He electricity price continues to be one of the main concerns of Spanish households, which has caused many users with PVPC rates and indexed to the wholesale market to pay attention every day to check electricity prices in an attempt to reduce spending at the end of the month.
And even more so after the latest tax increases, thanks to which the savings that we had been having with the lowering of production cost energetic.
How much do I save if I transfer consumption to the weekend?
The difference between working days and holidays It is still important in terms of the price of electricity, although as it has more moderate prices it is no longer as exaggerated as it was a couple of years ago. This may lead us to ask ourselves if right now it is really worth it to transfer our electricity consumption to the cheapest hours and days, or is it something of the past.
It was a common recommendation, for example, when moving tasks such as laundry and ironing to the weekend, turning the house into a laundry for those two days, putting on the dishwasher at dawn, etc.
To try to find out, we wanted to calculate the differences between turning on our equipment one working day and a holidayalso comparing the different prices between the most expensive, cheapest and average hours of the day.
For this we have compiled the electricity prices published by the CNMC during the month of March 2024 and selected those of the sundays and mondays of that month in the three time slots (expensive, cheap and medium) to find out if it makes much difference to use the appliances on Sunday instead of on Monday. What was the result?
As we can see in the graph, the difference in prices can be considerable in the case of comparing the most expensive hours of a Monday and the Sunday adjacent to it, being up to €0.166/kWh the week of Sunday March 10 and Monday March 11, although the differences then blur if we look at the average values and the cheapest hours of both days.
However, to see what our savings would be, we have assumed that we will use the appliances at their maximum one day each week of the month, Sunday or Monday of each weekto know if it would be worth it for us to move tasks such as laundry to the weekend or if we wouldn’t mind doing it on Monday, for example.
As the graph shows, in the event that our tasks do not require a lot of electricity, for example we only spend 1 kWhthe savings at the end of the month are very low with only 0.409 euros per month in the case of choosing the most expensive time every Monday and the most expensive every Sunday.
However, this figure increases as household electricity consumption also increases and, in the event that, for example, we spend a few 4 kWh Because we have installed a couple of washing machines and a dishwasher, the savings are already going to be more than 1.63 euros per month.
In situations where we leave most of the weekly tasks for Sunday the figures may be higher, if we also iron, cook with the oven, take the opportunity to turn on the electric heater, etc. However, in an extreme case where, for example, tlet’s shave about 10 kWh of consumption electric we will have a monthly savings of just over 4 euros for this concept, that is about 50 euros a year.
Is it worth it to us? Well, that is something that we will have to evaluate on an individual level, especially in case this intensive use of light on the weekend suits us according to our lifestyle.
Cover image | Immo Wegmann