Save Electricity and Save Money

Did you know your heating and air-conditioning system sucks up most of the energy that you pay for? Using less energy isn’t just better for the environment – it will save you money. It doesn’t matter if you own or rent your home, but here are a ways to cut energy bills and save money during the summer. How much money can I save?

The common sense stuff you can do right now:
Turn off your lights: Go around your house or apartment and turn off all the lights you are not using. Bathrooms, closets and sometimes kitchens use incandescent lights because unlike compact fluorescents, they get up to maximum brightness right away. Alternatively LED bulbs, are dramatically more expensive upfront, but don’t have the drawbacks of CFL and behave more like traditional lights.
And if you have little ones, then install motion detectors on light in kids’ rooms – the lights will never be left on by accident.

Unplug stuff you rarely use:
Things like TVs and other stereo equipment still draw power when they’re plugged in but off – which is called vampire drain – due to the fact that they have to still power IR receivers for your remote control to work. It might take an extra minute to switch off or unplug everything but it is worth it if they’re barely used.

Turn off the electronics, especially the computers:
Unless you are torrenting at night, or hosting a Minecraft server for your friends, you don’t really need to have your computer on when you’re asleep. If you are not using your computer the turn it off! Just like turning off your lights, is a super obvious thing that all of us know, but don’t religiously follow, because we’re not electricity Nazis. What exactly uses the most power?
There are two methods you can figure this out, and that is the batman method and the basic method.

Let’s start with the basic method:
This is a cheap way of examining your electronics and that is to go around with a Killawatt or a Belkin Conserve Insight and plugging all your devices, one by one, into it and seeing how much power they draw. This will help you see how much power your computer, microwave, TV and all your other appliances use.
The Batman method; If you want to seriously find out how much power you use, like the kind of serious that when you get over R1 500 electricity bill your mail, get an eMonitor. The eMonitor installs onto the circuit level, so you can get a room-by-room readout.

Save a Little More:
Use your curtains; during cold months, leave them open during the day to allow sunlight in – in the summer, to keep curtains shut in rooms where the sunlight hits.
Clean electric heating system or air conditioner’s filter and fan; it is best to do this month a month, but even once a year will make a difference.
Launder everything in cold as ninety percent of the energy used by a top-loading washing machine is for heating water.

Use a low-flow showerhead; as the low-flow head uses less water a minute, compared with a whopping seven gallons for old models, which means less water to heat.
You may know to turn the lights off when not in use, but with these tricks, you can save even more.