I’ve been trying to lower my electricity bill and use less energy at home, but there are so many tips online that it gets confusing. I already turn off lights when not needed, but I’m looking for more simple and effective ideas that actually help save energy.
Do smart thermostats, LED bulbs, or energy-efficient appliances really make a big difference? I’d also love to know if anyone has noticed lower bills after making small changes around the house.
What are the best energy-saving tips or products that worked for you?
Is this serious question? Is switching off the light really a good tip to use less energy?
Just use less energy, in what ever way you want, by hand or automatically.
Maybe switch off the main switch
If budget allows, solar array + battery + an electric tariff that allows charging battery at cheap rate
plug in solar is an option
if budget doesnt allow solar/battery setup, then smart plugs to turn off those appliances you have that are quietly sipping energy whilst on standby/not in use
apart from that, yeah common sense. turn stuff off when youre not using it
making one small change like that will not make a noticeable difference, but lots of small changes will
Best advice I’ll give is get a smart meter at the consumer unit and work out what your baseline power draw is when all devices and lights that are used on a daily basis, are turned off
There will still be a baseline power draw used by your networking infrastructure, your fridge etc
There might be some other devices that you usually power on during the day, which can be powered off at night
The lower you can get the overnight bassline draw, the better. I’m down to about 120w right now.
A fridge will use anywhere between 30w-80w during a 30-90min cycle.
Can you set the fridge to have a less dramatic and more eco friendly cooling cycle?
Smart bulbs and presence sensors will help you to lower your NET usage across a year, by gaining back time when devices are turned off in those times you exit a room
Spend 10 minutes in the bathroom at night? Well you could ask Homey to turn off the lights in other rooms you aren’t using for that 10 minute period.
To add to the above: many devices in standby use electricity (TV, smart speakers, NAS, etc.). Use a smart plug with power measurement capabilities to measure the power usage of individual devices.
If you find that a device uses too much power in standby, consider powering it down fully using the smart plug. You can build flows that help you powering on/off those devices. For example Homey could switch off all non-essential devices when you go to sleep.
I go with the advice from @deejayreissue its not neccesarily the high usage devices where you can save energy. (Although trying to use the dryer less does help)
Try to find out the devices that use the baseline power. These are running 24hrs a day every day.
I remember I found out a few years ago that my floorheating pumps (45W each) where always running, also in summer also in winter when the heater was turned off. Adding a smart switch did not cost a lot and the investment was saved in a year.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. It sounds like the biggest savings come from reducing unnecessary usage and making several small improvements rather than relying on one big change.
I’ve also been looking into smart thermostats, energy monitoring plugs, and LED lighting since those seem to be mentioned frequently in energy-saving discussions. A few people I know have seen noticeable reductions in their bills after tracking which devices were using the most power.
For those using Homey, have you set up any automations specifically to reduce energy consumption? I’d be interested to hear which automations or devices have made the biggest difference in your home.
When it comes to raw energy consumption, it is definitely finding culprits as mentioned above. I also had a case of a misconfigured hydronic heating pump/heater that was constantly turned on even if the hydronic controller didn’t request any heat. Things like home/away/vacation mode has also saved quite a lot of energy.
When it comes to saving money, it depends a little on the cost scheme you are on, but for me it’s largely about when energy is consumed more than how much. I have my own app that handles that. Right now, I use weather forecast to try to predict a whole-home budget. The daily budget determines how much of the consumption can run in expensive hours vs cheap hours. On days where the cost varies a lot per hour, this has saved like 30% of the cost vs if all devices where allowed to run blindly.
If you have really old appliances, it can help to buy new ones, but always calculate the return of investment. Buying a new appliance to save 100 watt a day is not economically feasable. Biggest saving i got was replacing all my 50 watt spots to LED spots. I live in Belgium and if someone ask me if investing in solar panels and home batteries is a good idea, i answer no, because the investment vs return time is to long and the rules constantly change over here. I have solar panels and batteries, but still got a subsidy for 3 years, so this was a no brainer back then.
Since we’ve been using things such as motion sensors, presence sensors, smart plugs, energy efficient lights and bulbs, and flows through homey we’ve managed to get our average daily energy usage down from around 12- 15 kWh to 7 kWh ..while this may not seem a lot ..trust me it is. With homey flows and smart devices, and being a little more energy aware, our quarterly bill is on average £279, which for the UK average usage is absolutely brilliant.
Little things which you think don’t really make a difference actually do. Like having lights only come on when it’s dark, and go off when you’re not in the room and so on make a huge difference over a month or 3 months
