Have you ever conducted an energy audit on your home?
Conducting an energy audit on your home is a great way to help you reduce your electricity bill and save some cash on your upcoming and future electricity bills. With electricity bills on the rise, and record temperatures expected this coming Summer, it’s as good a time as any to start looking at ways to save money on your power bill.
6 Steps to Conducting a Home Energy Audit
To make your home more energy efficient, you can carry out a home energy audit. You’ll pinpoint appliances to upgrade, save big bucks on your energy bill, and make your home more comfortable to live in.
Here are 6 steps to get you started.
1. Find out your energy usage in kilowatts per hour (KWh)
For any Aussie’s out there, the government has a super handy dandy energy benchmarking tool to work out the average electricity use in your local area. (If you aren’t from down under do a google search and see if there is something similar offered in your country :))
You simply need to enter your homes postcode and the number of people in your household:
Then answer 3 more questions to find out what the average energy use is in your suburb.
The following results will display based on your selected postcode area:
This will help you to compare your energy use from your electricity bill and see if you are perhaps using more energy than you should be. You can then compare this figure to your most recent electricity bills. This information can help you see if you might need to make changes such as upgrading old appliances, or being a little more aware of how much electricity you are using.
2. Identify energy guzzling appliances
It’s important when you are armed with your energy use, that you start to identify older energy guzzling appliances. When appliances last longer than expected it can be a positive thing, but sometimes when we hold onto these appliance for too long they end up costing us in higher power bills such as; old fridges, pool filters and small fan heaters.
There is number of ways to identify which appliances are more energy consuming than others.
The first is using a smart meter and utilising your electricity providers app to identify what your appliance is costing to run, by trying to run only that appliance. I.e. Have your regular stand by power on and then only run the dishwasher at 11am. Then the next day check the app and see how much your energy use shot up at 11am. Experiment over the coming weeks to determine how much other appliances are costing.
Another simple trick, if you don’t have a smart meter, is to turn off all your appliances except the one in question and look at your electricity meter to see how many revolutions it does in a minute. The faster (more revolutions) the meter goes, the more energy the appliance is using.
Another method is to multiply the wattage of the appliance (often found on the base) by the number of hours used per day. Divide this by 1000 to obtain your daily kWh and then multiply by the rate per kWh on your energy bill to find out how much the appliance is costing you each day.
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3. Upgrade old appliances
If your appliances are 10 years or older, it is likely they are using more energy than more modern and energy efficient appliances. This may seem like an expensive investment to update appliances, and it likely will be depending on how many you need to update, but the energy savings will help offset the cost.
Remember to go for the highest energy star ratings where possible. You can also check with your government and see what rebates are available. Some governments offer rebates to help you purchase new energy efficient appliances such as replacing lighting to LED downlights.
You might even be able to pick up some good second hand bargains or floor models that are still energy efficient models, but that are discounted.
4. Check your lighting and heating/cooling is optimised
A great way to save on power is to replace inefficient halogen lighting with LED lighting. Heat and cool only the rooms you are currently in in your home. Set your air conditioner or heater temperature to a lower temperature in winter such as heating at 23 degrees or higher temperature in Summer such as cooling at 25 degrees so it still heats or cools the room as desired and makes the room a comfortable temperature, but uses less energy, saving you money.
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5. Install adequate insulation and ventilation
If your home is hot in summer and cold in winter, it’s time to look at insulation and ventilation. Installing insulation can help keep your home warmer in winter and cooler in summer, such as by installing batts in your roof. It can be difficult to install insulation in walls of a pre-built home but there are alternatives such as wall insulation foam sprays that can provide a workaround (albeit an expensive one).
It may be worth getting a few insulation experts out to provide you with quotes on what it will cost to insulate your home better. Remember this should provide you on savings when it comes to your future electricity bills.
6. Check for air leaks
You don’t want your heating and cooling to flow out of your home under the door. As part of your home energy audit you should check for any air leaks under doors, and through the sides of windows. These can easily be fixed with caulking and weatherstripping such as caulking around window gaps or using door seals.
Check your local hardware stores for solutions to stop air leaks in your home so you can keep your home air cool or warm as desired. You might even hire an energy assessor or other weatherization expert to test your home for air tightness to help you make sure your home is more airtight and saving you on electricity.
Well there you go, 6 steps you can carry out to do a home energy audit and hopefully save some money on your electricity bill. These tips may not be something you can implement overnight, but over the coming months you can try and work towards each step, such as saving up to buy a newer appliance to replace a less efficient one and doing your research on what government assistance or rebates are available to you in your local area which may help offset any costs involved.
If you are keen to save money on your electricity bill this upcoming quarter, if might be well worth the effort to conduct an energy audit on your home to make sure you are savings as much money (and energy) as possible. With the cost of living going up, every dollar you can save will really help to stretch your budget further and keep more dollars in your wallet!
The above six steps are courtesy of Energy Australia’s DIY Energy Audit. This post is not sponsored and I do not receive any commission from it, it is merely to share helpful advice with readers in the hope they can reduce their electricity bill.
I’d love to know what you found from your energy audit. Leave a comment below if you found this post helpful, if you were able to identify anything from your home energy audit or if you have any extra tips to save on electricity.
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Photo by Anthony Indraus on Unsplash
