Electricity Bill

How to save energy and reduce your electricity bill

Home
Electricity Suppliers
Home Insulation
Grants Available
Check Consumption
Replace Appliances
Reduce Consumption
Phantom Loads
Your Own Power?
Be Greener

Reduce your Gas Bill

Reduce Consumption

There are various ways to reduce your electricity usage, apart from the obvious one of turning off appliances and lights when not in use. There are devices you can buy which claim to reduce your electricity consumption and amazingly, some of these do work. With sensible use, you could save up to a quarter of your electricity bill!

Intelliplug

When you have finished using your computer, do you switch off all the peripherals attached to it? Things like printers, modems, scanners and sound systems all use energy when plugged in but not in use.

This can be avoided by using a clever device called the Intelliplug. You simply plug in your main appliance into the master socket and then connect your peripherals to the other sockets on the Intelliplug. Now, when you switch off your PC, the other devices will be automatically turned off too. This works for a television with associated VCR, satellite receiver and DVD. Whenever the TV is switched off, so too are the other appliances. The cost of the Intelliplug can easily be saved by reduced electricity bills in less than a year.

Time Switch

Another way of reducing consumption at very low cost, is to use a time switch to switch off appliances that use power even when not being used. These are called phantom loads. For instance you could have a timer connected to your television, DVD and video equipment so that it is disconnected at night when not being used. This can save a surprising amount of power, which can add a lot to your bill in a year.

There is a simple mechanical time switch available which has a self resetting override switch that enables you to switch the equipment on or off without disturbing the time settings. So if the timer is set to go off at midnight and you feel like going to bed early, you can operate the override switch and it will go off and not come back on again until the next preset activate time. This timer is made by Masterplug and is available for only £4.99. You could save this much in electricity costs in just a few months.

When you set up your timer, you could just arranged it to switch off only at 2am and then not come on again until manually overridden. This way, the timer is not needlessly switching on when you are out of the house, but it will switch off when you have gone to bed.

The timeswitch could have a very useful security function during holidays too. You could make it switch on table lamps at various times during the night, giving the impression that someone was at home.