Are you wondering about Saving Energy to Save Money? Me too. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about ways to save money. I walk wherever possible, which saves on petrol costs. (As well as burning extra calories and getting the kids more fresh air)! Using less petrol means less pollution too.
I am one of those people who gets really wheezey and short of breath in London. The fumes kill me. If I can produce less of those for others to breathe in, while saving myself some money – great!
I’ve recently been thinking about how else we are a “Green” household, and what else we could do to “up our game”. So keep reading to find out how I think we could be saving energy to save money in 2024. (This post was recently updated).
Quick Ways of Saving Energy to Save Money
We don’t buy bottled water now, and we do recycle our cardboard and plastic regularly. We are also on the waiting list for an allotment, so we can try to grow our own veggies, herbs and fruit (assuming my allergies don’t make it a non starter, of course)!
The one area we really need to work on is our power consumption at home. Being the geeks we are, we have a HUGE electricity bill every quarter. It doesn’t help that DaddyGeek works from home, so there are computers / servers etc running all day long, but we really could cut back in other areas.
We’ve switched to LED bulbs, which use 85% less energy than standard bulbs. They also last a LOT longer to boot! We could still unplug more things between uses though, and STOP using the standby buttons!
Solar Panels
I’d love to have solar panels on our house to try to offset our consumption, as I think that’s a great way of saving energy to save money. Sadly, we live in a 3 storey house, and it’s not cheap to get the panels installed on such a high roof, so for now… it’s all about reducing our consumption instead!
We use solar where we can of course. Our garden lights and outdoor decorations are solar, wherever possible.
There are several grant options available if you’re seriously considering adding solar panels to your home. These are of course subject to change and eligibility criteria, so it’s worth reading up on them before getting too excited.
Kitchen Gadgets
I switched to using a one cup kettle around 15 years ago and suspect this has saved us a fortune as it only boils enough water for one cup at a time. We’ve also been part of the air fryer club for a very long time, so this has likely saved us a fair bit of money too.
I was shocked when I realised how much the electric oven cost to run, so now I use the microwave or air fry wherever possible.
Consider an Electric Car
Electric cars have come on leaps and bounds since they were rolled out in the UK, 14 years ago. You can now expect up to 400 miles per charge, so they are a much more viable option. There’s also lots more charging points in the UK now too. We don’t have a driveway, so they aren’t a viable option for us just yet. Hopefully on-street charging points aren’t too far away though.
Turning Down The Heating
Another way of saving energy to save money is to turn the hot water on your condenser boiler down to 50% – This will use less energy and your water will still be hot! I did this 2 years ago now and have seen a decent reduction in our energy consumption.
There are loads of other ways of cutting down energy consumption to save money – do let me know in the comments if you have any other ideas of ways of saving energy to save money.
What about you… Are you going green too?
