With the cost of living rising, we could all do with a helping hand; here are some simple ideas on saving you money on your electricity bills:
- Switch Switch Switch!
The best way of saving money on your electricity bills is to switch energy suppliers to ensure you are always on the best tariff, like you would with your car insurance. You can use our comparison site here to check the entire energy market. This can be done as many times as you like to keep you updated with all the new tariffs on the market. We are typically seeing a saving of over £400 a year!
- Know your Consumption.
It is important to know how much, when and where your electricity is being used. There are many ways to do this, the easiest is to use a simple device that clips onto your mains power cable, which costs from as little as £25. Another solution is to have your energy supplier install a smart meter which sends your meter readings directly to them, but, be aware, if you switch providers you may incur additional charges for having a smart meter, this could be up to £100 a year!
How to install an energy monitor sensor
- Lower your consumption.
Now you know why your electricity consumption is so high you can do several things to combat it. firstly, LED lightbulbs are a quick and easy way to reduce your consumption. every type of common bulb is now available as an LED bulb. Try using simple timers to have high consumption devices turn off when they are not needed. leaving things on standby is, in short, leaving them on, although devices are getting more efficient when they are in standby they are still consuming unnecessary electricity.
- Use your Tariff.
If you have economy 7 it is important to use it, as you are effectively paying more to run your home or business at peak times. If you can run devices at off peak times then it is important to do so, for example, like me, with 2 children our washing machine is running a lot, so where possible we run it at night.
- Smart Technology.
Home automation is not a new thing and is now on sale on the highstreets and with a bit of practice you can make your home and business more energy efficient, for example, automatically switching off lights in hallways, toilets and public areas when no one is using them. Switching off all devices when the house or office is empty. Powering down machinery or appliances during the night and have them power on at a specific time ready to be used when required. Many of these home automation technologies can also tell you when they are on or how much power they are consuming and by using clever rules they can manage themselves. A useful feature of many of the technologies is a standard called ITTT (if this then that) which can be used to create complicated rules easily, for example, if my mobile phone connects to my business wifi between 8 and 9 am then switch on the coffee machine if it is off.