With the holiday season upon us, Current± have compiled a list of 10 festive facts for our readers to enjoy.
Wishing you happy holidays and a great new year from all us at Current± and Solar Media.
1. Silent night (and an even quieter dinnertime)
According to data from the National Grid ESO, Christmas is the only day in the entire year in which electricity demand doesn’t peak during dinnertime. Instead, it peaks at 1:30pm – when most households are cooking or eating their Christmas lunches – and then drops throughout the day.
2. Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow
Poinsettias have become a Christmas staple since the beginning of their popularity in the 1980s. Growing these scarlet, star-shaped plants in winter requires heat and due to unprecedented energy prices some providers had to cut back on production. However, renewable energy was able to save the UKs supply of poinsettia’s.
Louis Motala, managing director at Bridge Farm Group, which grows more than a million poinsettias a year and is Tesco’s main supplier, said that the company was able to use sustainable biomass heating to manage energy costs and ensure that the UK was still be able to enjoy these festive plants this Christmas.
3. Driving home for Christmas
Research of 2,000 adults, commissioned by Accident Advice Helpline in 2017, predicted that families would travel an impressive 302 miles over the Christmas period. 116 of these miles would be travel to see friends and relatives, whilst present shopping made up 45 miles.
To support those driving electric vehicles (EVs) home for Christmas, the EV charging solutions company, RAW Charging, is giving free charging across their networks on the 23 December from 00:01 to 23:59.
As an estimated 45% EV drivers need to charge their vehicle on their drive home for Christmas, RAW are offering this day of free charging as an early Christmas present.
4. The most energy efficient Christmas light setting
On average, having a string of LED lights on for six hours a day will cost 56p over the Christmas period, which isn’t extortionate. Nonetheless, Which? conducted a study of the cheapest setting for Christmas lights to see if the cost could be cut even more.
The study had a number of interesting findings, such as the difference between having a 400 or 200 bulb chain on for six hours daily for 62 days is only 8p on average, as well as that white and yellow lights cost the same to run.
The cheapest light setting found by the study was twinkling-flashing, which cost only 20p to run throughout Christmas. So perhaps you might have yourself a merry twinkling Christmas this year, and save 36p.
Below is the table provided by Which? detailing the full findings of the Which? Christmas light study:
Setting |
Average cost per hour |
% savings switching from “On” to this setting |
Average running cost over Christmas |
On |
0.15p |
n/a |
56p |
In wave |
0.14p |
6% |
53p |
Sequential |
0.15p |
0% |
56p |
Slo-glo |
0.07p |
53% |
25p |
Chasing-flashing |
0.08p |
47% |
31p |
Slow fade |
0.11p |
27% |
42p |
Twinkling-flashing |
0.05p |
67% |
20p |
Combination |
0.10p |
33% |
38p |
5. A winter low-emission wonderland
Christmas day usually has the lowest energy demand of the year, according to the National Grid ESO. As many public places like shops and pubs, as well as schools and offices are closed, peak demand for Christmas day in 2019 was only 33.3GW compared to a high of 46GW in November the same year.
The even better news is that demand has been reducing each year thanks to increasing appliance efficiency, making it easier for renewable generation to power Christmas.
6. The costly cooking of Turkeys
Research conducted by Gocompare.com Energy showed that cooking turkeys on Christmas day – which typically takes an average of five hours – costs 1.5x as much as an average households electricity bill for an entire day!
7. How Oxford Street LED the way to a greener Christmas
In response to the energy crisis the Oxford Street Christmas lights went green this year. The New West End Company announced that all 300,000 LED lights used in the decorations will be on for a reduced time from 3pm-11pm this year. This decreased energy consumption by an impressive 2/3rds!
8. TEAM’s tips for an energy efficient Christmas
As most office buildings shut down during the winter break, Christmas provides a unique opportunity to measure office energy usage. Energy management services and software solutions company, TEAM, shared a number of tips to save energy in the office whilst everyone is at home enjoying some brussels sprouts.
In general, an office building’s baseload energy use ought to be roughly 10% at peak use. If you find that your is considerably higher than this it may be as a result of unnecessary energy usage during downtime periods. Be sure to make a note to find the cause in your operations when you return!
9. No longer only dreaming of a green Christmas
Data from the National Grid ESO showed that Christmas is becoming ever more green. Wind power, is generating an increasing amount of Christmas day electricity, growing from providing 0.3% in 2008 to 14.1% in 2019.
Reliance on coal at Christmas conversely, is decreasing; only 1.8% of the UK’s electricity was generated by coal on Christmas day 2020.
10. The most read Solar Media articles last Christmas
And finally, here are your most read articles throughout Solar Media on Christmas day:
- Energy.Storage.news – ‘South Korea’s H2 Inc plans 20MWh flow battery at California gas peaker plant site’
- Solar Power Portal – ‘Nofar Energy forms JV for 700MWh UK battery storage site’
- Current± – ‘Urgency of proposed BSUoS charges deferral approved by Ofgem’
- PV Tech – ‘The PV Review, Q4 2021: Rising prices, policy uncertainty and new product launches’