SPECIAL REPORT
ELECTRICITY
Top 20 Ways to Save It At Home
April 2012
2050 magazine - saving electricity at home
ELECTRICITY Top 20 Ways to Save It At Home
A smorgasboard of options for reducing your energy bills by 20%. Some blindingly obvious, some wickedly ingenious, and some just downright sneaky. But all of them potentially vital. As Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute once said, “The greatest reduction in CO2 emissions we can very quickly make, is for the emissions we don’t produce in the first place.”
I
’ve always thought that you only really become an adult when you flee the parental nest, set up home for yourself and invite your parents round for dinner. And only then, when, at some point during the meal, as your dad is in the middle of recounting some story or other about his day, you lean across the table, whack him soundly round the back of his head and shout, “Elbows!” But maybe that’s just me. For other people, the ones who weren’t constantly reminded that their elbows belonged by their sides and that their food wouldn’t run away if they were to put their knives and forks down for a minute, that moment of ritual passage more likely came with the arrival of their very first utility bill. Flopping unceremoniously through the letterbox. I still remember mine, with all its incomprehensible quantities, readings and graphs. A swirl of gibberish followed by a worryingly large number. For a minute there I thought a small country somewhere in South America must be missing its national debt. A shock to the system I have been lucky enough to enjoy on a monthly basis ever since. These days though, with three kids charging about the house leaving lights on and demanding microwave popcorn, I pay a little more attention to the swirly bits than I used to. Then, just like my dad, I grumble around for half an hour turning lights off and muttering to myself. Which is why, in an attempt to avoid a full-scale paternal reincarnation, I have recently conducted an extensive survey to discover people’s favourite tips for saving electricity. Some simple, some a little ingenious, but all worthwhile. After all, the average home in Europe uses about 5,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, which, in a country like the UK, accounts for about 30% of their total consumption. So the way I see it, and I don’t think I’m alone with this, if each of us can save say 20% on our monthly electricity bills by doing a few sensible things around the house, that would translate to a whopping 6% reduction in national consumption. Equivalent to 206,820,000 megawatts, which, to use the traditional gauge, would save us 75 power stations.
THE SHORT VERSION: 1.Watch your ‘demand’ charges. 2. Use off-peak power at off-peak prices 3. Turn off unused appliances 4. Do your own energy audit 5. Watch out for energy vampires 6. Buy energy-efficient white goods 7. Vacuum clean the condenser coils at the back of your fridge 8. Always keep your fridge full 9. Cool cooked food before you put it into the fridge 10. Defrost frozen food in the fridge 11. Use your kettle for boiling hot water not the hob 12. Cook as many things at the same time as you can 13. Gradually change your lightbulbs 14. Use lamps not overhead lights 15. Install motion sensors 16. Never run the dishwasher half empty 17. Live without a tumble dryer 18. Wash your clothes in cold water 19. Take Showers rather than baths 20. Install an efficient showerhead
2050 magazine - saving electricity at home
I still remember my first utility bill, with all its incomprehensible quantities and graphs. A swirl of gibberish followed by a worryingly large number. For a minute there I thought a small country somewhere in South America must be missing its national debt. 1. Watch your ‘demand’ charges’ Some utility companies impose an additional charge based on the maximum amount of electricity you draw at any one time. This is called a demand charge. If your utility company has a demand charge then you have the opportunity to cut your usage by spreading out your electrical use throughout the day. 2. Use off-peak power at off-peak prices Along the same lines, some utilities have cheaper rates in the evenings which means it makes sense to put your washing on then rather than during the day, particularly if it makes no difference to you either way. Or storage heaters, which draw their power during the night and then dish out heat during the day. 3. Turn off unused appliances Usually people add the words ‘when you’re not using them’ to the end of this tip which for some reason always makes me think of some poor bloke in intensive care, wired up to a bank of machines with an over-zealous porter buzzing round him, “You using this mate? What about this one then, with all the flashing lights, must be costing a fortune that one.”
But joking apart, this is one of the biggies when it comes to savings, which, unlike the chap in intensive, you wouldn’t even notice. Haven’t we all heard, from someone, somewhere, that we could save ‘x’ number of power stations just by turning off our TVs, rather than putting them on standby? And it’s perfectly true. To be fair, modern appliances are way more efficient in standby mode than they used to be, but it’s also fair to say that all our appliances aren’t necessarily modern and collectively we have so many more of them kicking around these days than we used to. You can buy devices relatively cheaply that automatically cut power to devices when they go into standby mode. Alternatively plug everything into a power strip and turn the whole lot off every night with the flick of just one switch. 4. Do your own energy audit. As my old history teacher always used to say, “Knowledge is power”, and for once he was right. It really does help to know how much you’re spending on electricity at any one time and on what, before you start running around looking for savings.
