Saving Energy around the home

This is probably one of the most obvious ways but sometimes we forget that the little changes make the big things happen.

Energy saving bulbs are really efficient, Rated A on the energy efficiency scale. They can be expensive especially if you are replacing all the bulbs in your house but since they use a different type of technology that your standard filament bulbs they can go for years without issue.

The efficiency is also very good 1 typical energy saving bulb that has a light output of 60W only takes a quarter of the output power to light up your room.

Switching all your household lights to energy saving bulbs is one of the biggest and long term options to saving energy. This will make a significant impact to your bill if you are still using the old filament bulbs.

The modern Energy saving bulbs have improved significantly since there first release. There is now no delay when first turning these lights on and the light output (lumens) has also increased to equal that of a normal bulb.

Keeping track of your energy usage can be done with ease thanks to these handy energy mains monitors. Cheap to buy, and very portable. You can plug this into any electrical appliance and monitor the energy usage over a 24 hour period.

This will give you a good idea of what appliances use a lot of electricity. They also display other technical info such as the current voltage, frequency and convert the current used by the appliance into Watts for real time results.

This will give you a good idea which appliances use the most energy, so you can use these less often to save more energy.

TV's, Games consoles, DVD Players, AC adaptors, Chargers... I'm sure I could carry on the list but you get the picture.

Although these don't use a massive amount of energy, switching these off each night for a month will save you over 200 hours of usage.

Gas / Electricity Which supply is cheaper?

If you know which supply is cheaper then you can adjust your household activities to use the cheaper supply where possible and save more on your bills.

You should consider comparing your bills and your current tariff annually. This can be done easily online, just search Google for compare the market or search for the keywords price comparison websites.

Price comparison websites work by searching all local suppliers to your area for the cheapest quote. You also have the option to input your annual or monthly usage which results in more accurate quotes.

One last thing to remember when switching supplier is to always read their small print, especially if you sign onto a energy cap make it a priority to know the companies terms and conditions.