What do you think the largest power user in your house is? Lights? Fixed appliances? Cooling/Heating? We can assess the items in your home and recommend more efficient ones if they are large power users.
Power
Usage Assessments
Big Power Items in Houses
Many of our clients have voiced the thoughts that the large power usage items in our houses are the lights… Unless you have lighting that still uses old incandescent globes including low voltage down lights, this is incorrect. Fluorescent globes/tubes & LED down lights have made lighting power usage one of the lowest impacts to your electricity bill. Of course if you leave your lights on 24/7 your going to get a large bill still.
If you still have low voltage down-lights with incandescent lamps, you may want to swap to LED down lights, or fit power saving globes, as the older style incandescent lamps are very wasteful. See our section on Lighting for more information.
So… what are the large power usage items?
Fixed appliances such as Electric Hot Water, Older Air conditioners, Electric Plug in Heaters, Oven / Cook top, Clothes Dryers. These all add up to the large percentage of your power bill.
There is not much you can do to reduce the power usage of some items, but others there have been advancements in technologies that make them more efficient and even work better than their counterparts.
Electric Hot Water systems can be replaced by Gas Hot Water, and best of all Solar Hot Water. If replacing your Electric Hot Water System isn’t a possibility, then installing a Solar Power System and only heating the Hot Water during the day time, will in effect turn your electric hot water into a solar hot water as it will use the electricity generated by the Solar to heat the water. To put this in place, we can install a timer to control your existing hot water system to only run during the daytime.
Ovens and Cook top’s are high power items, but there is little you can do with theses. Ovens are ovens, they require power to work. Cook tops on the other hand are an item that transmits heat, and as such there are losses during that process. Older Cook tops such as solid plate and ring type are high power usage and slow to work.
Replacing these with a Glass top cooker, or better still an induction cook top will make the heating process faster, and as such use less power. The better option out of these two is induction, as the transfer is not of heat, but of electromagnetic energy, which creates very little losses.
Heaters and Air-conditioners
Bar Heaters, Electric Fan Heaters, and convection heaters are all high power users. These plug in items are effective and cheap to buy, but they are expensive to run. Reverse cycle air conditioning is far more economical. The newer style inverter air conditioner using the newer R410 or R32 gas are the most effective and efficient way to heat your home.
Older Air-Conditioners can create higher power usage than their newer counterparts due to the fact that they don’t have technology which can ramp down the power usage when it’s not needed. Newer inverter style air conditioners reduce their power usage once the room is at temperature, and just “tick over” to maintain temp. The older units are “full whack” all of the time. Additionally the new gas used is so much more efficient than the old R22 gas that there is power saving there as well.
We can come and assess your fixed appliances and recommend what ones will use the most power and quote to replace them as required. Call us to book in an assessment!
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