Ways to Reduce Electrical Energy Consumption at Home
Electrical energy plays a pivotal role in our daily lives, from powering our home appliances such as laptops, stoves, and TVs, upto running big machinery in industrial sites.
Since most of the electrical energy we use to power our appliances comes from electrical energy supply companies, these companies charge us according to the amount of energy we use.
As an energy user, it is crucial to avoid unnecessary ways of using electrical energy that result in high electrical energy bills, that might put you over budget.
In this article, we are going to discuss ways to reduce electrical energy consumption at home while maximizing energy efficiency, as follows.
1. Switch to Energy-Saving Lamps
Switching from high energy-consuming lambs, such as incandescent and fluorescent lamps to energy-saving LED lamps can significantly reduce your monthly energy consumption.
2. Switching to Alternative Energy Sources for Some Appliances
Heating appliances such as electric stoves and electric geysers consume a lot of energy. These appliances have alternative sources of energy you can use at home.
For example, you can replace an electric stove with gas stove and an electric geyser with solar geyser.
When using gas energy, it is important that you use large tanks installed outside the house for your safety and also to avoid buying gas at short intervals.
While the initial cost for a gas stove and solar geysers might be high, trust me, in the long run you will see the benefits; these appliances last for a long period of about 20 years.
3. Keep Inductive Loads to a Minimum
Most inductive loads are those with moving parts such as water pumps, electric motors, washing machines, as well as fluorescent lamps.
Inductive loads introduce reactive power. Power is divided into two parts: true power and reactive power.
While true power is power that makes our appliances work, reactive power is power that does not do any work for us but is included in the power.
By keeping inductive loads to a minimum or powering them at different times, you can reduce reactive power.
Reactive power can also be eliminated by adding a capacitor bank across the load, but this is usually done in industrial settings where there are a lot of electric motors.
4. Avoid using Defective Appliances
Defective appliances we are taking about are those that give you electric shocks when you touch their metal casing.
These appliances have an earth fault, which causes some current to flow through the earth wire back the supply, increasing your energy consumption.
To cater for earth faults, you can add residual current circuit breakers to your installation if they are not already installed.
Residual current circuit breakers - RCCBs compares the current in the neutral and live conductors.
If there is an imbalance due to some other current flowing back to the supply through the earth wire, they trip off, signaling to you the presence of earth fault in your installation.
5. Assess Your Monthly Energy Consumption
By assessing your monthly energy consumption, you can figure out the months when you use most of the energy and find out which appliances you were using, and then come up with corrective measures.
By putting all these measures in place, you can significantly reduce your monthly energy consumption.