Site Prices Update
Last Updated28th June 2022
All calculations on this site are based on current fuel prices, they are checked regularly and calculations are automatically updated.
The costs calculated based on these fuel prices should be regarded as 'good estimates', given that fuel prices vary in different parts of the county and at different time of the year.
The calculations also have different levels of accuracy depending on the nature of the calculation. For example calculating the energy use of a known power output TV is very easy compared to calculating the effect on energy savings when insulating a cavity wall.
Site Calculations
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User PricesFor several of the fuel prices on this site you can now set your own prices and all the calculations on the site will adjust accordingly.
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At Confused About Energy we aim to provide practical, impartial advice on all aspects of energy usage, climate change and ways to save money on energy bills.
All calculations on this site are based on current fuel prices they are checked regularly are automatically updated and were last changed on:-
28th June 2022
The costs calculated based on these fuel prices should be regarded as 'good estimates', given that fuel prices vary in different parts of the county and at different time of the year.
The calculations also have different levels of accuracy depending on the nature of the calculation. For example calculating the energy use of a known power output TV is very easy compared to calculating the effect on energy savings when insulating a cavity wall.
Site Calculations
| Electricity | £0.271 per unit (1 kWh) |
| Economy Electricity | £0.094 per unit (1 kWh) |
| Gas | £0.072 per unit (1 kWh) |
| Domestic LPG | £0.122 per unit (1 kWh) |
| Heating Oil | £0.104 per unit (1 kWh) |
| UK Grid CO2 Emissions | 0.233 kg per kWh used |
The main units used in this site are in the table below, For a complete explanation of power and energy Read More.
| Unit | Name | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| W | Watt | Unit of Power |
| kW | Kilowatt | 1000 watts |
| kWh | Kilowatt hour | Measure of Energy |
| L | Litre | Measure of Volume |
Please use twitter to ask a question Message @@EnergyThinking
First What is a Watt?
A Watt (W) is 1 joule per second (j/s), it is a unit of power and a joule is a unit of energy, so if you have a 1W device running for 1 hour, then it consumes 1 Wh of energy .....
An electric heater might have a power rating of 1 kW so if you leave it on for 1 hour it will use 1kWh of energy, 2 hours then 2kWh. The k here stands for kilo (1000) and the unit most normally used is kWh (1 kWh is 1 kilowatt hour and is often called 1 unit). The units are not confined to electricity, you can relatively easily calculate for example that 1kg of propane contains 13.9 kWh of chemical energy, which will be released upon combustion. It is useful to do this to compare different sources of energy with electricity.
A Watt, by the way, is named after a Scottish bloke called Watt, who lived long before all the climate change stuff, so lets blame him for all of this since he can do little about it if we do and he did help with the industrial revolution.
What about kWh, MWh, GWh and TWH? Well these are just orders if magnitude of energy, k is kilo, M is mega, G is Giga and T is Tera.
- 1 kiloWatt -1000 Wh
- 1 megaWatt - 1,000,000 Wh
- 1 gigaWatt - 1,000,000,000 Wh
- 1 teraWatt - 1,000,000,000,000 Wh
Now can we have some perspective please? What do these numbers mean?
Examples of 1 Wh
A modern LED light in your house required about 5W to power it, so if you leave it on for 12 minutes it will consume 1 Wh of energy.
Examples of 1 kWh
Thing like fan heaters require between 1 and 3 kW to power them, so if you leave it on for an hour it will have consumed between 1 an 3 kWh, depending on the setting you have the heater on.
Examples of 1 MWh
A high-speed electrical train is a good example here. On average they consume about 25 kWh (0.025 MWh) of energy for every kilometer they travel, so for 1 MWh of energy the train can travel 40 km. It is about 400 km from Newcastle upon Tyne to London, so the train would require about 10 MWh of energy.
Examples of 1 GWh
Since Watt was Scottish lets look at Scotland. The total electrical energy consumption of Scotland in 2012 was about 25,000 GWh, divide that by 365 in a year and we get 68.5 GWh per day and then by 24 hours in a day, 2.85 GWh. So to give you and idea of a GWh, Electrical energy requirement in Scotland is about 1 GWh every 20 minutes on average.
Examples of 1 TWh
Again using Scotland it has a population a little over 5 million and requires 25 TWh of electrical energy each year.
Now here is the real big number. Total energy demand in the world in 2015, this includes all sources of energy, electrical energy and burning fuels directly was 160000 TWh. This equates to 21700 kWh per person on average given that in 2015 there were about 7,350,000,000 people, With the USA using 88000 kWh per person and Africa on average 7000 kWh per person.
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