Electric Savings
Are you hosting Christmas this year? If you’ve got your extended family heading to your house en mass, it could send your electricity meter spinning, with all those extra meals, cups of tea, showers and hours on the games console.
Navetas Energy Management has an early Christmas present for anyone worried about how much their electricity bill could increase with all those extra people in the house over Christmas; follow these Christmas Money-Saving Tips to save around £20 in just one week.
1. Run the shower rota like a military operation – Having the electric shower running for just an hour each day will use up over 50 kWh over the week. Get the stopwatch at the ready and keep shower times to a strict 2 minutes to save around £5 and reduce your kWh usage to just 23 kWh.
2. Enlist Santa’s little helpers - The dishwasher is definitely not a necessity but it does make life that little bit easier when you are rushed off your feet. But remember, you’ll have lots of little helpers around at Christmas, so get them elbow deep in suds to save yourself another £2.30.
3.Go all 80s with cold finger buffets - The electric oven will use around 20 kWh if used for 1.5 hours a day every week. Keep cooking to a minimum and go for cold cuts, cheeses, chilled savouries and all those turkey leftovers for a spread that will save you around £2 through the week.
4. Ditch the TV – Get out the jigsaw puzzles or take the family out and about for a winter walk for entertainment and activities that won’t impact your electricity meter. Watching a large screen LCD TV for around two hours a day each week adds around £2.50 to your bill.
5. Tell your guests to take their washing home – Save a few plastic bags for guests to store up their dirty washing so you don’t have to send your washing machine into overdrive with extra loads. You’ll have enough to deal with over Christmas and not doing their washing could save you around £0.50.
6. Promote the benefits of natural drying – Make sure your guests know the damage that hair dryers on high heat can do to their poor hair to encourage natural drying and low heat settings instead. Using a hairdryer for 30 minutes a day uses 12.8 KWh over a week, so you could save around £2 if you can convince your guests to leave theirs at home.
7. Cold water not boiled – With so many extra people in the house the chances are the kettle will be on a constant boil to cater for all those cups of tea and hot toddies. Make some fun cocktails instead or wax lyrical about the benefits of water to save yourself another £2-3.
8. Be creative – If you’ve got extra boys and girls in the house, the chances are the PlayStation 3 will be on for several hours - and don’t forget so will your TV! Use those extra people to think up some creative ideas to keep you all entertained. You could save another £2.50 over the week.
Tagged in Home Heating