You thought you couldn’t? Well you’ve got it all to cut down your electricity bills by nearly 25 percent. To me, this comes as the second best summer treat after mangoes!
Culture, design and alternative ways for energy consumption are things we have studied in our text books, heard and discussed over conversations, read articles about and maybe even seen installed in infrastructures. While we talk about culture, we specifically talk about our lifestyle patterns for energy consumption and electricity usage. Our daily means of lighting up our indoors. It’s not just culture however. Design thinking is a major factor that complements our culture. It is both and ideology and a process concerned with problem solving of real life problems, in this case designing houses to optimize lower temperatures organically. However, this doesn’t leave its possibility to engineers and design thinkers only. If you want your next month’s electricity bill to bring you a relief, I would suggest you go through this blog.
Majority of our houses have electric appliances running them but lesser to our knowledge, the ones most in use are televisions, lights, refrigerators and air conditioners. With summer in full swing, air conditioners are running at their full capacities to fight temperatures crossing 40 degrees. The need for refrigerating food is shooting up and watching televisions is another way of spending maximum time maximum time while staying away from the scorching sun. Here are some handy tips which you can apply to cut down electricity bills to nearly 25 percent.
Install Solar Panels
The installation of solar panels are trending fast. Often while crossing, we have seen black solar panels hanging off HT poles on main roads and even on the roofs of several houses. With an initial cost, it is sure to save you all the electricity bills for your future. There is nothing better than running on solar power. More power to our wallets and the environment! Also, 25 percent can be a figure but this investment promises greatly to cut down your energy savings by more than 75 percent.
Install Dimmer Switches
Imagine the level of freedom you would have if you installed dimmer switches at your home. You control your electricity. You direct your usage and get just the bill you want. Regulating the extent of light you need will not only define a certain mood, but will also give you space for the most appropriate amount of energy usage.
Ditch Artificial Lights
Considering that summers have days that never end, the outdoors stays sun lit for more than 12 hours. It is a great season to ditch the drapes or make use of thin fabrics for day light to pass through windows and curtains. Why turn artificial lights on when the sun is there? This can help your indoors make use of natural light and that too for a good long time of the day until the sunsets and bulbs need their filaments to light up.
Switch to LEDs
Substituting high energy consumption lights with energy-efficient light bulbs are a doable start to saving on your energy bill. Not only will that reduce the amount of watts used, but they last a lot longer too. LED bulbs are a famous choice to go with as they use 90 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs.
Stuffed Refrigerators
The only thing I’ve always known about refrigerators at my home is to keep the fridge door closed. It is unknown to many people, but keeping your fridges and freezers full with food acts as an insulation and cuts down the amount of time that the fridge has to run to stay cool.
Put Off-Peak Rates to Your Advantage
For those who want to save on electricity and cut down costs, it is very important that you know about the peak hours when rates for electricity per unit doubles. That is when you have to do just nothing! Take advantage of off peak hours because that is best time for all those chores that make use of electricity consumption, from washing laundry, drying clothes, ironing clothes to heating water or running the dish washers.
Here is a tip though! Almost 90 percent of the energy that is consumed by your washing machines goes into heating the water. All you have to do is turn the dial from hot to cold, and escape the bill. If you are thinking of drying them now, hang them under the sun. Clothes dryers use a lot of energy and produce heat. Do the same with dishes. Air dry them instead of running dishwashers.
Try Some Energy Saving Landscaping
When it comes to cutting down electricity bills, it means being able to maintain temperatures enough which require less usage of air conditioners. Another way of achieving this would be shifting our focus from inside homes to the outdoors. Planting trees to shade our homes and air conditioning units can help insulate our homes organically. The more the trees covering the house walls and its windows, the lesser the chances that light heats up our homes enough for fans to turn off and air conditioners to switch on.
Tone Down on Colors
Talking about indoor colors; shades of white, off-white and lighter shades are known to reflect light and heat. This summer paint your walls white and tone down household colors to lighter shades. This greatly helps in reflecting heat and light away instead of absorbing it and raising temperatures.
All the above tips may not bring a significant cut on their own for bill reduction. Combined however, energy saving on all the mentioned ways can significantly reduce your indoor temperatures and cut down costs. You can eliminate a huge chunk of your electricity costs with simple, easy and doable ways. With a few changes to lifestyle or if I may put it as ‘culture’ can be well on your way to a much reduced electricity bill.
While this blog stays specific to quick and doable means of cutting costs, design thinking should be an interesting read in the next blog. For those who are heading towards revamping their houses or constricting them, it is important for you to know of ways that can help construct your houses in a manner which in itself is a solution to all the living problems.
Until your next electricity bill! Relieved living.
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