Turn off the lights, lower the heating by 1°C, and unplug your phone charger… Do you hear these practices all day long? And for a good reason, saving energy has become essential to preserve the planet and your wallet! In an article published in the Journal du Dimanche on June 26, 2022, the French energy giants EDF, Engie, and Total call on the French people to reduce their energy consumption, echoing the current economic and energy situation… COSÌ, how to reduce your electricity consumption this summer? In questo articolo, DelightFire gives you 10 tips to reduce your electricity bill and adopt good habits!
Contenuti
- 1 Take advantage of a reduced electricity price during off-peak hours.
- 2 Turn off the power before leaving on vacation in summer.
- 3 Empty your refrigerator and freezer, and unplug them
- 4 Opt for a cold wash to reduce your electricity consumption
- 5 Air dry your clothes during the warm season.
- 6 Install connected electrical outlets
- 7 Keep your house cool in the summer.
- 8 Install a reversible air conditioning or heat pump
- 9 Use your power strips wisely.
- 10 Install a televisor on your electrical panel
Take advantage of a reduced electricity price during off-peak hours.
The off-peak rate is nothing new in the electricity supply market. It allows any individual to benefit from a reduced electricity rate during time slots set by Enedis, the French electricity network manager. The time slots are established locally, generally during 8 hours called “off-peak,” in the evening, at night, and until the early morning. To do this, you must subscribe to an electricity contract with an off-peak (HC) and peak (HP) option.
The option should allow you to modulate your energy consumption and program certain energy-consuming appliances during off-peak hours. We inevitably think of running the washing machine and the dishwasher in the evening. The water in your hot water tank can also be heated all night long. You still need to install a day-night switch on your electrical panel. This small module allows you to switch on your hot water tank outside peak hours.
Turn off the power before leaving on vacation in summer.
No matter how often we say it, you must prepare for a summer vacation! Luggage, final storage, not to mention turning off the lights! To avoid spending anything in July or August while you’re away, DelightFire recommends that you cut off the power to your home… Unless the fridge and freezer are still full or if the alarm and video surveillance are activated.
Go to the electrical panel of your home, usually located at the entrance or in a dedicated closet. The circuit breaker upstream of the electrical installation allows you to cut off the electricity in the house. The circuit breakers allow you to turn off all or part of the circuits, including the water heater. This equipment is one of the most energy-consuming in a typical household. The water is constantly heating up to keep it at the right temperature… Which is useless if you’re going away!
Empty your refrigerator and freezer, and unplug them
This tip, well known by the most economical among us, allows you not only to maintain your refrigeration appliances, to consume all your food without wasting, but also to save some money in the end!
The principle is simple: empty your fridge and freezer, then unplug them so that you don’t consume a single kilowatt-hour while you’re away… Because cooling food inevitably means spending energy. But when the bin is empty, and you are away from home for weeks at a time, you are wrongly spending electricity.
Be careful; a freezer that has not been defrosted will lose its ice, changing its state. The water from your appliances is then likely to flood your kitchen floor. So be there the night or the day before you leave to defrost everything, and if necessary, mop up the water.
Opt for a cold wash to reduce your electricity consumption
Do you have a washing machine at home that seems to consume a lot of electricity? What if you used the “eco” mode to wash your clothes this time? The function is ideal for saving water and reducing your electricity consumption. With the eco mode, the machine heats up less, and the spinning is reduced… Your clothes are as clean as usual, with a classic mode.
The cold wash mode allows you to use cold water at a low temperature (30°C) to wash your clothes. No need to push the washing machine to 60°C; your clothes won’t be any cleaner! And lower temperatures mean lower electricity bills!
Air dry your clothes during the warm season.
Does this tip seem obvious to you? DelightFire challenges you to air dry your laundry without using the dryer. This appliance tends to consume a lot of electricity (Di 200 kWh/year, according to ADEME), in addition to heating the air in your kitchen, bathroom, or laundry room.
If a tumble dryer is very practical in winter, it is useless in summer. The high temperatures alone are enough to dry your clothes during the summer. Whether you live in a house with or without outside access, we advise investing a few euros in a rope for the garden and a wooden or plastic dryer to hang your clothes indoors. In one day, everything is dry!
Install connected electrical outlets
A connected outlet is a perfect gadget to reduce your electricity consumption in the summer (and even all year round)! These sockets are controlled by an application on a smartphone or a home automation box, via the Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth.
In concrete terms, they simplify your life, reduce your efforts and help you reduce your energy bill. How does it work? The plugs are either :
- directly installed in place of a conventional socket (and therefore embedded in your walls)
- plugged into your current electrical outlets, as would be the case with adapters for electrical outlets abroad
Do you need to turn off the light left at home remotely, program an appliance, and refresh your home when you return? The connected plug is there to fulfill your wishes! These plugs are also useful to deactivate appliances that are still plugged in and in standby mode (and therefore still consuming energy). The ADEME (French Environment and Energy Management Agency) is clear: “turning off the standby mode [of your appliances, excluding heating] can save up to 10% of your electricity bill”.
Keep your house cool in the summer.
This seemingly simple tip will make it easier for you to handle your telecommuting days at home or your weekends and free days.
Summer temperatures can quickly make the air unbearably humid or very dry and heavy (especially true during heat waves). To keep your home cool, close your shutters and windows to keep the sun’s rays and hot air out.
You can also reinforce the insulation of your home: replace the most exposed windows (south-facing), and insulate the walls of your house from the outside. We know today that eco-designed “positive energy” houses spend the least energy; naturally cool in summer and warm in winter.
Install a reversible air conditioning or heat pump
The installation of a heat pump is the solution to reduce your energy consumption and, allo stesso tempo, your ecological footprint. Air-to-air heat pumps are useful for heating and cooling air, and their reversibility makes it possible to take outside air and cool it inside the house. It is said that a heat pump (PAC) gives back 3 kWh of heat or cold for 1 kWh consumed. This is more than any electric radiator or conventional air conditioner, which consumes a lot of energy.
Use your power strips wisely.
We don’t need to introduce power strips anymore (or almost). These mobile power strips are very practical for centralizing several electrical appliances in one place and increasing the number of outlets, which is sometimes insufficient.
Our advice? Invest preferably in a power strip with a switch. This way, you can turn off the power strip in the evening or the day before you go on vacation. We are thinking in particular of multimedia devices connected to the same place: the internet box, the television, the computer, the games console, the speaker…
Tuttavia, DelightFire warns you: that, above all, you must respect the maximum authorized power of your power strips and not plug in any device that is too powerful. The risk? Breaking your electrical panel (in the best case), burning your power strip and starting a fire, and/or damaging your equipment.
Install a televisor on your electrical panel
If there’s one thing you thought you had under control, it’s lighting! You never leave a room without turning off the lights (and that’s normal!). But your efforts don’t stop there. With the TV Dimmer, you can now control the light intensity of all your lamps. The dimmer is associated with specific switches, with a knob, Per esempio, to vary the lighting: maximum in the morning in a bathroom, or dimmed in a living room in the evening… To do this, install a module adapted to your electrical panel connected to your light circuit.
Don’t you know anything about electricity? It’s best to call an electrician to install a dimmer switch!
