Energy Saving Tips
3 Energy Saving Tips at Home
The process of Energy Saving involves simple yet effective ways of decreasing your energy use. We are paying a lot more these days for energy of all kinds to heat our homes and work places so any energy saving tips at home that can help reduce our energy needs isn’t just glamorous but helps to save money and the planet.
Energy Saving is more than just switching off the lights or turning the thermostat down, it’s also increasing energy efficiency so that the heating system does exactly the same job, while using less energy. Energy efficiency belongs at the heart of every low-carbon economy. If the house is old or wasteful, cutting home energy usage by 20 percent, which isn’t hard to do or take too much effort can bring big rewards. If you already live in an energy efficient home, it will be harder to save energy.
A phantom load is an electrical load that consumes electrical energy when it’s thought to be switched off. Leaving a TV in a stand by, or plugging in a phone’s charging port when not using it, can all be good examples.
While all of these issues seem small compared to what a typical home can consume, phantom loads can consume large amounts of electrical energy without you even knowing it. Especially one with teenagers, making it an appealing option for saving energy.
Reducing your electrical load and lowering your energy demand is achieved by energy saving and efficiency measures. Financial gains can be made by achieving energy savings throughout the home since energy costs represent a large share of the total expenses for a typical home. Behavioural changes can be the cheapest and simplest way to reduce electrical demand and utility bills.
3 Main Energy Saving Tips and Ideas
The 3 main energy saving tips you can use to get started saving energy around your home are:
Energy Saving Tip #1. – Cut Down On Energy Consumption:
This is about reducing your energy useage and cutting down on waste by being smart in what you use. Reducing energy consumption lowers energy bills while driving down greenhouse gas emissions.
- Lighting: Replace high wattage light bulbs with more energy efficient bulbs such as LED light bulbs which use up to 75% less energy and last up to 20 times longer than standard incandescent light bulbs. They give out the same amount of light but use less energy so rather than looking for the wattage, look for the lumen’s or how bright the new bulb is instead. Also, by keeping the light bulbs clean from dust, you’ll get more light.
- Baths: Replace soaking in the bath with a daily shower and use a low-flow shower head. Also, don’t let the hot water run constantly while you’re shaving or washing your hands and face, you’ll be surprised how much water and energy you could save this way. One of the most expensive ways to heat bath water is with an electric water heater. An energy efficient natural gas water heater can heat the water for half as much, or use solar thermal collectors and use the sun’s heat for free.
- Laundry: Use your washing machine’s half load setting for small amounts of clothes and choose a lower temperature setting for larger loads. Its the washing powder that cleans the clothes not the amount of water.
- HVAC: Check your heating and air conditioning filters. Dirty HVAC filters not only increase energy usage, they may also damage your system. Why not have your HVAC system serviced. Regular maintenance can extend its life cycle and operate more efficiency saving you money.
- Heating: Reduce the hours your heating system is operational and check for air leaks through windows and doors. Seal and weather-strip around all seams, cracks and openings to protect against drafts. Upgrade your attic and loft insulation to a minimum of R-38 (about 12-14 inches), which will help save you money on heating and cooling costs.
- Appliances: Buy energy efficient rated appliances for your home and kitchen. A-rated energy star appliances use at least 20 percent less energy than older models. Set the refrigerator temperature to 35 to 37 degrees Fahrenheit (about 3o Celsius) and the freezer temperature between zero and five degrees Fahrenheit (about -15o Celsius). Keep refrigerators and freezers full whenever possible as they retain the cold better than an empty one. Also unplug unused refrigerators or freezers.
Energy Saving Tip #2. – Turn Down Those Dials:
This is about reducing your energy consumption by lowering the settings. Adjusting the settings a degree or two than you would normally have them can save about 10% of energy use, long term.
- Home Heating: Turn down the central heating thermostats to 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25o Celsius) in summer and 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18o Celsius) in winter. Each degree higher or lower can significantly increase your heating costs in winter and cooling costs in summer. Change old bimetallic strip thermostats with newer programmable thermostats to manage your heating system more efficiently, saving energy. Why not use a fireplace to heat your home.
- Water Heating: Check and turn down the thermostat on your boiler. Make sure the thermostat is not set above 120 degrees Fahrenheit (about 50o Celsius). Why not lower the night time thermostat setting by 10 degrees or so while your asleep to reduce your heating costs. Heating water to a higher temperature than is needed not only increases your energy usage, but wastes money. Reducing high water temperatures is a good energy saving tip.
