Savvy dad knocks £625 off energy bill by updating one expensive appliance

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Families all over the UK are desperately trying to cut down on their energy bills. With the new price cap of £3,549 a year set to come into force on October 1, it can be handy to know exactly which appliances in your household are using up the most money, so it's easier to cut down.One father discovered one device in his home was contributing to a massive part of his bills, after using a smart meter to track his energy usage.

46-year-old David Miles, from Essex, recently went around his home plugging in different appliances and monitoring their energy performance via an app, the Mirror reports.“It tells me how much power each appliance is consuming at any given time and its average daily consumption," he told Express.co.uk.

The clever app also lets him turn off any appliance when he's not in the house, using his phone. When he plugged in his large 25-year-old American-style fridge-freezer, he was shocked to find how much energy it consumed. “Incredibly, it ate up a fifth of my entire electricity bill," he said.The fridge-freezer was using up a massive 1,600 kilowatt hours (kWh) of power over the course of a year, which according to David, was "the same as our friend's hot tub".

According to regulator Ofgem, each kWh of electricity costs 28p - so at the moment, David's fridge is costing him £448 a year to run.From October, when the energy price cap jumps from £1,971 a year to £3,549 a year for the average home, electricity will jump to 52p per kWh, a rise of almost 86 per cent.