About two years ago we realised that we were using a HUGE amount of electricity, far above the average for a house like ours. Our gas consumption was average. In January 2020 we were using 38Kwh of electricity per day and the combined cost was £169 per month with Octopus on a good tariff.
We decided we needed to reduce our carbon footprint and our energy bills. Over the past two years we have been able to reduce our electricity usage by over 65% to an average of 10Kwh a day in January 2022.
Everyone at this time wants to reduce their usage of energy and I will tell you how we have been able to cut our usage over the next few weeks. I will also let you know the mistakes we have made so that you won’t!
The first piece of advice I would give is to get an energy monitor. And use it! Some providers give you one of these so if they have, that is great. Otherwise you should purchase one, a basic one is the geo Minim Energy Monitor by Green Energy Options is £39.99 (Click on the picture to view it at Amazon). This is a basic model with a simple display to show your household usage. This is not suitable for houses with solar panels.
A cheaper option may be for you to get a smart plug with energy monitoring. This £9.99 smart plug works via the Tuya SmartLife app and needs a WiFi connection. We have used other more expensive smart plugs by TP-Link in the past but they have proved less reliable.
This can be used on individual appliances to show its energy usage. It is easy to use you just plug it into the socket and then plug the appliance plug into it. You only need one and can move it around your house and use it on all your appliances.
Using this plug we noticed that an old counter top freezer we had was using a huge amount of electricity (nearly 4Kwh per day = 80p) and that if we replaced it with a brand new under the counter freezer that defrosts itself, it would pay for itself and the smart plug within 6 months!
The cheapest purchase we made to reduce our energy use was a draught excluder, £10. You can get them cheaper. Our living room door is directly opposite the front door and there is a gap underneath it of about half an inch, you could really feel a draught through the gap. Jerrylee, a traditional style excluder was not efficient so we purchased a double one that is attached to the door, very efficient!
Next week. Information about how we have reduced the usage on some of our appliances.
){kind=link}