electricity

Hot water heating is the single largest use of domestic electricity, so cutting down on the amount of electricity used for that is the single biggest change you can make to your electricity consumption.

The money saved in reduced electricity bills can pay for the installation of the solar hot water heater within 5 to 7 years, but they last much much longer than that as there are no moving parts. You can calculate your likely payback time here http://www.mirak.co.nz/SavingCalc.php

The most expensive part of an alternative power plant i.e. wind, solar or water are the batteries. They have to be replaced every 10 years or so. And they cost an arm and a leg.

What if the government would force the power companies that they will have to allow everybody to feed energy back into the grid. Technically no problem. You would have a meter in your house which would measure what you produced and what you used. You would either have to pay the balance or would get some money back if you would have produced more than you used.

No need for expensive batteries!

Cheers

Weather its to wash your hands, rinse your dishes before loading the dishwasher, to wash your clothes or to fill the jug; USE THE COLD TAP!

There is no real benfit in using hot water- its just waste of eletricity! :)

It's easy - have a 5 minute shower instead of a 10 minute one, a 10 minute one in place of a 15; all it takes is cutting down your shower time.

Save time, money and electricity!

Irons must use shedloads of electricity to heat up....what a rather pointless waste of energy!.

I realise some things may need ironing e.g. shirts but I haven't ironed anything in about 10 years and no-one has noticed!. If you hang clothes on the line then in the wardrobe they rarely need ironing. If they are creased you can hang them in the bathroom while you have a shower and the steam soon gets rid of the creases....besides so many of our clothes these days contain lycra so they stretch and dont get creased and some people pay for the creased look.

Many items of household and office equipment that use electricity consume power even when switched off. For example a small 4-in-1 printer may be using 26W when turned off, but still on at the wall. That amounts to around 200 kWh (units of electricity) per year extra, at a typical cost of over $35.

Turn your appliances off at the wall switch when not in use.

Despite our numerous renewable energy sources coal is still used to generate electricity in New Zealand. We can put pressure on our electricity suppliers to move away from using fossil fuels and adopt renewable energy by using our consumer dollar.

Use the Clean Energy Guide to switch to a cleaner energy supplier.

http://www.cleanenergyguide.org.nz