Heating Simply Limited
It is an inescapable fact of modern life that practically everything we use in and around the home is powered by electricity, from the lights, the fridge, cooking, washing and drying clothes, our heating and hot water, and even the car, not to mention the seemingly endless charging of mobiles, tablets, and any other of the consumer goods that you can mention, even plug in energy meters use electric!
To give this some context, the energy used to charge your mobile, every day for a whole year, is about the same as the tumble dryer will consume in one, maybe two cycles, so fairly insignificant in the grander scheme.
This means, that the amount of electricity we use, almost exponentially increased over the years, and the amount we pay for energy has increased as well to. Just to further compound the problem. A lose, lose situation for the consumer!
So, when we get an electric bill, that once upon a time was usually the lights, the telly, fridge, and possibly a cooker, our perception of what it should be is grossly wide of the mark.
To the right, I have created a representation of what the individual appliances use in order to add some kind of scale, and reference.
There is only so much we can do to reduce the energy we consume, and we are at ransom, sorry - at the mercy of the energy companies.
The other thing to consider is that, the amount that you pay per unit can vary enormously and it is always, without exception, worth shopping around for the most favourable electricity tariffs available.
Even if it means using the comparison websites, but use them all, then compare the results that you are getting across the sites - simples, Apparently.
Thankfully there are things that we can do to reduce consumption, lets look at the simple, and cheap things first:
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only boil the water in the kettle needed XXX kWh per year saving
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Use the lower heating or eco setting on the
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dishwasher xxx saving per year
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tumble dryer xxx saving per year
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washing machine xxx saving per year
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using the air frier instead of the oven xxx saving per year
All these suggestions are more a change in mindset or usage patterns so are free to insitigate, but the habitual change maybe more challenging.
More expensive options involve the replacing of older appliances with more energy efficient devices. BUT I would only look at this as a viable proposition if the appliance is really old, on its last legs, or has completely given up the ghost and is beyond economically feasible repair. Im not encouraging unethical consumerism at this point!
If you do need to embark on some consumerism then things are a lot more transparent as far as the energy consumption of consumer goods are concerned, these days. The European Directives around this have really improved the information available, and how its presented, making it easier to interpret, and therefor to understand the efficiency of the products that you are buying, Anyone regretting Brexit yet?
All consumer goods, fridges, TVs, lighting, washing machines, dishwashers, tumble dryers to name but a few all now have to have the energy labels displayed, if you have visited a major electrical retailer resecnlty you will have noticed that this information is even displayed on the point of sale material one the shop floor.
The base scale is A-G with G being the most inefficient, ie it will use more electricity than a product with an A rating, this is further enhanced with G being red, and A green.
Depending on the nature of the product that you are looking to purchase, there may be a lot more information to hand, designed to help you to make an informed, pragmatic decision, on what product will give you the best balance of cost, versus efficiency, therefore value.
if really is worth spending the time to read and understand the labels, and all the metrics that they detail.
The example to the right is for a washing machine, more specifically a washer drier. This label has the two A-G scales, the left scale deals specifically with the energy consumption when using the wash and dry cycle, the right hand side covers the washing cycle in isolation.
It also gives the energy consumption of 100 cycles of the two metrics above, as a further comparison. It even details the water consumption in litres, so you can even workout how much water will be used er cycle, and how much it will cost will.
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