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Comment by yurishimo | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if some UK/IE residents can chime in; in practice, do you actually flip outlets to the off position or are they routinely left "ON"?

The few appliances I can think of that have an oversized phantom load are the TV and maybe a computer? For TVs, flipping the wall switch seems insanely inconvenient.

It all just seems wildly inconvenient from a modern view. Is it safer? Probably, but I don't think anyone is routinely saving more than a few pounds annually unless they are hyper religious about turning off the outlets when not in use. But if there isn't anything plugged in to an outlet, the fact that it's off means nothing.

EDIT: commented before reading the article. My question isn't really relevant to the article, but I'm still curious as it could be tangentially related. :)

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With one of the energy companies participating (Octopus Energy) the reward was for every KW you used less than your average [1], and the average saved looks like it was about half a kilowatt (108MW saved by 200K homes - 400K homes signed up but presumably half of them used the same or more power than normal and half used less and were eligible for a reward).

So presumably this was people not using ovens, kettles, and washing machines for an hour, rather than sitting in the dark and unplugging phone chargers.

[1] https://octopus.energy/saving-sessions/

[2] https://octopus.energy/press/believe-it-or-watt-octopus-ener...

For things that are easily accessible, yes. they can be really handy and mitigate fire risk from e.g. cheapo chargers. Never switch off tv though, too much hassle.

First time I visited the US i found the plugs and outlets shockingly flimsy and unsafe compared to UK standard. (No ground pin, no covers on live pins, no switches, wobbly wall warts due to lack of third pin etc...)

Depends what it is.

Things like mobile chargers are more likely to be treated like this, you're going near the socket (and the switch) already, and it's relatively simple to flip the switch when disconnecting the phone. (Equally, plug sockets tend to be switched off when there's nothing plugged in, but that's irrelevant in the context of energy usage).

Or electric cookers, there's usually a physical switch within close reach of the cooker itself. (Although arguably the power draw of an off cooker should be fairly minimal, even with a small LED/LCD display/timer/control panel, and resetting the clock time repeatedly is... quite annoying).

For something like a TV, where the power socket may be hidden behind the TV and furniture, far less likely.

(And obviously depends on the householder caring about it at all).

I turned absolutely everything off, including central gas heating, and disconnected what I couldn't turned off. My house's use dropped to below 40W during those periods (you need to have a smart meter to take part so you know exactly your usage and the impact of turning things off) and I earned about £2 per 1 hour session so far.

They are trying to put spin on this but this is really neither positive nor, I hope, the future. Rather the grid and energy supply are f*cked and they are trying to avoid blackouts with effectively soft rationing... It has worked so far but really, these are voluntary blackouts.

And, yes, I was sitting in the dark for an hour every time.

The point isn't microoptimizing by turning off LED lights, the point is to flatten the duck curve by having people use their ovens and washing machines at different times. These appliances use thousands of watts.

The duck curve is a big barrier to the transition to renewables, flattening it is a good long term goal.

Currently the point is to avoid blackouts and messy situations because of the energy problems in the UK, including energy infrastructure because of decades of nonsensical energy policy.

People want to use their ovens before meals, strangely enough... You cannot really ask them to use them at another time on a regular basis. Likewise for kettles, etc. for breakfast and when getting home in the evening.

Washing machines are different. It's perfectly possible to offer night or weekend electricity prices to nudge people as other countries have done for decades.

Any solutions to our energy problems have to deliver electricity when people want to use electricity. Soft rationing means the 'future' does not work.

For me personally, the point has only been to get paid something, even if not much, to offset the current ridiculous energy prices, otherwise I would obviously not have bothered...

"offset the current ridiculous energy prices, otherwise I would obviously not have bothered"

from https://octopus.energy/blog/saving-sessions-faqs/ :

"There's no need to get involved if you feel Saving Sessions isn’t right for you. But this is quite different to just saving energy all the time in everyday life – it’s about shifting your electricity-intensive activities to different times of day"

My guy, the sign-up information for those schemes expressly asked customers not to switch everything off and sit in the dark [1]. For this exact reason.

