Has the electric bill for your home or business been on the rise in recent months? If so, don’t panic–there are many simple ways to cut energy costs. Practicing a few quick fixes can not only get your bill down to where it once was, it can help you to save a great deal of money, too.
How Businesses Can Cut Energy Costs
If you’re a business owner or manager, there are plenty of ways to decrease the amount of electricity used by your company to lower your monthly bill, including:
- Practice efficient computer usage. Ensure all computers are set to automatically go to sleep after five minutes of inactivity. Train workers to turn their monitors off if they’re not going to be using them for 20 minutes or more. Instruct employees to turn their computers off when they leave the office for the day, instead of leaving machines to run all night long.
- Schedule an energy audit. Discover ways to make your company more energy efficient by scheduling an energy audit. Green construction companies send a team of engineers to your building to record all appliances using electricity, analyze your past electric bills, and conduct employee surveys to develop a set of recommendations to lower your power bill.
- Flip the light switch. While it would be ideal to install a motion censored lighting system that automatically shuts off when no one is in the room, that’s probably not a short-term option. Instead, simply ask your employees to turn their office lights out before they leave for the day. Simply shutting off one extra light probably won’t make a dent in your electricity bill, but if everyone participates, costs will be down before you know it.
Ways to Save Money on Electricity at Home
Don’t let a rising home electric bill get you down. There are countless ways to cut down on costs without having an impact on your daily life, such as:
- Laundry. Wait to put a load of clothes in the washer until you have enough for a full load, line dry any clothes you can, and clean the lint filter out of the dryer after each load to cut down on energy costs.
- Turning appliances off. It’s a pretty simple concept, when you leave a room, turn the light off. Or if you’re watching television in one room, but move to another, shut if off if no one else in the room is watching it. There’s no need to burn energy by keeping appliances running when no one is in the room to use them. To save even more money, take it a step further and unplug appliances when you’re not using them.
- Sealing Air Leaks. Cracks in your doors and windows let warm air into your air conditioned home, causing your cooling system to have to work harder. Use caulking to seal those leaks up to keep the warm air out.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these tips will keep your electricity bill down and conserve precious energy.
What are your tricks for conserving energy?
About the Author: Brandon Hodzic is a LEED consultant with years of experience in construction, real estate, engineering, renewable energy, finance, architecture, and climate protection. His current employer is Gaia Development.
In the UK it’s more about keeping the cold out than the warm out! But be careful about sealing up too much. We had our walls insulated in our last home then started having a problem with mildew due to the lack of ventilation so you may need to open a window after a bath or shower to get rid of steam if you get insulated.
The other things we did to save energy was to get the loft insulated, replace an old boiler with a new efficient one with a proper thermostat. Other obvious things are to switch to energy saving lights (but you have no choice in the UK now!) But also think about how you cook. If you’re cooking in the oven, try to fill it. Alternatively switch to using a slow cooker as that uses far less energy.
I like what the previous commenter said about paying attention to how you cook. The slow cooker is one of the best investments for saving energy. Did you know that you can roast a turkey breast in the slow cooker? or a whole chicken? Delicious frugal eats. We have also been using the more energy efficient CFL bulbs throughout the house and have gone ahead and invested in the pricier LED bulbs for the lamps that we use the most.
Great comments and feedback guys. Thank you. It is always nice to see when my article generates more discussion. Mammacook, those are some great tips.
Im not sure about else where but here in toronto we are also billed on the time of usage. So we have a high peak rate a mid peak and an off peak rate.. i use appliances like the washer, stove and high consuming power devicesafter 7pm or on weekends.. you can see significant savings in your monthly bills 🙂 hope it helps