How Much Energy Your Appliances Use and What to Do About It
Increased energy consumption has become an issue in many households. In fact, the average American home uses 867 kWh per month. To break it down a bit further, 1 kWh (Kilowatt-Hour) is the amount of energy it takes to keep a 1 kilowatt appliance running for 1 hour.
Although appliances have become part of most people’s daily lives, too much dependence can result in extremely high utility bills. Fortunately, there are ways you can conserve energy by using your appliances less. Keep reading to learn how much energy your appliances use and what to do about it.
Purchase Energy Efficient Appliances
Did you know that non energy efficient appliances can cause your utility bill to be hundreds of dollars higher than energy efficient alternatives? This is especially important for appliances that, by default, need a lot of energy to function.
Clothes dryers, for example, probably use more energy than any other appliance in your home. An energy efficient dryer will use 20% less electricity than a standard model saving hundreds of dollars in utility costs over your dryer’s lifetime. If you pair this with an energy efficient washing machine, you’ll stand to save around $50 per year on your utility bill.
If you want to take things a step further, you can make sure you’re using your appliances as efficiently as possible. For example, instead of washing a few items of clothing at a time, do large loads.
Perform Routine Maintenance Checks on Appliances
If you’re appliances are not functioning properly, it could be resulting in higher energy consumption. Things like old air filters and dirty ducts can cause your HVAC system to have to work harder to keep your home heated and/or cool.
Remember to change your air filters ever 3-6 months and clean your air ducts every 3 – 5 years. By performing regular maintenance, you can not only help keep your utility bill down, but you can also help increase your appliances’ lifespan.
Get a Professional Home Energy Audit
The first step to knowing how to adjust your energy usage is knowing exactly how much energy you’re using. A professional home energy audit will be able to tell you that. This assessment will give you a detailed breakdown of your home’s energy use. A professional auditor will go through each room and do an inspection.
Some audits even include a blower door test to determine your home’s air tightness. If the windows and doors in your home are not sealed tightly, that could also be contributing to excess energy usage.
Getting rid of your appliances probably isn’t a realistic solution for most people. However, adjusting how you use your using them is something almost everyone can do. Learning how to operate your appliances as efficiently as possible is an important step in understanding and decreasing your energy consumption. Being mindful of your appliances is not only good for your bank account, it’s good for the environment as well.
Great article! Full of information in a concise manner. Energy audits can be really helpful as you cannot manually check every device each of which can significantly contribute to higher power consumption and electric bill. However, energy audits are usually done on a yearly basis, if you wish to track the power consumption of devices regularly, you can install a power monitoring device like Ohm Assistant (https://ohmassistant.com/). Such devices help you to see the power consumption of devices in real-time and to track unusual spikes of electricity in devices. These faulty devices can then be sent for maintenance or replaced altogether which leads to saving a considerable amount of money in the long run.