I went to see Mum this afternoon to find that she’d been sent a couple of electricity-saving devices free of charge by British Gas…….despite the fact that she doesn’t buy her electricity from them!
One was one of those gizmos which shows how much power you’re using at any given time. Is it a "Consumption Meter"? Anyway, it took quite a bit of setting up and programming, even for a super-technical whiz-kid like myself (yeah, right) but gives some interesting results. In particular, turning on a kettle or the oven is actually a bit scary. In that sense, they’re a good idea; it just struck me that the stuff that’s easier to turn off (eg lights, radio) is exactly the sort of equipment which uses only negligible amounts. to really save money you need to stop eating and drinking. That would seem to be very effective.
More bewildering was the other “gift”: one of those multi-point sockets which turns off equipment left in stand-by mode, mainly the TV set. This took for ever to set up and – frankly – didn’t work very effectively. Things stubbornly refused to come back to life when turned back on. Dreading an urgent telephone call to "come quickly" because “the telly doesn’t work”, I promptly unistalled it…….
Wouldn’t mind one of the consumption meters though. I wonder if our supplier (
British Gas are getting desperate - they still treat customers like dirt, viz. as if they still had a state monopoly. I got shot of them for anything, a coupke of years ago.
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