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Gazette reporter Eleanor Stride tries out a Southern Electric Current Cost Monitor at home

IF A recent report by Centrica, the owner of British Gas, is to be believed, energy bills could rise by 70 per cent in the next few years - forcing the average household to fork out about £1,000 a year for fuel.

With families already struggling to meet ever-increasing gas and electricity charges, the desire to find ways of reducing energy consumption has never been greater.

To see if there are any easy ways to save money off my electricity bill, I tried out a Current Cost Monitor - a gadget that measures how much electricity you are using at any given time.

One part of the device connects to your electricity supply, next to your electricity meter, and the other part plugs into any socket inside your home and displays the level of electricity being used in watts, and the estimated cost of that electricity if it was used at that level all day.

After ensuring everything in my flat that could be switched off was (excluding the fridge/freezer), the monitor informed me the flat was using 27 watts of electricity, at a cost of 5p a day.

I then used this base figure to see how much power other appliances used when they were turned on.

Using the device, it became clear that appliances which create heat use the most power, so finding ways to get the required temperature, but using the least power to do it, is an obvious way to save energy and money.

The kettle brought the power consumption up to 2.58 kilowatts (a £5.55 per day cost). But by only boiling the amount of water you need, for example enough for two cups rather than filling it up, you cut down on the boiling time and could save in that way.

I also saw that having two of my hob rings on full used 2.37 kilowatts of power (£5.05 per day). Using a lid on the pan and turning the power down to medium used 1.46 kilowatts of power - a saving of almost one kilowatt of energy.

Although many energy-saving tips are common sense - only using the washing machine when you have a full load, for example - actually seeing the power consumption and estimated costs rocket when the machine was in use was a great way to show how easy it is to waste power.

While money-saving and becoming green often go hand-in-hand, the monitor revealed to me exactly how much of an energy-guzzler my electric shower (which heats its own water) is.

Although we are constantly told that showering uses less water than a bath and, as such, is better for the environment, when I saw that my shower used 7.79 kilowatts of power (£16 a day) it made me think that it might not be quite as green as I'd hoped.

Much to my annoyance the monitor also revealed that the games console didn't use as much power as I was expecting, or hoping. There goes a good excuse as to why my boyfriend should cut down the hours playing Mario Kart!

8:45am Friday 25th July 2008

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