From Guest Blogger Diana Smith: Energy Saving Starts at Your Own Home

There are two reasons why you should be paying attention to your electricity bill and they’re both extremely important. The first one concerns protecting our environment, the message should be pretty clear: eco-friendliness starts at your home. If this isn’t the reason enough for you (and it very much should be), think about your electricity bill – regardless of the financial situation, no-one likes coughing up more money than it’s absolutely necessary. Here are a couple of tips with regards to saving electricity at home.

Turn Everything off while You’re Away

You may think that your home is safer if it’s lit up while you’re away during the night, but the fact of the matter is that experienced thieves will be staking you out, learning all of your habits. This means that there simply is no reason to leave everything on, so make sure that you’ve flipped all the switches off before leaving your house.

In with the Natural Light

Turning the lights off during the day is just plain common sense. Besides, no artificial source of light can replace sunlight, even if thick clouds are about. So make sure to use it to the fullest; don’t draw blinds or curtains unless you’re watching a movie or something similar. The problem, however, tends to arise in rooms that aren’t on the sunny side as these areas won’t benefit even you pull the curtains wide. Well, there is a solution – investing into having a skylight installed. These contraptions that come in various types resemble lighting fixtures, but actually bring the natural light in.

Go LED

Of course, come nighttime, windows and skylights won’t be of any use and you can’t really go back to candlelight in this day and age. This means that lighting fixtures are pretty much unavoidable. Fortunately, there are ways to bring the energy consumption from the artificial lighting to a bare minimum. The solution here is installing LEDs – the light these provide is as close to natural as artificial fixtures get and, even though the bulbs are more expensive than the regular ones, they last significantly longer and will, in turn, pay off long term. Alternatively, a budget solution here would be installing CFLs, but these aren’t nearly as efficient as LEDs.

Solar Panels

One step further from LED lights, solar panels are likely the best solution, at least if you get enough sunlight in your location on a yearly basis. These waste no energy and, even though they aren’t exactly cheap to install, can significantly reduce your electricity bill. Of course, the less sunlight your hometown gets throughout the year, the less significance will these panels bring to the table. Regardless, using them in combination with LEDs or CFLs will still take a good chunk out of your carbon footprint, as well as saving you a good bit of money in the long term.

Inspections

Making sure that your residence is power safe is of the essence, both in terms of your physical safety and so that you can guarantee that your fixtures don’t spend more energy than necessary. Sydney Local Electricians place a huge emphasis on their employees’ education, which means that they are up to date on all the latest safety standards and electrical technologies, in general.

Unplug

You probably know that your appliances and electronics spend energy even when they are on stand-by, but did you know that they will continue consuming even when you shut them down? Well, this is why unplugging your computers, TVs, radios and sound systems after shutting them down is so important! Pro tip: don’t forget other smaller appliances such as coffee makers, toasters, phone chargers and even hair dryers!

These six tips will hopefully get you on the road towards conscientious energy consumption. Make sure that you turn everything off (and unplug it) while you are away from home, use as much sunlight as necessary, think about going LED, CFL and even installing solar panels and opt for regular inspections! Keep our planet healthy and your pockets turned the right side in.