Over the winter you’ve probably seen your energy bills rise. This is partly due to the larger suppliers increasing the cost of gas and electricity. But for many homes, it’s simply because they’re not sufficiently insulated or with the wrong energy provider.
Here are five top ways you can cut the cost of energy bills in your home.
Insulation
Insulation is one of the main ways to reduce heat loss in your home and can come in the form of double glazing, loft lagging and wall cavity insulation. The Energy Saving trust say cavity insulation is the most efficient energy saving measure and you can save £110 a year by injecting foam into the gap. There are also grants available for cavity insulation, especially for those over 60.
You could save £40 a year on your energy bills with loft lagging, which also comes at a subsidised cost with grants available. Most homes will have loft insulation of some sort, but not the recommended amount of 220mm.
Switch energy suppliers
With all the cost increases to gas and electricity over the past 12 months, it’s hard to comprehend there’s a cheaper option. But there normally is and switching energy supplier can be the most effective way to reduce energy bills.
You could save as much as £250 a year by changing suppliers and as energy bills are now £1,293 annually, this is a huge saving. Comparison sites uSwitch and Energy Helpline can help you find the cheapest energy suppliers.
Replacing inefficient boilers
Boilers are one of the biggest energy loss culprits in your home and throughout the winter you could pay hundreds of pounds more than you should be. Inefficient boilers can be working at just 70%, which is wasting heat and increasing carbon dioxide emissions.
Over the winter you’re also likely to see a fault with older boilers as they’re worked hardest at this point in the year. Boiler breakdowns are very inconvenient as you could be left without heat and hot water for days until an engineer visits.
To avoid these expensive call-out charges and reduce your energy bills, invest in a new energy efficient boiler. Another option would be to insure your current boiler, so that if a problem does occur, you’re not paying out a huge sum of money in one go.
Watch your electricity usage
As an extra incentive to turn off lights and other electrical appliances, it might be worth investing in an energy monitor. Energy monitors are attached to your meter and tell you exactly how much energy you’re using at any given time.
You’d be shocked at how much money you throw away each year by leaving things on unnecessarily, so an energy monitor could be very beneficial. Surveys suggest that as much as 5% of energy bills can be reduced with a monitor.
Install renewable energy products
Renewable energy is the best way to reduce your bills, as you’ll be generating free heat and electricity for 25 years. Renewable energy products include solar panels, heat pumps and wind turbines.
These products can be installed domestically and use natural energy sources to generate power. Depending on the size of the system you have installed, you could reduce part, or all of your electricity bills with renewables.
With renewable energy you can also earn money through the government’s Feed-in tariff scheme, which pays for every unit of renewable energy generated. The current rate of 43.3p/kWh will be reduced on April 1 2012, so make a move quickly to lock on to this higher tariff. After the cut-off date, the rates will be reduced to 21p/kWh, so you’ll still make a comfortable return on your initial investment.