The Sky At Night: a global light pollution image based on satellite photographs
1,000,000 + 500,000 - 1,000,000 200,000 - 500,000 100,000 - 200,000 50,000 - 100,000 20,000 - 50,000 10,000 - 20,000 1,000 - 10,000 - 1,000
Energy consumption on a country by country basis
2050 magazine - saving electricity at home
When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent. (George Carlin) There are devices you can get for this too. There’s one for example, which allows you to convert your usage at any moment in time into a projection of a monthly or annual bill. Which means that if you really want to scare the rest of your family into joining you in your noble energy saving crusade (or ‘nagging’ as they probably affectionately call it) all you have to do is plug it in at breakfast time, when all the TVs are on, the hairdryers are whirring away and the tumble dryer is in emergency Sports Day mode. The resultant bill projection obviously won’t be entirely realistic, but it will be scary. Which helps too sometimes. There are also some very handy devices for measuring the thirst of each of your appliances individually. All you do is plug it into a wall socket, and then insert the plug for the electronic device that you wish to monitor. It will give you detailed readings on energy use, from which, combined with a quick estimate of how many hours a year the appliance is used, you will be able to calculate its running cost. It’s only a very small step from there to becoming the proud owner of a league table of results on the fridge door for everyone to enjoy. 5. Watch out for energy vampires It isn’t just the infamous ‘standby’ mode you have to watch out for (tip 3). Some appliances, particularly
chargers, still use power even when they aren’t plugged in. These are known as ‘energy vampires’ and can account for about 8% of an average electricity bill. Anything with one of those unusually large plugs tends to be quite naughty at this. Best remedy is to unplug them or put them onto a power strip and turn the whole lot off every so often. Or sprinkle them with holy garlic water and drive wooden stakes through their hearts. 6. Buy energy-efficient white goods While this particular suggestion has a bit of a Marie Atoinette ‘Why don’t the peasants just eat cake?’ ring to it – wouldn’t we all love to have enough money to go out and buy brand new white goods? – if your kitchen really is on the retro side, not stylistically but actually, there is a fair chance the economics will stack up over a far shorter time period than you might expect. Newer models really are that much more efficient than their ancestors. If, for example, you are running a pre-1990 fridge, it’s probably using about 1,400 killowatt hours of electricity a year. A modern fridge uses about 350 killowatt hours. That’s a 1050 killowatt saving, which, at a sample rate of 20 euro cents, equates to a 210 euro saving every year. Modern cookers are also far more energy efficient and many come with inbuilt convection fans which alone can reduce cooking times by 30%. 7. Vacuum clean the condenser coils at the back of your fridge. This particular tip definitely falls into the ‘sneaky’ category for me, mainly because so few people know about it, and yet it really does work. All heating and ventilation engineers worth their salt will have a portable vacuum cleaner somewhere in the back of their van because they know that by simply removing accumulated dust they can improve a
2050 magazine - saving electricity at home
This particular tip definitely falls into the ‘sneaky’ category for me, mainly becasue so few people know about it, and yet it really does work.
fridge’s efficiency by up to 25%. Which leaves plenty of time for pretending to do lots of other far more complicated tweaks and drinking free cups of tea. 8. Always keep your fridge full. Again, a bit Marie Antoinette at first glance, but fridges work a lot more efficiently if they are nicely full, but not so full that air can’t circulate properly inside them. 9.Cool cooked food before you put it into the fridge. Fridges spend their lives trying to maintain the air inside them at a particular temperature and so chucking in something hot like a Tupperware tub full of piping hot soup, in fridge parlance is known as ‘loading up the in-tray a bit’. 10. Defrost frozen food in the fridge Conversely, defrosting frozen food in the fridge rather than on a kitchen surface will be considered, again in fridge parlance, as ‘a bit of a result’, because
it will immediately help the fridge meet its set temperature. 11. Use the kettle for boiling water not the hob It’ a question which can evoke much debate, but the overall answer is that boiling water in a kettle rather than on a hob uses 50-70% less energy and is quicker. Especially if you only heat as much water as you require for drinks and cooking, which is dead easy to do if you invest in a modern Eco-kettle with all its fancy markings. Don’t be tempted to use your microwave to boil water, studies have shown it comes third behind both the kettle and the stove top methods. 12. Cook as many things at the same time as you can And don’t preheat the oven for roasting and try not to keep opening the oven door to check on progress - every time you do that you lose about 20°C of heat. Use a microwave to reheat food or to cook small portions. Although it uses a lot of power, it does so over a very short time. 13. Gradually change your light bulbs Lighting accounts for about 10% of a typical electricity bill. Change your high-wattage bulbs with lower users, ideally CFLs. which use 75% less power than old incandescent bulbs, and last much longer. Or consider LED bulbs, even more efficient and longer lasting, but more expensive to buy. 14. Use lamps not overhead lights Lamps can be put into the corner of a room so that the light is reflected off two walls. They are also far sexier.