I've seen all over the internet in the last few days posts similar to yours with doomsaying and misery which will jeopardise the success of future schemes by confusing people about the purpose of the actvity. The idea was to measure how customers could reasonably move some energy use outside of the peak hours - where gas turbine plants need to be kept on standby just to manage. With a little thought and care, perhaps boiling the kettle a bit earlier, running the dishwasher a bit later, a small difference can be made which was the purpose of the experiment. No "energy nazis" are coming to tell you to switch your lights off at 5pm.

If you check grid demand history [2] you'll see that the UK is not close to needing to ration power or risk blackouts.

[1] https://octopus.energy/blog/saving-sessions-energy-tips/ [2] https://grid.iamkate.com/ or https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electr...

If I'm told I can make £3 per kWh saved then I turn everything off to max savings out. That's how incentives work.

There is no other purpose to those schemes to me personally. They are sugar-coated to hide that the root cause is the failure of the UK energy policy over the last decades.

If things were working as we should be expecting them to we would have plentiful and cheap electricity and there would be no such schemes at all.

> They are sugar-coated to hide that the root cause is the failure of the UK energy policy over the last decades

No, No matter how much power is used and how many power stations any country has, power usage goes up and down, to cope with that some power stations are paid to be be dormant but ready to come online at periods of high demand (usually the highest cost, easiest to start and/or polluting ones).

What these experiments are doing is testing if its cheaper/easier to pay consumers to reduce demand than it costs to bring those power stations online.

This will only get more sophisticated as dishwashers/washing machines get smart enough to do there work and and cars charge when the power is cheapest (even paying electric car owners to put a few kWh into the grid at peak early evening times)

> to cope with that some power stations are paid to be be dormant but ready to come online at periods of high demand

If that's the problem then it's entirely self-inflicted... It's a classic: the problem is actually in the premise and presented as a matter of fact to justify 'solutions'...

> cars charge when the power is cheapest

What if I told you that some countries have had off-peak pricing for decades? There is no need for anything new and high tech for that.

That's how electric grids work all over the world. Why are you saying that's a problem? What's the alternative?

If the power in doesn't match the power out there will be a black out and if there wasn't why would you produce more power than is being used? Individual wind turbines are often turned off when there's too much power going into the grid.

https://www.energuide.be/en/questions-answers/why-does-the-e...

That's not the same as your previous statement... Of course usage goes up and down. The problem you previously stated is that power plants are paid to shut down, which is not the way it has to be but rather the consequence of the chosen system of production.

In any case, that's not the reason of the current "saving sessions" in the UK, as already said.

No I said:

> some power stations are paid to be be dormant but ready to come online at periods of high demand

> cars charge when the power is cheapest

Octopus encourage that on certain tariffs. Something like £0.10/kWh during the night if you schedule EV charging using their app (and linked charger).

[2] is such a good link! Does anybody know why we send so much power to France overnight? Does that mean that France is using a lot of energy overnight, or am I misunderstanding?

Probably not, but right now that small inconvenience is financially noticeable. We've (2 adults, 2 teenagers) made an effort in the last 6 months to reduce our base load, result is that our December 2022 electricity usage was 75% of December 2021 - for the same house, same occupancy, same demand (light, cooking, washing/drying, showers, household tech but not space heating or other hot water).

If we go to bed and the house is using > 200watts, then something has not been turned off. Turning off our TV and the associated devices for 20 hours hours per day adds up to a nice meal out for one person each month.

For some things. For example I switch off the toaster at the outlet. It shouldn't use any power until it's activated / pressed down, but the extra safety doesn't cost me anything, so why not do it? May prevent a fire one day if something falls into it or a cat steps on just the right place.

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