- Radiators and Ducts: Switch off radiators and close heating ducts in the rooms you’re not using regularly and keep internal doors shut. Otherwise draughts and poorly insulated windows will mean you’re burning energy unnecessarily. Fully close shutters, shades and curtains at night to help keep the heat inside the rooms during the cold winter and partially close them during the day to help keep the suns heat outside during the hot summer.
- HVAC: Air-conditioning is a big electricity user and the colder you set the thermostat dial, the higher your utility bill will be. Turn-off the air conditioning unit (AC) when no one is home to save money, or why not use window fans to blow the hot air out or to bring cooler air in instead of switching-on the AC unit.
- Smart Appliances: Many manufacturers nowadays produce smart appliances which can be connected to smart electric meters or to home energy management systems to work only during off-peak hours. Smart appliances don’t just reduce energy or water consumption, they use subtle ways of saving energy by using cheaper electricity at night.
Energy Saving Tips #3. – Shut Down When Not Needed:
This is about turning things “off” completely when not in use. Phantom loads are the electricity used by electronic devices like televisions, phone chargers, monitors, or printers when they are put in standby mode. These are a major source of energy wastage and not very energy efficient.
- Lighting: Get into the habit of turning lights off when you leave a room, even if you’ll only be gone for a moment. Use outdoor motion detection sensors and photo-cell lighting controllers or install automatic timers on indoor and outdoor lighting circuits. Dimmers can save electricity when used to lower light levels.
- Electrical Appliances: Mobile phones, TV’s, laptops and iPad chargers left on standby are still using energy. Switching them off and unplugging them once they’re fully charged is a great way of saving energy. Switching unused appliances off is a good energy saving tip as it eliminates phantom loads that can secretly consume electrical energy in their stand-by mode from a single tiny watt to many ten’s of watts without you knowing it.
- Water Heating: Turn off your water heater when your home is empty for two or more days. Fix dripping and leaky taps and faucets especially for hot water as this can waste gallons of hot water in a short period of time. Why not insulate your water heater and pipes to save energy and money.
- Close the Chimney: Closing off the chimney with a metal damper or panel when the fireplace is not in use, stops the warm air in your home from getting sucked up the chimney due to drafts causing cooler air to enter the room. Lock and sealed windows to improve their seal and prevent the cold air from entering the room in the first place improving your homes energy saving performance.
Conserve Energy To Lower Costs
The potential for energy savings by using more efficient appliances and routines at the point of use is very large indeed. A home with an energy efficient design will not only save you money but will also keep you and your family safe. You will see a reduction in energy bills over time if you make larger investments to make your home more energy efficient, or take the simple energy saving tips above.
One way to reduce a lot of energy is by avoiding careless habits like leaving the lights and fans on when no one is around, cranking up the heating or HVAC, and so on. Reducing your energy consumption and needs by installing energy saving devices like LEDs, compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL), switching “off” unused appliances, eliminating phantom loads and other such measures can be done quickly and easily if you want to save money.
You could save a lot of money by replacing the three or four most frequently used light bulbs in your house with more energy efficient equivalents, as they give you more control over your energy bill, as every kilowatt-hour of electricity or a gallon of water you save gives you more control over your energy bills.
Energy Saving Summary
To improve the energy efficiency of your home, there are many options available for you to consider. For example, using thermal insulation, temperature control, passive heating and cooling, or using renewable energy resources and solar technologies in the home to consume less. There are many energy saving ideas and energy saving devices available to lower electricity costs.
Energy Saving through renewable and non-polluting energy sources such as the solar design of photovoltaics and solar hot water panels replaces the amount of purchased energy you buy from the utility companies. The amount of energy used today to heat domestic water and for space heating is enormous and the possible energy savings in using the suns solar energy is an attractive option for saving energy. Don’t forget, the more energy you save, the less coal is burnt and the less impact we have on the environment.
Saving money and energy isn’t very hard to do. The key to saving energy is taking a whole-house approach, which means look at your home more as a system of energy using system than a series of interdependent rooms and areas. In the long term, installing more A-rated energy efficient appliances will pay for itself. When we waste the energy in our homes, we end up throwing away money which we could use to do other things.
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Another good way to reduce energy consumption in a home is to use ceiling fans all year round. Did you know that ceiling fans aren’t just for keeping you cool during summer? Changing the ceiling fan’s rotation can make a significant difference
Thanks for mentioning such a thing as AC filter replacement. Another way to conserve energy is to install central air conditioning system. Central air conditioning systems offer the flexibility to customize temperature settings for different zones within your home. According to this article, by installing zone control systems, you can adjust the cooling levels in specific areas according to your preferences, enhancing energy efficiency and reducing energy bills.
