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As homeowners or property renters, we rely on electricity to power our lights, appliances, and electronics. There are also a good portion of us that use electricity to supply our homes with heat, hot water, and even air conditioning. The more we use electricity in our homes, the more costs rise, leading to massive electricity bills. Not only that, but using electricity with no regard to saving energy adds to the global warming issue that this planet faces. That is why saving electricity at home has become more and more important to homeowners over the past years.
In this Ideabook, we are going to give you seven tips on some of the best ways you can save electricity in your home, and in the process, save you some money.
Finding out what consumes the most power in your home is the first step towards saving electricity. The biggest energy consumers are central air conditioning systems, using on average 15,000 watts of energy per hour, the clothes dryer, using 4,000 watts, space heaters, using 1,500 watts, the hair dryer, using 1,200 watts, the refrigerator, using 1,000 watts, and the computer and monitor, using 800 watts.
At the top of the list, air conditioners cost you about 1.06£ per hour. If you use your air conditioner for ten hours a day, that would cost you about 10£ a day, which may not sound like a lot, but if you add that up to over 1,000£ per year, assuming you only use it for the hottest summer months.
It may come as a shock to you, but surprisingly enough, decreasing the brightness on your devices such as your computer or laptop, or your television, can save you quite a bit of energy. Reducing your monitor brightness from the maximum 100 percent to about 70 percent can save up to 20 percent of the energy the monitor uses.
Most people do not even notice much of a different from 100 percent brightness to 70 percent brightness, so this is a great opportunity to save energy and therefore money. Reducing the brightness means that the battery on your laptop will last longer, which also means you do not have to plug it in as often to recharge. Similarly on your desktop, it will use less electricity while plugged in.
There are more and more devices out on the market today that come equipped with energy saving modes. Smart phones, laptops, desktop computers, televisions, and sound systems have settings on them that allow you to save energy when these devices are not in use. Using these low power modes on your phone and computer especially save on electricity.
In this day and age, we use our phones and computers more than any other device, so switching your phone to power save mode while you are at work or in class will help your battery life, meaning that you do not have to plug it in as often to recharge. The same principle also applies to laptops.
Were you aware that appliances and electronics still use electricity as long as they are plugged into the wall, even when they are turned off? Making it a habit to unplug any appliances at night or when they are not in use saves a lot of energy over time. Powering down your computer and unplugging it when you are not using it, unplugging television sets, radios, and sound systems will make a big impact on your home's energy consumption.
As we have already mentioned, computers are one of the main culprits when it comes to sapping a lot of energy in your home, so don't forget to unplug that when you have checked your last email for the day. Even smaller appliances like the coffee maker, the toaster, your hair dryer, and even phone chargers use energy when plugged in, and although it is a small amount, it really does add up over time.
One thing to remember about appliances and electronics is that just about every one comes with a label or engraving that tells you how much energy it uses, but if you want to measure this yourself, that is also an option. There are three ways you can measure how much electricity something uses. You could buy a relatively cheap and simple watt-hour meter, buy and install a whole-house meter, or look at the meter on the side of your home and time it yourself.
Most people don't want to be bothered with the latter of these options, but luckily there are alternatives. The cheaper option is to buy the watt-hour meter, which is a little device that tells you how much electricity something uses at a given moment or over an extended period of time. All you have to do is plug the meter in to the wall and read the display. The whole-house meter, on the other hand, tells you how much energy your entire home is using at any given moment, as well as how much you have used for the month and how much it costs you. These meters start at about 90£ and need to be installed by an electrician.
Another thing you can do to save on electricity in the home is to replace your appliances with energy efficient models. Back in the day, manufacturers did not pay much attention to the energy use of their products, but as times have changed, so has the design of large appliances. More appliances are now energy efficient and some even include settings that allow you to choose how much energy is used in a given cycle.
As we have already mentioned, the refrigerator is a huge energy sucker in the home, using about 1,000 watts of energy per hour. Replacing your old refrigerator with one that functions on even 700 watts of energy per hour will save you over thousands on your electricity bill each year.
The up and coming thing on the market today that will help you with your energy consumption is the intelligent plug. An intelligent plug is a plug that works with your mobile device through a wifi signal. With your device and the intelligent plug, you can automatically turn off any device that is plugged into the intelligent plug from your phone, saving you energy and money.
The intelligent plug works with any operating system, is easy to configure, and you can control the plug from anywhere in the world, You can set it to a timer, as well. They don't cost much, but end up saving you, on average, about one third on your energy bill. Now that is really something!
For more environmentally friendly energy saving, check out these six steps to an eco-friendly home!
