Energy Prices, Energy Tips

With astronomical house prices and more people going to university, shared house living seems to be more popular than ever. But when that time of the month rolls round and bills need to get paid (if you're unlucky enough to have a landlord who won’t include them in the rent), the guy from upstairs who last night offered you a slice of pizza and a post-it note to help distinguish whose bottle of milk is whose, can suddenly assimilate himself into an over-zealous, miserly, tight-fisted pedant.

But I shower half as often as you do! And I only use my TV for re-runs of Lost and Top Gear.

Therefore, I propose that the gas and electricity companies take a lesson from the classic itemized phone bill, and start offering us a little more information. As a simple starting point, there must be a way the gas company can know when our boiler is being fired up, and for how long from day to day. Consequently, we will then be able to discern at what times we use it the most, and whose habits are the most costly.

Similarly, we could do the same for electricity, although this is certainly a little more complicated. Granted, when it comes to lighting, I wouldn’t want to overstep the mark by suggesting we account for every moment we flip the switch. But in this energy-anxiety climate is it really possible to overstep the mark? And someone must be able to obtain the information as to whose bulb is in whose bedroom. However, I do remember learning one thing in physics class which could throw a sizable spanner into the works: electricity runs in a circuit right?

Still, even if our electricity bill was just a little more detailed, maybe we would be able to recognize whenever the big juice-pullers, such as the TV, are switched on. Subsequently in this case, poor Eleanor, who only allows herself to watch shows before the watershed, can have her payment subsidised by the rest of us who watch later into the night; until our retinas are satisfactorily branded by images we try and try to forget.

But is this really too far? Well, finger-print sensors on each switch to show who has a habit of flicking things on and not turning them off again may be. But I must admit, when living in shared accommodation, it does seem a little pointless to try your darnedest to think ‘shutdown’ instead of ‘standby’ when down the hall, Jerry is blow-drying his hair, watching the news and listening to The Wombats with multi-wasting abandonment. And I’d love to bring that up next time I offer him a slice of margherita.