A smart thermostat is actually a good thing. But it’s also advisable to not mess with your thermostat too extremely or too often. Try not to crank it up or down too frequently, as doing so can cause stress on the heating system’s internal coils and pipe work.
Contact a professional HVAC technician if you’re not sure how to program a thermostat correctly.
Thanks for sharing this! Yep, sometimes the bills are crazy. I would also advise isolating the attic, as a lot of heat comes out through it. But before you start doing this, determine which type of R-value of insulation you need, it’s quite important.
Thanks for sharing! By the way, you can also set thermostat to a frugal temperature while you’re away and program it to be at your preferred temperature by the time you return (I haven’t tried to do that but I find out it here benefits of smart home automation). Gone are the days spent needlessly heating or cooling an empty house.
Great ideas on how to use less electricity. These little tips can go a long way in reducing our carbon footprint. These are all tips that I will be telling our clients about to reduce their energy bill as well as prolong the life of some of their major appliances.
A fantastic article that covers almost every appliance use! Thanks a lot :). One more tip that you can add is to install a power monitoring device in your home. These devices enable you to monitor electric consumption of your home devices, find out where your power leakages are happening and pinpoint which devices are draining electricity. This way you can optimize your electricity usage by repairing or replacing them which leads to saving money on electricity bills.
You are correct. Power Monitoring Devices measure power consumption allowing the user to check different aspects of their electricity usage as part of their energy-saving activities.
Thank you for telling me that LED light bulbs only use up to 75% less energy. I’m currently trying to help my mother save money on electric bills since it occupies most of the house budget and there are other expenses we need to pay attention too. I think it’s time for us to replace the incandescent light bulbs we use at home since you said that LED light bulbs can last up to 20 times longer compared to them. Also, I’d consult the electricity supplier we have here in Massachusetts to see if there are more effective ways on how to save energy or if the surge we’re experiencing is normal.
Thank you for helping me to understand that poorly insulated windows will decrease the energy-efficiency of your home. In the past couple of months, my power bill has been rapidly increasing even though we have been trying to use our air conditioning sparingly. It seems like it might be a good idea for me to invest in some windows that block sunlight more efficiently.
I love how you talked about lighting and how replacing higher wattage bulbs with energy-efficient bulbs and how that allows less energy usage. My husband and I are moving from Sparta, NJ and we need to get our home energy audited to make sure that we are good to sell. We will keep these tips in mind when searching for a professional.
It’s interesting to know that even closing off your chimney with a panel when you are not using it will help you to save energy in your house. My brother moved to another house, and since he is on a really tight budget at the moment we are looking for advice to save energy. I will pass this information to him to help him with tips to save energy.
I thought it was good how you explained that you should upgrade your insulation in your attic and loft. Our home is over a hundred years old and so I’m not sure when the last time it was insulated was. Personally, I’ll have to look into getting a home energy evaluation so I can know whether I need to replace it or anything else or not.
It would be good to cut down on lighting consumption. Maybe doing that and getting a power saver would be good for an RV. This is something I will have to look into for my RV soon.
Replacing appliances that might not be working properly is a great way to keep everything in working order. I have a sister that is thinking about getting more energy efficient in her home. Looking into kilo-watts of electricity might be a great place to start.
This website is awesome. This helped me with saving energy in your home office it was very informative. I must totally agree with these awesome and effective tips. I’ve tried a few of them and really it worked. Thank you for creating this article.
A good way to save on your electric bill is to generate your own clean electricity. That’s good for the environment as well as your wallet, and it’s really easy and cheap to set up. You can even get paid by the power company if you generate enough electricity, and you’ll eliminate your bill completely.
Starting cost in the installation of solar pannel seems expensive but for a long term, its give much better results.we should move our usage to renewable source of energy as much as we can .Now for our future ,its is a neccessity.
Saving energy through renewable and non-polluting sources such as solar design is a good idea. Making sure you have your home upgraded to the best products would be very useful. Having an electrician come to your home and give you energy management tips would probably help you know what you need to improve on and the best ways to do it.
Sound advice. I changed the light bulbs in our house for led ones from the local diy centre, less light output but use much less power. Good insulation also helps.
I like what this article recommends about closing off the ducts in rooms that don’t need to be heated. It makes sense that this could be a good way of making sure the furnace doesn’t have to work too hard. It’s something to remember when looking to have new ducting installed because good ducting could help prevent future problems with the system.