You mean there is a way that “beateth” those high energy bills? Yes indeed, and they are simple little hacks we don’t pay much attention to, while at home. And oh, quick disclaimer, these are all legitimate ways. If you are ready, lets dive right in!
BUY A FLASK
Boling water is inevitable in our homes, be it that tea, a quick cereal or hot chocolate, we all use kettles at various time of the day. It will however surprise you that you can save way more on electricity bills if you boil your required volume of water in one go. Boling water in small amounts for every cup at different times of the day goes to use more energy and thereby a corresponding increase in your utility bills. So, go into the store and buy a durable and portable flask which you can use to store hot water for pretty much an entire day. Have it handy to meet your hot water needs, save on bills and also conserve energy and save the environment too, it’s a win-win.
If you don’t have a flask yet, what you can do in the meantime is to boil only the right volume of water you need at any particular time, The key here is not to over fill the kettle as this ends up taking longer and using more energy to boil water you don’t need. The worst is to leave excess water inside the kettle and re-boil over an entire day. There is a particular interesting statistic by the BBC on over filled kettles. According to them, $92 million (£68 million) is wasted across British households due to overfilled kettles. Let that sink in!
STAND-DOWN YOUR APPLIANCES
These days, its trendy, even fancy to have electrical gadgets in ready-to-go modes, hence we leave most our household appliances in stand-by mode. In your mind, the device isn’t in active mode and hence not using up energy. What we don’t realize is that even in this standby mode, it is using electricity in the background. This is usually referred to as phantom power and quietly consumes power. I bet we are all guilty of this. Do endeavour to power off completely all devices not in use as failure to do so can increase your energy consumption by 75 percent.
LIGHTEN YOUR BILLS
The pun here is very much intended. Light is a non- negotiable to maneuver in our various homes, so that’s not even up for discussion, what is however, is what type of lighting we employ and how we use it. Throughout time most households used incandescent light bulbs, which are the traditional bulbs that only convert 5% of their electricity into visible light while consuming loads of energy. In the recent times, other bulbs have emerged which are more durable and even use 80% less energy than the traditional bulbs. Examples that merged are compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and even the more efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs). Another complementary action to employ is to employ skylights that admit enough daylighting to even prevent use of bulbs during daytime. Practice these and you will see a marked decrease in your electricity bills
PACK UP YOUR FREEZER
This one sounds like a bit of an irony, doesn’t it? In our lay minds, we will think that the more stuff in our freezers, the more the freezer uses energy to freeze them, right? What we haven’t factored is that, actually the freezer is in the business of freezing the space or air contained inside of the freezer. So the lesser the space or air within the freezer the lesser energy required. Another tip to keep in mind is to periodically defrost your freezer as ice buildup means the freezer is expending more energy and you know what that means, higher electricity bills.
There you have it folks, as easy as ABC, let’s go save some money!
The writer is the Executive director of Yecham Property Consult
& Founder of Ghana Green Building Summit.
Email: [email protected]
Linkedin: Cyril Nii Ayitey TettehTweet
