Disclaimer: this is a sponsored post for Origin Energy, all opinions are my own. I’m going to ramble a fair bit, this is a topic I struggle to get my head around and the vast majority of our home energy savings are driven by my husband who does this stuff at work.
Energy costs are a topic near and dear to my heart. We are lucky, our bill is in credit, thanks to all our energy saving efforts. Many are not so lucky.
I volunteer at Diamond Valley Food Share once a month and last month every client that came in while I was there spoke about their heating bills. Which accounts in part for this:
Chatting to Rona @ Diamond Valley Foodshare – 25% increase in need the last six months. ping @StuffWithThing pic.twitter.com/wA5FIfVITz
— Vicki Ward (@Vicki4Eltham) July 31, 2014
25% INCREASE! It is huge and heartbreaking, we are struggling to keep up with the demand for food and our lovely clients are struggling just to survive day to day.
On Monday I was part of a small group of bloggers invited to Origin Energy to talk about energy companies, ways to reduce our energy bills and ways we feel our energy suppliers could improve their service.
One thing that really struck at my heart (yes I’m bleeding hearted leftie, I think we’ve discussed this before) was:
“Those that can least afford to pay are being made to pay by the change in our energy habits.”
Anne Armansin, Energy Adviser, Home Energy Services, Origin Energy.
See the cost of getting energy to our homes is going up, not just the cost of energy itself, those 4 days a year of peak demand when everyone runs their AC units, means we need more poles, more wires, more pipes, to get the energy to people’s homes. It is us, the consumer, that ends up paying for those costs. Now the folks who have AC units can generally afford this fixed cost and will happily bear it if it means cooler home on those extreme heat days. But what about the elderly, the poor, most of them can not afford the increased in this fixed cost, let alone an AC unit.
Now one way to work around this (as local Greens in my area are doing) is encourage everyone to put solar panels on their roof, then you have lovely environmentally friendly solar power and you don’t need increase those wires and pipes and things… gosh I’m getting all technical here, not my strong point.
HOWEVER, big however.
- Some of us rent (hi, me, I rent) and our landlords are not interested in putting solar panels on their rental properties (wouldn’t it be lovely if they were).
- Some people live in homes where the roof isn’t positioned to get enough sun to make solar panels effective (waves to my personal trainer who has just this problem).
- Some of us just can not afford solar panels.
For those of us that can’t go the solar route there is the option of getting Green Energy through our energy suppliers, which honestly makes me relieved, because I want to do the right thing for the environment, but getting solar on our house isn’t an option for us.
Another way we can make a difference is by reducing our energy usage. Not only does this help reduce our bills but it helps the environment and hopefully means less poles and wires and fixed costs to meet peak demand.
So :: drum roll please ::
ENERGY SAVING TIPS
from Anne Armansin, Energy Adviser, Home Energy Services, Origin Energy
- Your AC unit is 50% more efficient if used properly and maintained.
- Set the thermostat to 20C in winter and 24C in summer
(ours has been at 18C this winter with only increase to 20C on the days temps outside dropped below 5C, investing in warm blankets, dressing gowns and slippers is well worth it, which brings me to the next tip…) - Dress for the climate!
- Newer appliances tend to use less energy than older ones, when updating to new appliances look for the energy star rating sticker, on fridges / freezers there will also be a box figure which is the approximate daily energy consumption of that item.
- If you can hear your fridge running that means it is sucking more power than it should.
- Cooling and Heating are your single biggest energy users, fridge, freezer, oven, AC, heating. These are the things to watch.Lots more tips here.
Anne also gave us some ways to check how much energy individual items in your house use, which I will be writing about in another post (need to do some research at home) and I’m going to answer my reader questions separately as that will be another long post.
What do you do at home to save energy?
