How can you reduce your household energy bills?

You cannot help but notice that your household energy bills have probably gone through the roof recently. There have been many headlines centred around the cost of living, and the price of gas and electricity is often at the centre of this. Energy price caps have done little to control this, and for many, household energy bills now seem to be spiralling out of control.

The good news is that there are things that you can do about it. Whilst the price of units cannot come down, the amount of energy that you use certainly can. By finding ways to reduce how much energy you are using, you can also bring your bills down quite significantly. Here, we take a look at some of the best energy saving tips that you can use in your home.

Don’t rely on standby

Almost every appliance in our home has some sort of standby mode that we tend to rely on. We might just zap the TV with the remote and think that it is off, but the standby mode that you have put it into is still using electricity. By simply turning these kinds of appliances off at the plug, you can save around £30 a year.

We have all got used to the convenience of remotes to control our appliances, so getting up to find the plug might seem taking a step backwards, which is why you can now add plug sockets to your home which can connect to your phone. This means that you can still turn them on and off from the comfort of your sofa and benefit from saving energy. For a cheaper alternative, look at plugs that have timers on, which can be set to switch appliances off after you have gone to bed or set off for work.

Smart thermostats

Smart thermostats have become incredibly popular in recent years thanks to the amount of money that they can save people. As they can be controlled through your phone, it is possible to switch the heating off, even when you are out of the house, meaning that you are only ever using it when you need to.

They also have the facility to break your house into zones, meaning that you are only heating the areas that are in use. For example, you may only want the bedrooms warming at night, or just the living room when you are having a relaxing day at home. By limiting where you want the heat to go to, you can reduce the amount you are spending on heating drastically.

A smart thermostat is called smart for a reason. That is because it is capable of learning things about your home, such as how long it takes to heat it, and it can then adjust the timings to have it at the right temperature at the right time. That means that you are not running your heating for longer than necessary.

Use efficient appliances

Not all household appliances are equal, especially when it comes to energy efficiency. Each one has its own rating, telling you how it compares to others. For example, choosing a washing machine with an A+++ rating will use around £65 less energy that an A+ one over its estimated 11-year lifespan. The same is true of dishwashers, fridges and many other appliances that are available, so it is an important statistic to pay attention to.

If your current appliances are not energy efficient, throwing it out won’t help you, but when the time does come to replace something, it is a good idea to keep any eye out for these ratings.

Insulate your home

Often, your heating bill can rise because a good proportion of your heat is being lost from your home. There are things you can do to help keep the heat inside and therefore reduce how much you need to have your heating on. Double glazing is one great way to do this as it keeps warmth in whilst keeping noise out. In a semi-detached home, you could save as much as £110 a year by switching from single glazing to A-rated double glazing.

Heat often escapes from your home through your roof, so making sure that your loft is properly insulated is important as it can save around £135 per year. If you find that there are cold draughts in your house, then these can also be a source of wasted heat and need to be dealt with. You can seal cracks in floors and skirting boards, block unused chimneys, line letterboxes, and put draught excluders at the bottom of your doors to stop that warm air from escaping.

Compare energy prices

Whilst there is not much to choose between the big energy providers at the moment, you can still save money by shopping around, to help reduce your energy costs. You should remember to not just compare energy companies, but also the tariffs that are on offer, as you will not necessarily be on the best one.

There are different tariffs that could suit the times of day that you use the most energy, and there will be fixed and variable rate deals to choose from. Take a look at each deal carefully to see how long you are tied into it and how the prices might change during that time to make sure that you are signing up to a deal that will work for you.

Energy prices are higher now than we have ever seen them, and this shows no sign of slowing in the near future. That means we need to do all we can to reduce the amount of energy that we use if we want to stay in control of our bills.

Look carefully at what energy you use through smart meters and keep a track of when things seem high and what might be causing this. Make sure that you examine how you use it to identify where savings can be made, and you could be surprised how much your gas and electricity bills start to come down over time.