where possible.
They say turn off your modems- do not do this. This is actively terrible advice. The network provider will read this as an unstable internet connection and automatically throttle your bandwidth because they’ll assume they are overloading it and your modem cannot keep up with such a strong connection.
This article is shite.
Martin Lewis thinks this is a bit of blame game by energy companies to make us feel like we’re to blame for high bills. Makes sense as most people have highly efficient devices that don’t suck much power even in standby