Good afternoon (or morning, evening, night, etc!) all,
Having recently moved into a new flat I’ve been racking my brains as to why my electricity bill is comparatively higher than anticipated and it struck me that one thing I hadn’t considered might be the turbo trainer and fan (Kickr Core & 55w Pedestal fan).
Now, having plugged the relevant numbers into various online calculators, it looks like the turbo trainer and fan combo stacks up to about 463watts combined draw [55w fan + 408w Kickr (1.7amp X 240volts)]. In kilowatts, that’s 0.46kW, multiplied by my usual MV 7-ish hours a week training plan chucks out approx 12.88kWh per month.
At my current electricity rate of 15.19p/kWh, that works out at approx £1.95 a month (I think)?
Are my calculations drastically wrong here? (I’m trying to dispel my girlfriend’s misconception that this is the reason for the high electricity bills…)
Yes. You also need to add entertainment if any (like TV, sound system and such) and any AC temp drops you may do (i set the AC to 70F while I am on the bike).
Also, depending on where you wo, you might be heating up the place, causing more AC usage (other than any manual cooling you do)
Fans are not energy efficient at all. I heard once (not sure if true) than some AC inverters are more energy efficient than most Hi-Po fans.
For more accurate energy usage, pick up a Kill A Watt. You can use it on different items to see what is using the most electricity. Many people are very surprised to see how much electricity their home entertainment systems use, even when “off”.
Luckily I only use my laptop / phone for music in my earphones and the only AC I have is the spare bedroom window, which only has two settings; open or closed.
Time to swap back to old school dumb trainer or even something like the Neo models that are able to run on rider supplied power (not connected to mains power).
I am wondering when we are actually going to be able to run our TVs by pushing watts on the trainer
No solution yet available? So much energy created and wasted.
Something`s in life you just have to pay for, life is too short
In this day and age its constant pressure to cut back on essentials and spend it on useless crap you do not really need (got to keep the wheels turning)
Think of that extra monthly bill as not being a Burdon on the NHS in your later years and hence less NI payments (I know keep dreaming Andrew )
There are so many things in your statement that could be creating the positive variance in utility costs;
what did you assume, was that even correct?
if you had a baseline that was proven and not just assumed, what else has changed
depending on your location (based on currency i assume UK) how is your billing calculated and invoiced, the variable component can actually be quite a small piece of the overall bill.
I used this for a year to find and modify things before I sized and installed whole house solar. For the money this is the biggest savings you can make. It lets you really get a handle on your AC usage, stuff like hottubs, etc. The ‘old’ fridge we kept in the garage turned out to be a huge suck. Found a light ABOVE the drop ceiling in the basement with an incandescent 100w bulb in it. If its on all the time and/or runs without a human pushing a button worry about it. If it gets really hot when its doing its thing, worry about it. Stuff like trainers and fans and even items like microwaves that pull a TON of power are just not on long enough to worry about.
If your bill is off by dozens or hundreds of dollars/pounds its not anything like your trainer. Its an item making heat, either as a side effect or main purpose. Only way to use that much power without notice.
400W for the small power unit of the Kickr Core didn’t seem right, so I just went to check the specs on mine.
Input is a max of 1.7A, but that must be seen as a worst case power surge. If you look at the output, 12V / 5A giving 60W, and assume an efficiency of say 85%, that means it consumes only 70W, probably less as it is not consuming max power all the time.
Conversely, in the winter you can use the heat created by your body to warm the house and offset those energy costs. My pain room heats up about 25 degrees in an hour and stays there.
I’ve got one of those plug in meters for around the house. After reading the OP I decided to run a test.
Results:
Geiger+1 plus 30 odd minutes of set-up and pack down time. (1:45 approx).
A grand total of 0.3 kWh. Wattage peaked at 320W with everything running. (I’m using 230FTP ATM).
As someone in the industry, I just tell you that high energy bills are always related to “heating” appliances. To make a coffee you need a 1500W heating element (even if only for 1 minutes), Kettles are 3000W in UK… Washing machines, dish washers and dryers are big energy users, any form of electric heater is huge sucker (imagine you keep a 2200W heater on for hours…). Lighting can be a killer if you still have scores of 100W filament bulbs spread around the house… but it cost nothing to replace them with 7W led…
All motorized products and IT product use very little (unless you have a gaming PC on for hours…)
