One issue identified is that consumers don’t understand the language of energy, Kilowatt hours (kWh) and how that relates to bills. Or is there another issue here? Do consumers know what there home appliances, electric heaters and electricals cost to run? From our experience they don’t!

My first taste of becoming ‘energy literate’, the term being used, I prefer the phrase ‘energy aware‘, was in the seventies (showing may age here) when, as a child, I fed the electric meter under the stairs with coins. If the emersion heater or electric fire was on it was a endless task of finding the next 10p coin (Two Shillings), or a trip to the shops to get some change, as the house was plunged into darkness! You soon got grips with what was using power, as the spinning disk on meter picked up speed!

Sust-it’s website came about because of our frustration at the lack of meaningful information for consumers about how much electricals actually cost to run. We’re all bombarded with energy information, from energy labels, car CO2 emissions, home energy performance certificates, and even the solar panel gold rush has educated many people on financial benefits of the Kilowatt. But do they mean anything to the consumers about to buy a new TV or turning the fan heater on? Probably not!

Energy labels, are one example of how it could be far simpler to get over the value of energy; these labels are already starting to display Kilowatt hours (kWh) which most consumers don’t understand. So why not convert that into running cost, as our site does? The average cost of a unit of electricity in the UK is around 0.14p per Kilowatt hour, so the maths for most products is fairly straightforward.

The other major obstacle to people switching energy supplier is the hassle involved, see previous post. Finally, how can Ofgem propose one standard tariff for each energy suppliers tariff according to payment methods, when you pay different amounts for your electricity, dependent on your postcode! I’m afraid to say your energy prices are a postcode lottery too!

These installers are promising that the rate of government subsidy on solar PV panels will be 43.3p per kWh generated. In fact, due to an ongoing legal battle, this cannot be guaranteed. Consumers may only get a feed-in tariff rate of 21p per kWh.

A search for solar installers on Google brings up three companies on the first page claiming to offer the 43.3p tariff rate. There are also many misleading ads in local and national papers and landing on people’s door mats.

If you install a 4kW system based on an expectation of 43.3p, and the government wins its appeal to the Supreme Court, you will receive £20,000* less than you had calculated over the 25 year term of the feed-in tariff.

YouGen’s advice to people interested in solar panels is to go ahead only if you are happy with the returns given by a 21p feed-in tariff rate. Then if the government loses its appeal, and the rate does go back to 43.3p for installations with an eligibility date before 3 March 2012, you will have a very nice bonus.

If a company says that they can guarantee the higher rate, show them the door, or put down the phone.

There are many honest and reputable solar installers who will do a good job. If people want to protect themselves from solar cowboys, they should:

check that the company is MCS accredited, and members of the REAL Assurance Scheme
Get three quotes. Ask for references from previous customers, or check consumer feedback in the YouGen directory.

by Cathy Debenham – YouGen

We’re all for energy saving innovations, but will a radiator booster really do much more than make a noise, and create for more CO2 emissions in it’s manufacture and distribution than it will ever save! My advice would to make a draft excluder out of an old pair of tights and save yourself £25!  This is exactly why we don’t promote eco and so-called ‘energy saving’ products, just to make money!

The other supplier, who had installed our heat pump 6 years earlier. Had emailed us to say they were now offering PV installations, the bandwagon was moving fast! I asked them to provide a quote for a 4kW PV installation with well known Japanese branded PV panels and inverter. The price came back at the expected £12k,  again the sort of figures you would see around in the press and online. Then the bombshell feed-in-tariffs were slashed by 50 per cent!  Let the PV panic begin!

The phone calls started; “yes, we can install your system before 12th December, as long as you send £500 today! I must admit that I thought the installations cost were high, £3000 for two man days of work! (one electrician, and a labourer!). My gut feeling was that panels and inverters should have dropped in price due to demand and take-up of FiT. In the end, we decided not to risk installing a system on financial grounds, and foreseeing the panic to get the panels registered and commissioned in time to get the old tariff.

Then, miraculously last week, the company resent their quotation with a £2500 reduction for exactly the same system!  Claiming surplus stock – yet prior to 12th December, other suppliers could not source panels due to the demand to get systems in place before the FiT change. So Chris Huhne was right when he stated that the real price of PV panels had dropped dramatically. I didn’t believe that the price of panels was being reflected in the market place, and expected that, after the feed-in-tariff reduction, prices would drop in six to twelve months time, not a week after the deadline!

