Experts in energy say it’s better to only boil as much water as you need. However, many people don’t follow this advice. This is how much it’s costing you.
The energy crisis means we’re all looking for ways to lower our bills – and one place to start is in the kitchen.
Your kettle should only be filled with water. However, many of us don’t follow this rule.
According to Uswitch, it costs approximately 1p to boil one cup of tea or coffee. This assumes you have a 3kwh kettle which takes just one minute to boil.
It would still cost 7p if you used five times as much water and boil it for five minutes.
This means, if you boiled the kettle four times a day, you’re potentially wasting 6p each time – or 24p per day.
Spread out over each day of the year, and this is a wasted cost of £87.60.
How the energy bills crisis can affect you
Of course, the exact amount wasted does depend on the power rating of your kettle, how many times a day you’re using it, and if you fill it up to the max each time.
Justina Miltienyte is the head of policy at Uswitch.com, said: “The more water you put in a kettle, the longer it takes for it to get up to temperature.
“That means that filling it up with more water than you need is going to be using much more energy.
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“Although the savings you make by filling your kettle up with just enough water for each drink only represent a few pence, this all adds up over the course of a year.”
The advice from Uswitch comes as energy bills skyrocketed for millions of homes, following a huge £700 increase to the Ofgem price cap.
For those on a default tariff who pay by direct debit, the price cap has gone up from £1,277 to £1,971 – a rise of £693.
Prepayment customers have seen a bigger jump, with their price cap going up by £708, from £1,309 to £2,017.
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The price cap caps how much households will be charged for each unit or electricity they use.
We also looked into whether gas radiators or electric heaters are more cost-effective ways to reduce your bills.
An electric heater can be expensive and will not heat your home as well as radiators.
There may be instances when an electric heater is more affordable than running a traditional one.
If you are heating one room only for a brief time, the rest of your central heating will be turned off.
To save money, we also considered whether it would be better to use a regular oven or a microwave when cooking.
A baked potato would take 27p to cook in the oven, versus 3p in the microwave.