2050 magazine - saving electricity at home
Lamps can be put into the corner of a room so that the light is reflected off two walls. They are also far sexier. 15. Install motion sensors These are particularly handy for external lights, both in terms of security and avoiding energy wastage, but can also be fitted internally just as successfully. Or you can change your switches in certain locations for those mechanical ‘plunge’ style switches which only stay on for a minute or two unless you ‘re-plunge’ them. 16. Never run the dishwasher half empty Running a full load of dishes in an efficient dishwasher uses far less hot water than washing up by hand in the sink. And ‘stacking’ the machine rather than washing up is a doddle which effectively just puts the whole nasty business off until tomorrow. 17. Live without a tumble dryer Hang your clothes out to dry rather than using an electric tumble dryer. Or, if you find you have no option, consider running clothes through the spin cycle of the washing machine a couple of times first. Apparently that reduces drying time by about 50%.
18. Wash your clothes in cold water Turning down the temperature on your washing machine definitely helps because heating the water accounts for most of the electricity consumed during a typical washing cycle. Or why not go the whole hog and try washing your clothes in cold water? Many people swear by it and none of them seem to smell. 19. Take showers rather than baths It probably goes without saying that showers require less heated water than a bath. And it’s also apparently good etiquette, army style, to spend no more than 3 minutes in the shower. Which isn’t to say that if you successfully implement all of the above power saving tips, you shouldn’t reward yourself with a deep ‘wallowing’ bath at least once a month. With Radox perhaps, if they still make that stuff. 20. Install an efficient showerhead A modern, ‘unclogged’ showerhead will save both water and electricity and give you a far more enjoyable shower experience. Cheap and easy to install too.
Would the last person to leave the planet, please remember to turn out all the lights. (Neil Armstrong)
CASE STUDY
looking beyond the price tag. By Gijs de Reeper, the founder of greenem.com, a cost comparison site which helps consumers make purchasing decisions that include an awareness of future power consumption as well as initial price. Everyone knows that appliances use electricity, but these costs are not taken into account when hunting for that bargain. As such, you have a very real chance you just spent hours shaving a few dollars off the price of that particular TV, when looking at a remarkably similar, more efficient and more expensive model, might save you hundreds of euros over the course of the product’s lifetime. A troubling fact is that consumers simply lack the knowledge to get to grips with this issue. A 2009 study by PwC found that 60% of consumers could not name the price of one kilo-Watt-hour (kWh), the principal measurement of electricity usage (it’s about €0.25 in The Netherlands, and 0.13p in the UK). 40% did not know how much electricity their household used (roughly 3,500 kWh per year). In a recent survey by the Dutch consumer television programme Kassa, people were asked to sort several household appliances on the basis of their presumed annual energy costs. The refrigerator was placed on the bottom spot by most respondents, whereas this energy-intensive appliance is actually the second hungriest in the average household, just behind the tumble dryer, which on its own accounts for 20% of domestic electricity usage.
For Joe Public, making the right decisi you’re convinced that the appliance’s unsexy it is, ought to be taken into acc doing so?
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Using a tumble dryer can cost up to €1.25 for each cycle Only half the energy usage of an oven is related to cooking; the other half is due to the ubiquitous digital clock The period in which you recoup the hefty €25 investment of an energy efficient LED light bulb to replace an incandescent, is 24 months, leaving the remaining lifetime of the LED light (up to 18 years!) to earn a pretty cool dividend
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have been implemented towards tendency to be caught up by of refrigerators have a “green” Commission opted to add plusses to confusingly resulting in products the intention of the program is good, a tumble dryer uses 4.2 kWh per
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This will likely leave you with dozens of possible choices. Finally, you can sort your selection, so you can see the one with the lowest total cost of ownership at the top. Which appliances in particular are worth your while to look beyond the price tag? A few spring to mind. Refrigerators, freezers, and tumble dryers have gotten a lot more efficient in recent years: up to 70% per cycle. Others have improved their efficiency by decimating standby, or idle usage. Some televisions have reduced this to as little as 1 kWh a year, one hundredth of their counterparts a few years ago. Feedback from visitors has been very encouraging, as they recognize the unique information we bring to the market. We also notice however, that people can be turned off when seeing the four-digit usage costs. Unfortunately, we can’t help that: some products really consume that much. A promising indication is that our best-selling product is a particularly efficient tumble dryer that will save an average household €500 over the product’s lifetime, compared to the average machine, while being twice as expensive to purchase. Think about that next time you’re bargain hunting.
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Gijs de Reeper is the managing director of Greenem. He holds an MSc in International Business Economics, and lives with his girlfriend, son and labrador retriever in Amsterdam.