Man staggered by standby cost of two appliances after measuring everything | Personal Finance | Finance

A savvy home owner was shocked to discover how much he was paying for all the appliances he’d left on standby around his house.

During the peak of the cost of living crisis, energy bills shot up, leaving many households facing staggering increases in the monthly direct debits to pay for their gas and electricity, and many turned to their usage to try to work out what they might be able to cut back.

Now, energy prices have increased again in April, the third time in a row, and energy bills are 18% higher now than they were last September, on average. Ofgem raised prices by 10% in October, another 1.4% in January and another 6.4% in April, with bills now hitting £1,849 a year for a typical dual fuel household.

When energy bills last spiked in 2022, one Reddit user decided to take matters into his own hands and bought an electricity usage meter to directly measure how much everything was costing him.

The meter, which can be plugged into any wall and measures how much power something is using, even on standby, revealed two appliances in particular were adding a massive amount to his bills.

His results were surprising as he discovered phone chargers actually cost very little, even plugged in, while ‘older appliances’ cost a lot to run.

Leaving an Apple phone charger plugged into the wall cost nothing at all, the plug successfully turning off its power draw when not in use.

A microwave, though, cost an estimated £27 a year just to display the clock, while a Sky Q TV box on standby cost him £48.46 on standby, or £60.79 to run while recording, averaged out for a year.

Another high cost was the Virgin Media wifi router, at £31.09 per year.

He said: “Contrary to belief, leaving a phone charger plugged in will not end up killing penguins in the Antarctic.

“It’s worth checking your older appliances, for me the microwave was an eye opener. I’m paying £16 (soon to be £27) a year just to have the thing display “00:00” at me all the time. It’s now switched off at the wall when not in use.

“Sky TV… I didn’t expect over 9 watts when it’s sitting there doing absolutely nothing. Both boxes are in ‘eco mode’.

“I’m considering having my broadband router and ethernet switch on a timer. A timer costs around £7 and would pay for itself in just over a month if it switched them off for 8 hours a day. I may also do this with the Sky boxes.”