Sorry for off-topic question - just wanted to check our yearly electricity usage, but in my e-bill I see the invoices only starting from February 2022… Is really the history kept that short or I’m missing something?
EDIT: Above question still valid, but checked in the meantime on electricity provider website: a bit over 5.5 kWh in 2021 (family of four, house with heat pump).
We’re a family of 3 using around 5kWh/day (1800-1900kWh p.a.). This includes washing machine, but no heating or warm water.
We have a really old (1990) crappy fridge which seems to run/vibrate permanently (instead of on-off). During a long holiday (with no other electric devices on) I measured 2.5kWh usage per day (900kWh p.a.) for the fridge alone, unfortunately our Verwaltung doesn’t want to replace it. Will maybe try to convince them again as new A+++ uses around 150kWh, a massive difference. Maybe as an idea for other people too.
How’s this for a “fun” electricity-related side-note. Today we got targeted by the newly formed Stromspar-secret-police. We had this paper thrown in our letterbox. At least it wasn’t “anonymous” like such notes in Switzerland usually are, although I don’t recognise the name. And “abmontieren” seems kind of harsh too.
The next months are going to be fun, when/if the energy situation really gets critical and the witchhunts really get going.
(…and just to add our “Balkonbeleuchtung” is a chain of little LED lights from Ikea, powered by a small solar cell which charges 2 AA batteries during the day when the sun shines and then the lights go on at dusk)
I can’t imagine the electricity that went into creating that paper, the ink, the printer and then printing the paper itself. I also dread to think some amount of electricity might have also gone into its distribution (though it also may not).
While I do think saving power is important and that we have a huge margin of efficiency on that front, I always have to frown at the typical swiss habit of wanting to tell our neighbors how we want them to live (it usually goes by “please tend to your garden” when we have a biologically diverse grassland instead of monocultural short mowed grass but I’ve seen a broad range of such complaints on very diverse topics).
I can’t help but think this energy could be better spent elsewhere. There are way heavier gains that can be made before tackling specifically small outside private lights.
I am curious, what does it means when you translate it ?
In my building, they leave the lights in the common switch on all night on.
I didn’t see any movement detector.
“Please save electricity.
Remove the lights on the balcony.
Many thanks”
When seeing these kind of lights from outside I will have guessed their are sun powered.
Your district must been too quiet so they have nothing else to do.
You should attach a sign with a solar panel sign 
That’s not my neighboorhood, if it was, I’d politely tell this guy to “go f**k himself” 
As a side note, outside lighting is to be avoided to help decrease the light pollution and spare the night insects.
Doubt that this Ikea set is bright enough to contribute to any of those.
It doesn’t even light up the balcony on which it’s hung sufficiently. 
It’s mostly just aesthetic.
Before the war against private waste of electricity, there will be a war against public.
Have you noticed that Migros has only closed fridges, while Coop,Aldi,Lidl,Denner and possibliy others have open ones? That’s way more of a waste than even conquestador’s wife issues.
Also if you go on all shopping zones, you’ll notice other waste, see for example Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, were there is a shop with a huge screen that just show stick figures walking. It’s not even dimmed during the night, so you get blinded when you see it during the night.
Anyway we should try to save energy at home. I’m looking at you @conquestador 
I am sure you were joking about the 25C. If not let me know and I will point out why it’s bad.
@ma0 It’s this sort of jokes where you make fun of something that you should be crying 
. Well just in general it’s not easy to change a mindset of somebody from a different culture. Bolivians have always a TV and/or Radio turned on even if nobody actually pays any attention to them. Furthermore, also lights are on always. The 25°C was actually the case when she moved here first. I was able to bring her down to 23°C in the bathrooms and 21°C in the living area and 20°C in the rooms. Luckily we now have air regulation, this was another hot topic for long (even including mold issues but that’s another longer story 
).
Overall we are doing ok, but obviously have a lot to improve still
eheh. sort of.
It’s more for her/your health than for the environment tbh (also offtopic). I’m sure you can still going down sooner or later 
With an electric heat pump or with gas?
Winter or summer?
For me it’s:
609 kWh / year
1.89 kWh / day
Around 90% of time I’m alone, 3-room apartment with relatively new appliances.
Seems low when I see the numbers here.
I guess doing my best in not working from home saves quite a lot.
Hello everyone,
Our consumption during the last 12 months was:
-Ttl = 8.543 kWh (5.472 kWh during the day and 3.071 kWh during the night) (which is just 3% higher than the previous year)
To be honest I was a bit sock after seeing your figures. We are 2 people + a baby in a 2 bedroom 65 m2 apartment and though we were very careful with the electricity consumption.
Can it be the reason for such a high consumption that we have a boiler to heat the water?
The heating of the apartment is by a serpentine under the floor, we keep it on at 20°C during whole Winter, which is the most efficient as I was told.
Thanks,
Hi JdG,
Yes I think your consume is very high. Specially taking into consideration that you have “only” two bedrooms and I assume a kitchen/living room to heat. As mentioned before in a post we live in a house and we also heat the water with a boiler connected to the heat pump and still we use around 6000 kWh.
Maybe you can check if there is some specific device that uses a lot of energy? But I guess you would know if you have a mining rig for cryptos
we have for instance a separate freezer that uses quite some energy but as of now we still need the extra freezer.
Hi Conquestador,
Thanks for the feedback.
All devices we have are the normal devices that you can find in a standard household, we do not even use the TV nd spent most of our free time out as we are very outdoor people.
Is it possible to know how much each electricity each device uses?
I will also ask my neighbors, we live in a old house with 4 apartments and all the others have lived here for almost their entire live, all of them are retired already.
Thanks again for your feedback.
20 degrees for me is luxury, but many people “need” even more than that (my wife included…). I do understand that small babies are special though. Anyway, you could try to lower the temperature at least in the night and when you are out (to 16/17 perhaps).
But how is the water running through the pipes heated up? You only mention kWh, so is it something electric, e.g., a heat pump? Sounds at odds with the fact that the house is old.
A simple trick to save is to run expensive devices like washing machine/dryer/dishwasher only at night. A pro tip is to do some cooking on Sunday for the rest of the week.
You say the house is old, so you might want to invest in new windows and better insulation of the walls/roof/floor.
However, if my understanding is correct, it is not financially interesting for PV owners to run those appliances during the night since they sell their surplus at the energy rate but have to pay the transportation cost (+ energy rate) on what they take from the grid.
Hi Giff,
Thanks for the comments.
It is an old building but my apartment was renovated not long ago and the insolation is pretty good.
To be honest I am not sure how the heating works, the boiler is just for the water that we use, therefore the serpentine under the floor should be power by electricity, there is a thermostat in each room. We were told to keep it always on during the winter because when it cools down to warm it up again, lot of electricity is needed. The apartment is South oriented and here is Ticino we have many sunny days therefore is pretty warn I would say. When we turn it on this winter I will set up at 17 degrees and increase if needed.
We started few weeks ago to use the dishwasher only during the night, it is a small 1 which we fill it up everyday, so not bother. The washing machine I see a bit more complicated because of the drying, but to use it the week ends is the best solution.
Actually I had the chance to meet my neighbor and he told me they spend about 10k kWh, they are just a couple, their apartment is 1 room bigger.
To be honest I was not too concern about the consumption until I saw yours figures, in term of money is not that high, CHF 150 per month
