I’m trying to reduce all the spending on essential and non essential items in our budget, so that I can send extra money to our mortgage.
One of the budget items I’m trying to reduce is the cost of our gas and electricity. I’m unsure of how successful I’m going to be because we had to change to a different price plan on March 1st and the new one, although more expensive than before, is still the cheapest that I could find.
Because I like to keep track of these things I’ve done a little excel sheet;
This sheet shows a 2.5 year history of the cost of these two items. Columns 2 and 3 show the pure charge before any online discounts are applied and the 4th column is the actual cost on our bill; Column 5 is the monthly charge to cover the bills.
So far in Dec 10 and Mar 11, the cost, compared to the same months in previous years, is reduced by £45.64, so I’m on the right track. My goal is to reduce the monthly payment to £70. Ha!
I have a few small ideas to reduce the costs; we can use the oven less and the steamer more and we can definitely reduce the length of our showers, but then I’m struggling for ideas, so it’ll just be a case of monitoring things on an ongoing basis.
So lovely readers let me know, do you have any ideas that I can pinch to reduce our energy usage?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Seems like your doing pretty damn good so far – what ever your doing keep it up!!
When I was living in a house my partner and I would do a few things to keep electric use down, but I can’t offer any tips for gas as we didn’t have any in the house!
Some things included:
Only showering every other day – washing with a flannel from the bathroom sink on the alternate days: Saves electric from the shower, and not heating as much water up!
Only putting the amount of water needed at the time in the kettle.
Unplugging everything that wasn’t in use: So many things have a standby function which I think is pointless if it’s not being used!
Not turning on the outside porch light (if you have one) I think they are pointless unless your outside, which at night time was generally for about 5 minutes, other than that all you do is illuminate the way for the lickle hedgehogs and urgan foxes!
Can’t think of any more right now, hopefully one of them will help you out a little!
WeeMike
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Laura Reply:
March 22nd, 2011 at 7:59 pm
Thanks Mike, all great tips! I think the main thing, to keep the bills down and save energy, is conscious usage of everything gas, everything electric.
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The obvious ones, only turn lights on when needed, use heat or A/C when its necessary. Use fans and open windows when warm. I live in the southern United States, and while air conditioning is a luxury, it is one I am willing to pay for. I do keep it set on a higher temp unless we have company or I am working up a sweat cleaning!
If you do laundry at home, make sure you do full loads, but not too full. If you use a dishwasher, try the light wash setting, I know mine cuts 35 minutes off the cycle. If you wash by hand, fill the sink and try not to run the water much.
Bernice
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Laura Reply:
March 22nd, 2011 at 8:05 pm
thanks Bernice! I’m trying to get the kids to cut down their washing, you probably know what it’s like..wear something for an hour and then it needs washing!! We’ve switched off our heating now and hopefully will be able to leave it off until October/November…air con not a problem here in the UK, we only get ten days of sunshine a year lol
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Can you do your cooking and washing at a later time in the day with a cheaper rate for your hydro???,,,I’m in Canada and here, we have Smart meters with 3 diff price per khw and the best time is after 9:00pm,,we can save hundreds of dollars over the year just by changing time for cooking and cleaning. Call your hydro company and find out if they have it.
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Funny, I have a saving energy post going up later in the week. I’ve reached a point of diminishing returns on my heating bill. The only thing we could do further is to be home less so the heat can be turned down.
My electricity bill has tons of room for improvement though, mainly in the area of laundry. My husband also likes his AC in the summer which also costs a bundle.
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We asked “how can I reduce electricity use in my kitchen” question on my other site Recycle This recently and had some useful replies: http://www.recyclethis.co.uk/20110203/how-can-i-reduce-electricity-wastage-in-the-kitchen
I’m currently trying to train my partner out of always reaching for the hot tap to wash his hands/small kitchen items – he doesn’t use enough water for it actually to get hot but the boiler fires up and starts working anyway. Grr!
(It’s less relevant now that the sun is shining and a lot warmer, but I also wrote up my five frugal ways to stay warm over winter on my blog a few months ago.)
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I don’t know if this will help you, but we’re going to get “wind power” propellers installed onto the roof of our house (once the renovations are complete.) The propellers are quite small, but they generate a ton of energy… energy that you can then use in your home. I’ll have to ask my husband for the link, if you wanted to learn more about it.
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