With over 20 energy saving tips and advice, sourced from YOU our very money saving savvy Mummypenny community and from business partners Octopus Energy, there’s bound to be some small tweak or change you could make today to reduce your energy. Go on, challenge yourself, just how many of the following are you already doing….?
Don’t have time right now to read the whole blog?
Here are the most impactful tips to take away:
1. Turn down the thermostat (by 2°C) save around £300/year
2. Turn down the boiler flow temperature save around £112/year
3. Install a water-efficient shower head (save £83/year) and reduce your shower time to 4 minutes (could save you £70/year)
4. Heat yourself not the whole house using a water bottle and/or heated blanket – Heating the whole house can cost £4 a day. Heating yourself with an electric blanket or water bottle only costs 4p and hour.
Note: Don’t turn off all the heating to the point you’re uncomfortable. Instead turn off the radiators in rooms you’re not using. This can still save you £83/year if you usually warm the whole house.
Tips from you, the MummyPenny community:
Cooking
- Bulk/Batch Cooking – Cook in bulk to avoid cooking everyday – saving your energy as well as making a saving on your energy bill – and freeze.
- Make more of your microwave – microwaves use less energy than conventional ovens and tend to be underutilised in most kitchens
- Get the Slow Cooker on – A favourite for this time of year is of course the slow cooker. There are heaps of brilliant slow cooker recipes to whet your appetite – one of my absolute favourites is slow cooker chilli.
- Plan your meals and eat together – a lovely thing to do where possible anyway.
- Air Fryers – Quicker to heat and cook, easier and healthier (no oil) than other forms of cooking the new kitchen must-have gadget the air fryer received a lot of love from you all. There is an initial layout cost but with budget Air Fryers starting from £40.00 and research showing that they really do save you money.
- Only boil as much water as you need – Nothing warms you up from the inside out so much as a nice cuppa but just boiling what you need saves energy whilst still giving you your hot beverage fix. Win.
- Batch making your daily hot drinks – Invest in a good quality flask and making all your cups of tea and coffee for the day in one hit.
BBC Good Food has a great guide to energy efficient cooking and according to energy company and WHICH have a handy table showing just how much it costs to run those big household appliances
Washing and Drying
- Wash at 30 degrees (low but enough to still kill the bacteria)
- Shorter cycle/Eco button – use a shorter washing cycle as standard
- Always have full Washing Machine loads – no more half loads! Make sure it’s full before you hit start
- Wash less – think about wearing things more than once before washing them use the smell test and always wear things multiple times (not pants though, there’s a line to be drawn somewhere!).
- Invest in a Heated clothes airer – such as the Minky Tower. Although there’s an initial outlay of £20 – £40, according to research by the Telegraph heated airers cost 10p per hour to run vs around £2.00 per tumble drying load. This could save you £70/year.
- Down with ironing – Hang creases out of clothes rather than ironing
- Install a water-efficient shower head (save £83/year) and reduce your shower time to 4 minutes (could save you £70/year)
Heating
- Turn the thermostat down on your boiler – this has been talked about A LOT as there are several ways to turn the thermostat down on your boiler:
- Turning your thermostat down by 2 degree (from say 21 to 19) can save you around around £300/year
- Turning the Flow Temperature of your boiler down – this is the way your boiler heats the water in the radiators and you can turn that down too, turning down the boiler flow temperature save around £112/year. It’s a slightly trickier job but the best and easiest way to find out how to do it is to watch a YouTube video of it being turned down on your specific make and type of boiler.
- Warm the person not the house – There are lots of ways to do this
- Wear thermals under your normal clothes (Aldi and Lidl have these)
- Heated Hoodies! putting on jumpers, coats, blankets,
- using electric blankets even rather than putting the heating on
- Hot water bottle
- Heating the whole house can cost £4 a day. Heating yourself with an electric blanket or water bottle only costs 4p and hour.
- Turn off the radiators in rooms you’re not using. This can still save you £83/year if you usually warm the whole house.
- Keep in the heat you already have in the house – Hang heavy curtains on external doors, use draft excluders. (*We had a snake one when I was little. MMP)
- Go back to the office – Many people are choosing to work from the office more rather than at home as another way of saving money
Electrical Items and Switching Off
- Switching off standby – Turning off at the plug and switching your devises off fully could save up to £65 per year on your energy bill – from TVs to games consoles they all consume energy on standby. The hardest challenge here can be getting everyone in the family/household to cooperate!
- Unplug laptops, tablets and mobile phones – it’s not great for the battery life and also is an energy drain – some people even turn their WiFi off when they’re in the office!
- Turn out the lights when you’re not in the room – Just flicking the light switch could save households up to £20 per year If you need a light on overnight, consider using plug-in or rechargeable nightlights instead of leaving a main light on.
- Agree on movie nights or games nights as a family – Instead of everyone watching tv/playing on gadgets, by themselves every evening. This is great for family connections and cheaper to run 1 TV, heat 1 room and light 1 room.
- Use Smart or WiFi plugs – there is an initial outlay for Smart plugs but increasingly they are coming down in price and can be useful for those hard to reach places or, when linked to an app, helping you to schedule when devises are switched on and off. They do obviously draw energy (albeit small) but worth considering.
- Check if you are really using your fridge freezer fully – if you have a second freezer (in the garage) check if it’s being fully utilised
Some extra advice from Octopus Energy.
Plug the gaps: Save: £45
A continuous draught can quickly undo all the good work of your heating – essentially wasting energy. Identifying and plugging up draughts around doors, windows and other gaps can help trap warmth in and make your gas spend go further. Read more about home insulation below.
Professional draught-proofing can cost a few hundred pounds, or you can find draughts yourself using the back of your hand, or with a thermal camera, and make your own excluders for free using old fabric
scraps. Average saving: £45 per year
Switch to LED bulbs 💡 Save: £80+
Lighting makes up around 11% of a typical power bill. LEDs use 70-80% less electricity – so when it’s time to replace those bulbs, go LED. The Energy Savings Trust has written loads about the impact it could make on your bills: between £5-£13 per bulb, per year! Making sure you switch off the lights when you leave the room can save a further £20 per year.
Insulate your hot water tank. save: £35
To reduce heat loss and therefore keep your hot water hotter for longer, add a British Standard Jacket 80mm thick to your hot water cylinder and you could save£35 a year in the process. Exposed hot water pipes can also be insulated using a foam tube that covers the pipes between your hot water cylinder and boiler.
This is a collaborative post with Octopus Energy.
If you are worried about paying your bills with Octopus read their helpful page for What to do if you’re worried about your bills for more information on the support available.
