Home Energy Saving Tips

Here are some home energy saving tips which (if you follow them!) should save you money and make your household quite a bit greener too.

What's here?

This collection of home energy saving tips includes information on lowering your electricity needs, both inside and outside the house and information about some household energy saving devices. The tips on this page mainly relate to lighting.

The devil, as always is in the detail. As householders it is up to us to select what we can do practically. Some tips require a fair amount of vigilance by the householder. Fortunately, there are more and more useful gadgets which can help us to a leaner and greener energy profile.

I hope that by offering these energy savings tips collected together in one place on Greenfootsteps, you will find ideas which best suit your circumstances.

Home energy saving tips: Lighting and electricity

Stand-by

Many electrical devices and gadgets are set up to keep a small light burning to show that they are on or on stand-by. These small lights are thought to be responsible for up to a tenth of domestic power needs here in Britain. This seems an incredible amount of power to be generated just for appliances to say "Hey, I'm on"!

Britons are wasting around one million tonnes of carbon a year on from idle machines left on stand by. The University of Strathclyde has shown that each household in Britain loses around 525 KW of energy to these devices each year. That's about more than £50 per year per household at 2008 prices. It's also a carbon dioxide burden that the atmosphere could well do without.

One US study concluded that the energy needed just to power electrical devices on stand by alone would need the entire output of eighteen power stations!

Kill that vampire!

If you are buying new electric gadgets, try to buy ones that either don't have these almost useless lights, or if you cannot bring yourself to do that, (or cannot find alternatives, which, unfortunately, is often difficult at present - though changes are now in the pipeline in 2009) then at least make sure that most of them are switched off at night.

Switching off electrical devices on stand by can quite quickly become part of the closing down the house at night routine. It only takes a few moments to run around switching off all the inessential power sockets. And it should save you noticeable amounts of cash too when the electricity bill plops onto the mat.

There are now home energy saving devices available which allow you to switch off many machines which are on standby at the click of one button. These remote control devices may be an option which is worth considering if you live in a home with loads of electrical appliances. I've not tried these yet. The Bye Bye Standby BBSBUSA Energy Saving Kit has had rave reviews and allows you to keep selected devices running - so you can still record a TV programme, for example. You can even keep the remote by your bed and switch off from there!

The power strip smart switching devices from Smart Strip also look to be a good deal. Check out which of your appliances are suitable for sudden switch offs - or for best results, switch the devices off before activating the smart switch to stop them being on stand-by. The device includes a couple of sockets for products which you don't want to switch off - DVD players with timing devices, for example.

Now that global warming and climate chaos are becoming more widely recognised as facts there are plans to limit stand-by on appliances. In the future these devices may well switch themselves off after a set time. In the meantime, we need to do the necessary, and switch them off whenever possible.

Energy saving tips for kids and teens

Turning lights off is a good habit to develop, especially if you can get the offspring to co-operate! I used to come home sometimes to a house blazing with light as people moved though it, leaving lights on behind them as they went.

It's definitely a good idea to implant this idea in your kids' minds at a very early age if you can.

Teenagers are generally a lot harder to re-educate than small children, so it's probably well worth trying to get your kids switching off lights on auto-pilot while they are still little.

Even with low-energy light bulbs it is generally worth switching off when you leave the room, unless it's just for a moment.

Picture above: low energy CFL light bulbs can now look almost like incandescent bulbs

Home energy saving tips: Low-energy light bulbs

Low energy bulbs should save your household money over the year. They are coming down in price now and you can often buy bulk packs which are cheaper still. You can buy starter packs from Amazon which are good value. You need to pay a little more if you want a good pure white light. Here, in Britain the government is subsidising CFLs at the moment and starting to phase out standard incandescent bulbs - something which has made a few householders incandescent with rage!

Consumer studies show there is some dissatisfaction with CFLs. Truth is, many companies compromise on quality in order to get prices down - with the result that CFL bulbs do not always last as long as they should and the light quality is poor. Look for quality bulbs from reliable manufacturers - and complain if the bulbs you buy do not meet expectations!

The range of lights available and the colour of the light emitted has been improving steadily.

Disconnect!

Disconnect mobile phone chargers and other transformers when they are not actually being used.

A good many of these devices leach energy from the grid even when they are doing nothing for your needs. You can actually tell this by the fact that they feel warm. Many of these transformers are far worse than simple stand by lights.

The energy they use compared to a computer, say, may not be much. But it's very easy to inadvertently leave them on for hours and hours. This does nothing good for your energy bills and when you consider all the millions of people who now have phone chargers, camera chargers, iPod chargers, digital radio transformers, etc, it does no good for our planet either!

Digital radio transformers actually use more power when they are not powering the radio than when they are. This is because they have a high internal resistance - which explains why they get so warm when left in the plug socket.

Leaving mobile phone chargers and other devices which contain transformers may even add further to your electricity bill. If you have air conditioning and you leave phone chargers on in summer they may also add a little to your AC costs.

Home energy saving tips: Outdoor Lighting

Outdoor sensor lights

If you use an outdoor light regularly, have a sensor light installed and set it to stay on for only a shortish period for lighting your comings and goings. You can always wave your arms about to re-activate it!

If it is mainly for security lighting it is actually quite a good idea to have it on only fairly briefly - it will make it hard for any potential intruder to see when it goes out. (Meanwhile, you are in a position to switch off your indoor lights and peer out to see what's going on.)

Outdoor lights left on can have a big impact on your electric bills - and on your carbon emissions. It is now possible to buy low energy outdoor lights (CFLs) and LEDs which are far more eco-friendly than halogen bulbs or incandescent ones.

Outdoor lights which are triggered by every passing cat are always going to be using some unnecessary energy. More permanent outdoor lights can also be responsible for a lot of electricity usage. Think carefully about your needs. Do you really need your house lit up like a Christmas tree every night of the year? If you think permanent outdoor lighting is essential, do investigate low-impact solutions, especially solar and LED lighting which are among the cheapest options as well as the most eco-friendly.

Solar powered garden lights

Solar powered lights for the garden are now widely available and no longer expensive. The light they emit is dim and depends upon there being a bit of reasonable light during the daytime, so they are less good in dull weather and in winter when light levels are low. The light given out is generally quite OK for picking out a well marked path.

Many of the cheap solar power garden lights sold in garden centres and supermarkets do not do such a great job. You will get better performance and longevity from some of the more expensive brands.

Rechargeable lighting

Re-chargeable torches: you can now buy torches with dynamos instead of batteries. You just press a lever or wind them up to generate light. These are quite easy to use and effective. (I've had one just like the Garrity torch pictured rightfor a few months now - I think it's great!) Many torches are now available which use LEDs. The bulbs often last up to 1000 hours. Many other types of torch with re-chargeable batteries are available for prolonged outdoor use. If you are with a green energy supplier, then these are relatively eco-friendly.

Old-fashioned methods

You can also use old fashioned tricks like painting some largish stones white to mark out a path (or using naturally white stone such as marble or chalkstone). It has to be a very dark night for a combination of these techniques not to work!

More home energy saving tips

For more home energy saving tips please see More home energy saving tips and tricks which has ideas for reducing cooking costs as well as more ways to save home energy usage.