Reducing Your Electricity Bill

We all like to avoid wasting money and spending a lot of money on your electricity is a very effective way of wasting money indeed. Quite often the electricity bill can be a real shock to the system, leaving an expensive hole in your financial budget.

This article will show you our top ten tips to reduce your electricity bill that actually work.

Change to LED lights for your most used rooms at night

Rather than spending a fortune and changing every bulb in your house to be LED rather focus on changing then in the top 3 rooms you use most at night. Typically this will be the kitchen/dining area, the lounge and maybe a bedroom. You really need to have more than 10 hours usage a week to get a payback within 2 years.

Change over to Passive heating and cooling where practical

Passive heating and cooling is where you set up your property to maintain a comfortable temperature all year round without using lots of expensive heating and cooling. See this article for more details.

Reduce draughts in rooms you heat

This should be cheap to do, but you need to make sure that attention in particular is paid to reducing draughts via windows and doors that connect to the outside as the will loose you the most heat.

Use full length curtains in rooms you heat.

Full length curtains are a great way of stopping heat loss via windows. Combined with a thermal lining they can be as effective as double glazing.

Dress to keep warm

An obvious but often forgotten point is to dress to keep warm by using layers. Simple things like wearing a t-shirt under a shirt or socks indoors can help you keep warm. Also make use of the good old hot water bottle.

Keep your inside doors closed in Winter and open in Summer

Again this is about keeping the heat where you need it in Winter and then spreading it out in Summer when you don't. This also in Summer assist with cross ventilation to keep you cool.

Use a clothes line to dry your clothes

Again an old but practical idea. If you have the space put up a clothes line, or use a drying rack if you don't. This can often lead to quite a saving in its own right.

Shift appliances to use off peak

Instead of running the dishwasher right after a meal, why not run it when you go to bed. Also see if you can program the washing machine to run just before you get up.

Turn off the worst phantom power devices

This will take quite a bit of detective work, but it is likely you will have some older device that is sucking down power. Look for older devices that have a large plugin adapter in particular, this is often an older transformer based design that could consume a lot of standby power.

Change to more energy efficient appliances

Typically if the have a fridge, freezer or Tv over 7 years old you need to check its power consumption compared to newer devices and change if the power efficiency gain outweighs the cost.

Check your electricity plan regularly

Some operators have a habit of not being that great at helping you in picking the best electricity plan to suit your power consumption. Every time you get your bill find out what other plans are available and if they reduce your costs - just change plan.

> Reducing Your Electricity Bill - 10 top tips