Our Top 5 Home Energy Saving Tips!
With winter almost upon us, and energy prices through the roof, our Top 5 Home Energy Saving Tips are likely to be the most useful thing you’ll read this year!
Compiled from months of data, we’ve created this list as our definitive top 5 home energy saving tips! From changing to LED lights, to changing when you do your washing, we’re confident that if you follow these home energy saving tips, you’re guaranteed to save money this winter!*
*All calculations are based on 34p per kWh.
#1 – Peak Times
Home Energy Saving Tips
Up until now, the majority of the UK public have never had to consider when’s best to use your appliances. However, with the current rise in energy costs, the first thing you can do as a home energy saving tip, is to only use your appliances during off-peak hours!
Electricity is most expensive between the hours of 4pm and 8pm on the weekdays. So using your washing machine, dishwasher or tumble dryer during those hours is going to cost you a lot more than if you washed them outside of peak hours. For example, if your washing machine takes 1 hour to finish a load, and is rated at 2100w, it will cost you about 72p per washing. If you did your washing during off-peak, then you can halve that cost to 31p a load. If the average person does 5 washings a week, you’d save £80.60 a year by doing the washing using off-peak electricity.
Should you only use your appliances over night? According the fire brigade this is not advised due to the potential of a fire when the occupants are asleep. Therefore we’d recommend using your appliances between the hours of 5am-7am. Or if you’re a night owl, stick it on before you go to bed. It depends on your supplier, but electricity used between midnight and 7am is generally much cheaper. So even set the time on the dishwasher or washing machine so it will run during the cheaper hours of the day and save you money in the long run! That’s just the first of our home energy saving tips, read on for more!
#2 – LED Lights
Home Energy Saving Tips
We’ve all grown accustomed to the warm yellow haze given off by traditional bulbs. However, these filament style bulbs are very in-efficient, especially when comparing them to LED lights. With the average price of electricity now at 34p per kWh (as of October 2022), a standard 40w bulb being lit for 5 hours a day, would cost you 47.6p per week. If you changed this one bulb to an 10w LED with the same brightness as a normal bulb, it would only cost you 11.9p for the week. Times that by 52 weeks and you’re talking about a saving of £18.56 per bulb.
When you think that most houses will have at least 6 bulbs in their home, that’s an average saving of £111.36 for the whole year! When you consider that 6 LED bulbs will only cost you £16.86, it’s really a no-brainer! Especially when LED lights will last a lot longer compared to an incandescent bulb; 50,000 hours for an LED compared to 2,000 hours for a normal bulb, not only great home energy saving tips, but great for reducing waste too!
#3 – Heated Airer
Home Energy Saving Tips
Currently the hottest thing on the market right now (pun intended!) is the heated clothes airer/drier from Aldi! The perfect home companion in our quest for home energy saving tips! Designed to dry your clothes on the cheap, these little bargains sold out at our local Aldi with 10 minutes of the shop opening.
Using only 250w of power, this clothes airer won’t set any records in terms of drying time, but it will only cost you 8.5p per hour at 34p per kWH. Significantly less than a tumble drier, and much cheaper than sticking the heating on and drying your clothes on traditional radiators.
For example, if you turned your 2500w heating on for one hour every day, it would costs you 85p, or £310.25 for the whole year. Using this little airer, you could have it on for 5 hours of the day and it would cost you less than £3 per week, or £154.70 for the entire year. That’s less than half the cost of having your heating on for just one hour a day for the whole year. Even if you had your heated airer on for 2 hours a day, you’d save almost £250 a year compared to having your heating on for one hour a day.
However, this little clothes airer has an ace up it’s sleeve when it comes to home energy saving tips! Not only is it one of the cheapest on the market, it does a great job of heating the room that it’s in. Therefore, if you’re only ever in the living room at night, just stick this airer on for that little boost in heat! We must point out, that this should never be used as a replacement for your warm and reliable central heating! However, if you are struggling with energy costs, check out this advice from the citizens advice bureau.
#4 – Standby Mode
Home Energy Saving Tips
As technology has advanced over the past decade, we’ve gotten more and more dependent on it. So much so, we’ve become a lot lazier than we used to be. We casually use multiple electronic devices in different rooms in our homes, without giving a thought to how much energy they’re using, especially when they’re on standby!
Therefore, our 4th home energy saving tip is to stop leaving electrical appliances on standby mode. We’d always suggest unplugging any device that’s not being used, as some devices can use a considerable amount of power when in standby mode.
For example a Sky Satellite box uses as much as 10 watts when in standby. That’s the same wattage as one of those new LED bulbs you just installed! So even when you’re not using your Sky box, it’s still costing you £87.36 a year when on standby mode! Multiply that by the amount of items you have on standby in your house, and you could save a lot of money by simply turning off or unplugging appliances when not in use.
#5 – Smart Meter
Home Energy Saving Tips
For the 99p cost per year of running a Smart Meter in your home, you could save upwards of £200 by simply keeping an eye on your energy usage.
The majority of homes in Scotland the UK should have had a Smart Meter installed, but if you haven’t then contact you energy supplier and request one. Trust me, they’re dead handy!
Not only can you tell exactly how much gas and electricity you’ve used on a day to day basis, and get a more accurate cost for your energy usage, but you can also set budgets and more importantly, look at your current usage.
By examining your current actual usage you can get a picture of exactly how much energy things like a kettle or a microwave uses. In our testing the biggest surprise was the 3kw powered Air fryer, which given it’s size actually costs about 78p per use!
The best way to understand your home energy costs using your smart meter is to get a baseline reading. Turn everything off in the house that you can, except the essential items like the fridge and freezer. On average we’ve seen baselines figures between 200w and 600w when your house is basically idling. Remember this figure, and when you go to bed each night check the smart meter. If it’s not at your baseline figure then you’ve left something turned on, perhaps in standby mode?
For example, instead of unplugging your Sky Box and TV at night and leaving them on standby, you’d save on average of £14.85 a year for each 10w device! Got 3 TVs and 2 sky boxes? Then you’d save £74.26 a year by looking at your smart meter and remembering to turn off your devices!
Total Energy Costs & Savings
We really hope you’ve found some of these home energy saving tips useful, and will save you money in the long term. However, these are only tips and should not be used as a sole replacements for your central heating. If you are struggling with you gas and electricity bills, be sure to check out the advice from the Citizen Advice Bureau.
Do you have any top home energy saving tips that we’ve missed?
Drop us an email or get in touch online.
