Tech tricks to save money on your power bill
BUSTING THE MYTHS AND ROUNDING UP THE WORTHWHILE GADGETS TO GET THE POWER BACK IN YOUR HANDS.
NO ONE LIKES bills, so any way to save a little money is welcome. But these days, there are loads of gadgets and methods that claim to reduce your electricity consumption and it’s hard to tell which of them is actually worthwhile. To help out, we tested some tech and crunched the numbers to see what will save money in the real world.
INDIVIDUAL CIRCUMSTANCES
Around Australia, we have widely different power costs, temperature ranges and solar availability, which means that no one has the exact same power experience. In many cases, excellent savings can be had from switching to a better electricity provider. But it can also be tricky, and time consuming, to compare all the different options and fine print. To help out, the Government has a great website with guides as well as an energy offer comparison tool — check it out at www.energymadeeasy.
gov.au. Another great choice for comparing different deals and providers is Canstar Blue — www.canstarblue.com.au/energy/ electricity. Don’t forget to consider off peak power, which can be a cheap way to run water heaters and pool pumps at night.
OPPORTUNITY COST
An often-overlooked factor, opportunity cost can have a big impact when considering potential savings. Spending $5,000 on solar panels may help save money on the power bill, but it’s important to consider how much could be saved by using that money elsewhere. For example, $5,000 pulled out of your mortgage offset account will increase your interest payments by around $250 a year, eating into any money savings. For those with credit card debt, a car loan or other debt, the amount of extra interest could be even higher.
POWER MONITORING
In our experience (and number crunching), power monitoring that leads to usage changes and/or reduction can help save the most money. It’s easy to be unaware of exactly how much power certain appliances use, but checking yourself is simple. A cheap single socket power meter can measure power use of one device at a time, and costs around $20 — a good option is the $25 Jaycar MS6115 Power Meter. More in-depth systems can monitor specific electrical circuits (such as to an air conditioner or water heater) and transmit the results to an easy-to-use web portal. A great place to start is the Efergy range ( www.efergy.com) which is easy to set up and can scale up over time. The Belkin WeMo Insight ( www.belkin.com) combined a remote switch and smartphone connected powering monitoring device in one. Generally, the biggest power user is heating (water and household heating), cooling and running a fridge.
IS SOLAR WORTH IT?
The effectiveness of solar varies depending on your location in Australia, and is better further north. In an ideal situation, your home would use all the solar power produced during the day — for example, running a pool pump or heating water. But, really, most is fed back into the grid, and is paid for at an average of around $0.06 per kW/h, or 15% or so of what you pay the electrical company. Still, solar panels can pay back their purchase cost as start saving money in 5–10 years, which is well under the typical 25-year warranty period. For those with high daytime power use, solar can produce savings even quicker. While they look nice, the solar roof offerings from companies such as Tesla are much less cost effective than just installing solar panels. A great resource for comparing solar panel prices and effectiveness in your area is www.solarchoice.net.au.
BATTERY STORAGE
The idea is to store solar power during the day (or cheap off-peak power at night), then use it during peak times, reducing the overall usage cost. The Tesla Powerwall 2 ( www.teslamotors.com) is the poster child for battery storage with the best price for the capacity, but there are also plenty of competitors. The problem is that, with current power costs, the battery prices are not yet low enough to produce real savings for most users. In fact, for the Powerwall 2, real-world savings won’t be seen until around 20 years of use — well outside the 10-year warranty. Worse, adding battery storage to a solar array reduces the savings in most cases. Still, it’s a rapidly improving technology — the Powerwall 2 gave twice the capacity of the original for the same price, so in the next few years, battery storage may be cheap enough to offer compelling savings.
Combined with new companies and smart systems, such as those from www.
repositpower.com, it can be possible to sell excess power back to the grid for a much higher price, giving significant savings.
STANDBY POWER WASTE
Studies have estimated that 10% of your power bill is from standby power usage on appliances. The main culprits are older devices, as modern electronics often now have very low idle power use modes. Use a power meter to check out different appliances, and multiply it by your power bill rate per kWh to estimate how much it could cost. For example, we discovered in testing that our washing machine uses a hefty 31 watts when off — around 16 cents a day, or $60 a year. AV equipment is a good one to test — put a power meter on a plugboard that runs all your devices. The solution is to unplug or turn off at the wall any overly power-hungry appliances, but you can also get special power boards make it a little easier. For example, the $20 Ecoswitch makes it simple to switch off a bunch of electronics at once. Another option is a master/slave switch, which can shut down all your AV equipment when you power off the TV, and turn it back on when the TV is turned on. Don’t worry so much about small devices such as phone chargers, which typically use a very small amount of standby power.
EFFICIENT APPLIANCES
Buying more energy efficient appliances can save money, but it’s important to factor in any increased cost into the real-world savings. The best appliances to target are those that use a large amount of power, and are often in use, such as fridges, dryers and TVs. It’s also well worth buying LED lights, but wait until your existing CCFL bulbs stop working first. Many LED lights (such as the Belkin WeMo range) include wireless connectivity, and can be remotely turned on or off to a schedule. For more information and an energy ratings calculator to see how much you could save, check out www.energyrating.gov.au.