Powering the Nation

Ipsos managed the recruitment, and attitudinal survey, of a nationally representative sample of households across England to take part in research to monitor and measure electricity consumption of domestic products. This provided reliable average energy consumption data to be incorporated in modelling projections for future energy consumption. The final report that summarises the findings of this research can be found here:

• Download the full report

It found that, amongst other things:

• Background standby consumption is much higher than previously estimated (on average, study households spent between £50 and £861 a year on their appliances in a standby, or ‘non-active’, state. Total standby consumption can amount to nine to 16 per cent of domestic power demand.
• The one-person households used as much, and sometimes more, energy as typical families did on particular appliances. In particular, for cooking and laundry the power demand of single-person households matched or exceeding those of average family units.
• Instead of the previously assumed figure of almost five hours of typical daily TV viewing, the study showed this was more likely to top six hours a day. This is an additional 400 hours of viewing per household a year, equating to over 10 billion extra hours nationwide. Translated to a financial cost, this would cost the nation, on average, an extra £205 million a year in total.

250 households were recruited to take part in the monitoring – either for a period of one month or 12 months. Recruitment took place on a rolling program over a 12-month period. All households also completed an attitudinal survey on environmental attitudes (including being segmented according to Defra’s pro-environmental behaviours segmentation), energy use and related behaviours.