I've always been a lover of hot drinks, be it coffee, tea, or hot chocolate so the kettle is always on in our house. But it never occurred to me how much money I’m wasting each time I flick the kettle on to boil.
As a household we have become a lot more conscious of the energy we use and like everyone else we've seen our bill double, if not triple. In under a year our EDF monthly direct debit has gone up from around £100 to £250.
Due to the rising bill we’ve cut down where we can on unnecessary appliance usage around the house. Adding up how many mugs of hot drinks my boyfriend and I make, along with the water we boil in our kettle for cooking and cleaning, we spend just under £100 a year. Which sounds like an astronomical amount to me.
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I used the energy calculator site ‘Sust-it’ to get these figures, which calculates the wattage of an appliance with the amount of time used along with the current UK energy price cap. This then gives an average ‘cost spent’ figure.
Although this gave useful information on where we can cut down on energy costs (I need to drink less cups of tea) I was completely oblivious I was causing us to overspend by more than half of our annual kettle bill, with this energy mistake.
Research from Uswitch.com says 80% of households spend an extra £55 a year by overfilling their kettle, and after reading the article I realised we were in that group.
It’s suggested you only boil the exact amount of water you’re going to drink at that time, so that you don’t leave any water in the kettle and re-boil in an hour’s time (or when you next use the kettle). Now that it’s been pointed out to me I can see how obvious it is, as the more water you fill in the kettle, the longer it takes to boil which is more money spent.
To save £55 a year I am now only boiling the exact amount of water, which means measuring out per ‘mugful’. Which sounds silly even writing down.
Our Breville VKT221 Kettle has a 3KW element and when boiled at the max level takes three minutes and nine seconds to boil. When following the money-saving advice, and only boiling one mugful it takes just one minute and three seconds, costing £0.014p each time.
Depending on the wattage of your kettle at home will depend just how much money you use each time you boil, but it’s safe to say no matter the wattage of the appliance, boiling per mug will save money compared to guessing the fill line each time.
It is also worth noting the minimum fill line on your kettle at home, or something to look for when buying, as the minimum line could be more than one mug.
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