Electricity bills feel mysterious, but the spending is not evenly spread. A few things dominate, and knowing which they are tells you where effort is repaid and where it is wasted.
The big users
Anything that makes heat is expensive to run, because heating is energy-hungry. Electric heating, immersion water heaters, tumble dryers, ovens, kettles and electric showers sit at the top of the list. After those come the appliances that run constantly: the fridge and freezer, which are modest moment to moment but never switch off, so they add up. Everything else, the telly, the laptop, the lights, is usually small by comparison.
Standby is real but small
Devices left on standby do draw power, and over a year a houseful of them adds up to a noticeable, if not enormous, sum. Switching things off at the wall is worth doing, especially older equipment and anything with a transformer that stays warm. Just keep it in proportion: standby is worth a tidy-up, not an obsession, while the dryer and the heating are where the real money is.
Lighting, the easy win
If you still have halogen or older bulbs, swapping to LED is close to free money. An LED uses a fraction of the electricity for the same light and lasts for years, so the swap pays for itself quickly and then keeps paying. It is one of the few changes that is genuinely fit and forget.
Work out your own numbers
Rather than trust rules of thumb, put your own appliances through the running cost calculator. Seeing that the tumble dryer costs more in a year than the standby of every gadget combined is the moment the priorities click into place.