With winter around the corner, space heating will become the second highest cost-pusher of an average household’s electricity bill.
Eskom says if every household makes some minor changes, they can lower the collective electricity use by 10 percent. This means reduction in monthly energy costs and less demand on the national grid while at the same time doing your bit towards saving the planet.
According to Eskom, space heating and a hot water geyser constitute 55 percent of an average household’s energy usage per month, with the geyser being responsible for 39 percent of the electricity costs.
If everyone were to switch off energy intensive appliances such as electric geysers and pool pumps during high electricity usage times in the evening, this could save up to 2 940 MW.
This is enough to free-up five units of a six-pack power station and power three cities the size of Durban, Port Elizabeth or Bloemfontein.
To keep tabs on your winter electricity bills there are several things to bear in mind about heating:
- Use electric heaters that are controlled by thermostats
- Electric blankets are the cheapest way of warming the bed, but don’t keep them on throughout the night. Turn your electric blanket on for an hour or two just before bed to heat it up and switch it off
- Only heat rooms that you and your family are going to use
- Insulate ceilings and make sure that there are no gaps that let cold air into your house to improve the efficiency of your heater
Other ways of reducing electricity demand include:
- never leaving appliances such as TVs, computers and radios on standby mode. Sitting in standby mode still uses up to 50 percent of the electricity that the appliance would normally use
- switching off lights in unoccupied rooms and replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs)
- taking a shower instead of taking a bath (a shower uses a lot less water than a bath); also consider installing an energy and water efficient shower head
- remember to unplug cell phone chargers when your phone is fully charged
Eskom says if every household makes some minor changes, they can lower the collective electricity use by 10 percent.
This means reduction in monthly energy costs and less demand on the national grid while at the same time doing your bit towards saving the planet.
