04/09/2022
How to save energy without forking out thousands for solar and heat pumps? 10 tips from a professional electrical engineer.
1) Put the effort in, saving energy takes a Llittle of your personal time and energy. Put thought and practice into monitoring and adjusting your home and businesses technology. There are smart systems that do a lot for you, but they’re expensive to install and the system thats supposed to switch things off for you automatically is in-itself always on and therefore using energy, if you’re as smart as the smart lighting or heating you’d get up off the sofa and switch that light off yourself and save the standby energy. Consider anything that is on standby your enemy, switch off those printers, hifi, washing machine, dishwasher, microwave and oven. Mine are all off right now, why aren’t yours?
2) What temperature is your fridge at? The optimum temperature is about 4 centigrade, and it will fluctuate according to ambient temperatures. If your fridge is so cold that ice is building up the chances are its a little too cold, the ice also lowers the efficiency of both fridges and freezers, so keep them clear of excess ice and use a thermometer to make sure its not waisting energy getting excessively cold.
3) LEDs LEDs LEDs! get rid of those incandescent and halogen light bulbs, they’re using five times as much energy and these days the LEDs are so good the quality of light is lovely and warm and good for reading by. With LEDs what you get is what you pay for so avoid the cheapest of the cheap, get a nice mid price range LED and you’ll likely be quite happy.
4) Ovens. Often the largest energy consumer in the home. First of all newer ones are far more efficient than older ones. Size is also important, a little microwave oven on its fan oven setting is going to use half the energy of a single oven and as they require less preheating they’re on for shorter durations. So if you’re just doing some nuggets for the kids dont even think about putting on the oven, it’ll use three times the energy of a little countertop one.
5) Hobs. Gas hobs are still more cost effective than electric but gas is being phased out so your best bet is probably an induction hob. Unlike a hot plate or ceramic hob, induction hobs only use energy when there is a pot physically on the stove. Remember to keep the lids on those pots to keep the heat in. Hot plates will stay hot for a while so switch them off a few minutes before you finish cooking.
6) Showers and baths. My shower takes 15 minutes to get the bath full, so for me any bath lasting less than fifteen minutes is a travesty. A shower timer costing just £3 can help you be aware of how long you’re in the shower and setting it to 4 minutes has helped me reduce my shower time by at least 50%, giving me not just more money but more time to admire myself in the mirror.
7) Hot water. Try to keep mixer taps in the cold position, make it a conscious decision to run hot water and ask yourself if you’re just rinsing your hands or something does the water need to be hot? Secondly are you heating water up only to cool it? You probably wash at about 38 to 40 degrees but your boiler is probably set to 70. Try turning it down five degrees so that you’re not needlessly adding too much cold to get it to a comfortable temperature. Legionella can easily multiply at 20 to 45 degrees and cant survive at 60 degrees, so dont be tempted to turn your hot water right down for long periods of time. I personally turn mine down for short periods such as filling up a bucket of hot water for cleaning. (Refer yourself to tip 1, this takes active management)
8) Washing machine. Try washing your clothes on the coldest wash, check em out, I bet they look and smell just as clean as if you washed them at a 30 or 40 degree higher temperature. You’d be surprised how good modern detergents are at cold temperatures.
9) Choose your devices carefully. Dishwashers are in and tumble dryers are out. Unless you’re uncomonlly talented a dish washer will actually use half as much water as hand washing, the less water you use then the less energy you use to heat it. Air dry those clothes, plan ahead and you dont need dry clothes in an hour.
10) Read the manual. Beware of the eco settings, eco settings might not be the most energy efficient with things like washing machines and dishwashers. They’re settings that simply meet the national directives for lowering CO2 emissions emissions, they‘re a base standard that isn’t necessarily the most efficient setting on the machine. Check in the manual for the exact performance of each setting. My dishwasher for example has a setting that uses 30% less energy and 10% less water than the eco setting, the maual claims its the pots and pans setting but in reality it gets what ever I put in there just as clean regardless of the setting I choose, use a good detergent and the slightslightly lower temperature does as good a job.
A bonus tip about saving water…. If you meet someone in a pub or club and decide to go home with them, check out how they brush their teeth before bed. If they leave the tap running while brushing DON’T have s*x with them! Deny them the chance of passing on their wasteful genes.