The renewable energy sector certainly needed kick-starting. However, is there a strong argument that PV installers were profiteering? Or was it a case of bad green policymaking driving greed and not generating the sustainable, long term green jobs we need?

Another little known fact, is that energy suppliers could claim savings under CERT (Carbon Emissions Reduction Target), for subsidising televisions which had a built in digital tuner and a screen size of less than 22 inches. OK the carbon saving the energy suppliers could claim was small, around 0.15 tonnes of lifetime CO2. I can only guess what funding was given, but this amount of CO2 for other measures would typically see a subsidy of between £1.50 and £2.

In total almost 22 million televisions have received a CERT subsidy over the last three years which Ofgem claims “implies CERT has helped drive a significant uptake of energy efficient TVs in GB households”. Really? How many people stood in the store and chose a TV because it had a whopping £1.50 subsidy through CERT, how many even knew? And how many people instead purchased a TV with an integrated digital tuner because of the digital switchover?

A sceptic may conclude that over the past three years most of the TVs on sale had a digital tuner, so consumers had little choice but to buy one. With the analogue signal being switched off, surely most would opt for a digital-ready TV when upgrading? And not many of these TV would be a household’s main TV, more likely a TV for the bedroom, kitchen or even bathroom, or maybe for hotels and businesses, so I can’t imagine that CERT has had much to do with the driving their sales. Perhaps more incentives to encourage  consumers to buy energy efficient appliances generally, linking with manufacturers and retailers, would have had more benefit.

Has the price of panels really dropped more than they predicted? And if so, is that do the Chinese subsidising their solar industry? Raw materials haven’t dropped in price. The government obviously needs to re-adjust the scheme, as it is running out of cash, and the advise they have been given to ‘save the industry’ is to cut quickly and deeply. Yes, it might get rid of the ‘sharks’ around, be in does nothing to inspire confidence or trust.

We are often asked why we don’t list broadband routers in Sust-it’s energy efficiency rankings; the simple answers is that manufacturers tend not to publish any energy usage figures, and are unfortunately not obliged to do so!

The main issue with modem routers is that they are on all the time, 24/7 consuming electricity. So how much electricity do they consume? We did a simple test with our BT home hub 2, which is installed in millions of homes across the UK. This router uses 8 watts per hour, that’s 70.08 KWh’s a year, which adds up to £9.24!

BT has 28% of the UK broadband market*, that’s over 5m customers, consuming £45m worth of electricity every year!

British Telecom are addressing this with their New Home Hub for broadband introduced in 2011, this requires a third less power than previous models, according to BT, as it adjusts power consumption based on use. That still means it costing over £6 a year to run. Whilst this doesn’t sound much on an individual basis, thinking about it on a global scale means a lot of energy being used.

* Source ofcom

What ofgem doesn’t seem to be addressing, in their recommendations, is the the hassle and time it takes to switch supplier. I’ve experienced the hassling phone calls from the outgoing suppliers suddenly offering you a better deal; the end-list request for meter readings, as they don’t send out meter readers anymore. Then there’s the over exaggerated monthly repayments from your new supplier, as the outgoing energy companies probably don’t share information on your energy usage! And then you’ve got the joy of registering with your new supplier, creating new passwords and figuring out how their website works, not forgetting to cancel your old direct debits. And does it really take six to eight weeks for these energy companies to get their act together when you do want to switch? That’s all if your computer savvy. What about those who don’t have internet access or the skills necessary?

I say bring on Smartmeters with real-time billing and the ability to switch supplier instantly through some kind of login system on the Smartmeter, and the facility to add your credit/dept card details to this meter, rather than opening new accounts with energy suppliers. And a network of advice centres, maybe through the post office/library/citizens advice, to help.

There’s a £100 off a BOSCH WTW86560GB tumble dryer, £81 off a washing machine, £78 off a BOSCH fridge frezzer and £71 off Dishwasher. Click here to see the offers.

Ten years old and its still going! Powerbook G4, just replaced with MacBook Pro

Apple’s operating system appears to be more energy efficient too, when you
consider that the Mac mini has been top of our efficiency charts for the last two years – despite it using the same Intel processors as its PC cousins.

For more information click here

What is Forest Eco Open Homes?

