Energy bill increases

[Regular.Cyclist]

Kilowatt hour is a nonsense unit anyway, not to mention kilowatt hours per year. How many time dimensions do you want? Can we not just use Joules and Watts?

How would simply using joules or watts relate to quantifying and billing use?

Say a 2,200 watt kettle takes 6 minutes to boil. That would equate to 0.22 kilowatt hours and can be used for billing. Both the 2,200 watts and the 6 minutes are meaningless to your electricity supplier.

 

[winjim]

How would simply using joules or watts relate to quantifying and billing use?

Say a 2,200 watt kettle takes 6 minutes to boil. That would equate to 0.22 kilowatt hours and can be used for billing. Both the 2,200 watts and the 6 minutes are meaningless to your electricity supplier.

A kilowatt hour is energy divided by time multiplied by time. That means the time dimensions cancel and it's a unit of energy, which in most situations is expressed in Joules.

1kWh = 3.6MJ

You could do it in electron volts I suppose, I've always wanted an excuse to use the yotta prefix.

1kWh = 22.5YeV

 

[winjim]

I suspect the reason is that a kilowatt hour sounds like a lot less than a megajoule. It's a bit more palatable to the customer, as well as relateable because historically we used to compare things to light bulbs and single bar electric fires which we know the wattage of.

 

[PaulSB]

It's a really interesting question but completely off topic, but logically why would you need to?

A gallon as far as petrol/diesel is concerned is irrelevant, we have been buying in litres since January 1995, over 27 years ago, at what point will the UK population let go of the concept of MPG (miles per gallon)? Surely we should have adopted MPL (miles per Litre) but maybe that number is so small the automotive industry don't want us to use that, the other option appears to be litres per 100km, which as we do not use km it would be pointless, so maybe it should be Litres per 100 miles.

But anyway back to the original question, I don't know the answer, but I use 4.5 as a guide, just like I use 5/8th converting km to m.

I fully understand your point and I agree it is an interesting question. In relation to your first sentence one would only need the knowledge for the calculation being made by the poster I was responding to.

More broadly it seems we do still need the ability to convert as we have a daft mix of imperial and metric units in use. There's also the question of people of my age, 68, educated in imperial and lived through the change.

I can easily handle weights, volumes, small measurements etc in daily life but distance, mpg and similar mean nothing. I always ride, drive, walk in miles and mph. I can't explain why. When I cycle tour on the continent I run my Wahoo in imperial to give me meaningful information and a small Cateye in metric showing distance travelled - this I use for when navigating. If the road sign says Calais 20km I check the Cateye, mentally note the reading and use that to gauge how quickly I'm approaching the next town. Bonkers. I know but it's how I cope.

It should have been an all or nothing change.

 

[jowwy]

Whats any of this got to do with energy bill increases???? Typical of some to derail a thread into how they want it.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Whats any of this got to do with energy bill increases???? Typical of some to derail a thread into how they want it.

Which bit? The units of electricity or my off topic post about fuel & how we use the wrong unit(s), I did point out it was OT & @PaulSB was just an answer. But in my defence it was related to your comments about how much it would cost you to drive to work.

 

[PaulSB]

10 days back I used historical billed data for July '20 to Jun '21 to calculate my expected cost for '22/23. This came out at £2594 which in the current climate I viewed as "reasonable."

This morning I put in the new costs from October 1st. The period total now comes out at £4394.

One of my sons enjoys, I do mean this word, supported living in the community. He shares a house with three other men. Including a carer there are always five adults, often six, in a five bed house 24/7.

Currently Scottish Power forecast the annual bill at £7764 prior to the new cap. At 80% increase from October of £4228 the total will become £11992.

That's £12000 for one household occupied by four men unable to care for themselves and entirely dependent on benefits.

I'm waiting to see what the government does for the vulnerable in our society. On the past 12 years it will be nothing.

 

[PaulSB]

Whats any of this got to do with energy bill increases???? Typical of some to derail a thread into how they want it.

I replied to an interesting point raised by @Phaeton. An enjoyable and informative feature of CC threads is the frequency with which they throw up OT questions and points. In my experience this directly reflects real life.

It was a discussion developing out of your reference to and inaccurate calculation of the cost of WFH compared with being office based.

 

[jowwy]

I replied to an interesting point raised by @Phaeton. An enjoyable and informative feature of CC threads is the frequency with which they throw up OT questions and points. In my experience this directly reflects real life.

It was a discussion developing out of your reference to and inaccurate calculation of the cost of WFH compared with being office based.

No inaccurate calculation fella…..i said approx, i cant help it if my abacus wasnt working correctly

 

[PaulSB]

No inaccurate calculation fella…..i said approx, i cant help it if my abacus wasnt working correctly

So you pluck a meaningless figure out of the air, blame Google for the inaccuracy and come up with a 17% error and write this off as inaccurate?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

How would simply using joules or watts relate to quantifying and billing use?

Say a 2,200 watt kettle takes 6 minutes to boil. That would equate to 0.22 kilowatt hours and can be used for billing. Both the 2,200 watts and the 6 minutes are meaningless to your electricity supplier.

It would be 792 kJ of energy used which is far from meaningless and can be used to calculate billing.

 

[stephec]

And... an electric toothbrush charger!

Good god man have you no shame, think about the ozone! 😂

 

[stephec]

The wife & I got into a bit of an argument at lunch time, I was making a sandwich & she was deciding what to have, she's looking in the pantry. She pulls out a box of eggs, puts them on the counter, turns on the halogen hob on full, walks away to then take the pan out of the drawer, then goes into the utility where the fridge is, opens the fridge door, takes out the margarine & mushrooms, leaves the door open & comes back into the kitchen puts the pan on the hob, puts the margarine in the pan. Cracks & beats the eggs, by this time the fridge is bleeping, she cuts the mushrooms, I know I should have kept my mouth shut but just couldn't, so I asked why she had turned on the hob before getting the pan, why she had left the fridge door open.

I went outside to eat my sandwich.

I would have done the same as you. 😊

 

[Regular.Cyclist]

It would be 792 kJ of energy used which is far from meaningless and can be used to calculate billing.

The downside is that method generates large numbers very quickly requiring more digits to be displayed on the meter.

My, rather modest, annual electricity consumption is estimated at 2,178 kWh. 7,840,800 kj begins to look like telephone numbers 😂.

 

[presta]

Kilowatt hour is a nonsense unit anyway, not to mention kilowatt hours per year. How many time dimensions do you want? Can we not just use Joules and Watts?

It irks me a bit too, but the fact is many people don't understand the bills they're already getting, let alone the difference between power and energy, or that a watt is a joule per second. In your head, it's quicker to find the cost of a 100W lamp for an hour at 50p/kWh, than at 14p/MJ because you don't have to convert between hours and seconds.

A bit like miles or kilometres per hour rather than metres per second.