Also the EnergySmart service British Gas promotes will only help people who have internet access and it also relies on a change in behaviour to make savings through the use of an energy meter. You might be mislead by the title; it is not offering a Smart Meter (allowing usage to be accurately read) and passing on the savings of meter readings to the customer, as the National Audit Office is calling for, but is offering an energy monitor and relying on the user to do the work.

So who cares if these products are mislabelled, if we’re getting a bargain? Well, not only are these appliances creating more CO2, their lifecycle running costs could end up costing the consumer up to £200 more to run. Both the models mislabelled were sold at the lower end of the market, making them attractive on price, especially if the shopper thinks they are comparing them with other ‘A” rated models. This is a real issue and let’s hope that businesses take note, particularly as the government has announced plans to ensure that the Green Deal won’t rip off consumers. And that Icetech have learnt from there £12,000 fine and £28,000 costs and have, as they state is the press release carried out a “…. complete reassessment of production and testing procedures”.

That’s not much comfort if you’ve only got space for one machine! At least if you check sust-it could save yourself £64 a year by buying the most efficient washer dryer available.

Is viewing television online and on mobile devices green?

It could be down to the economy Nielsen notes, “The last such UEs decline occurred in 1992, after Nielsen adjusted for the 1990 Census, and subsequently underwent a period of significant growth.” But could it signal a change in viewing habits that could help the environment by reducing waste generated in manufacturing TV’s? Probably not! As the energy used in delivering on-demand television services is always going to be more than any broadcast system – which just deliveries content in a single stream over the airways, cables or the Internet.

Think of the processing your computer has to do to play a video from your hard drive, the latest episode of Dr Who, for instance, then multiply that by a hundred, or a thousand, or even hundreds of thousands of people, all trying to view that same video file at slightly different times, what would happen? Your computer would simply grind to a halt; this principle applies to on-demand video services sitting somewhere in this virtual cloud that we never see. All these video servers are consuming vast amounts of energy to store and deliver this content at our convenience. They all need to backed-up, so everything needs to be stored twice! The machines have to be superfast to deliver high quality high-resolution formats we are starting to expect. Our networks/broadband need to have major upgrades to cope with the enormous increase in data traffic, our service providers are trying to pass on the cost by limiting bandwidth usage and charging for when we go over our limits. Are less broadcast TV’s going to lead to lower energy consumption? I don’t think so.

You could just read your electricity meter!

There are some deals around at the moment with energy suppliers offering monitors free with certain tariffs, but beware you could be paying over the odds for the tariff. Check the rate out first and buy a monitor separately.  Or save the cash and look at the dial on your metering spinning around in the cupboard!

But research by the Lighting Industry Federation, the recycling scheme Recolight and others, showed that I am quite alone in my concern with 8 out of 10 consumers unaware that low-energy light bulbs MUST be recycled

Only 18 per cent of those surveyed were aware that low-energy light bulbs need to be recycled through specialised recycling facilities. Alarmingly, when asked what they thought they would do when their old low-energy light bulbs reached end-of-life, 69 per cent said they would throw them away in the normal household rubbish.

And with the research showing that there are approximately 133 million low-energy light bulbs currently in use in homes across the UK. That could add up to a lot of mercury. As Recolight Chief Executive Nigel Harvey explains; “In the next three to five years we expect large quantities of low-energy light bulbs to start reaching end-of-life. It is essential that we raise awareness now of the importance of recycling these bulbs so that they don’t end up in landfill.

“We are working with retailers and local authorities to provide more facilities for consumers to recycle their old bulbs, therefore making it easier for people to do so and helping to raise awareness of the issue. We have also set up a community recycling initiative to enable recycling champions to set up recycling facilities in convenient community locations, using our specially designed collection container.”

So to help promote the need to recycle A colourful animation created by Sam Duggan, illustrating how people can help increase recycling rates of low-energy light bulbs in their community by becoming a CoBRA volunteer.

CoBRA was set up to create volunteer ‘recycling champions’ up and down the country who help take responsibility for collecting used low-energy light bulbs for recycling in their local area. These ‘Champions’ take on responsibility for collecting the used light bulbs in specially designed collection containers which can be placed in community locations of their choice. The waste light bulbs will then be taken to a central collection facility by the volunteers, ready for collection and lead to responsible recycling. So think twice before you chuck the next bulb to blow in the bin.