Unless your situation is special, you are probably in the same category as most of us. We witness first hand both a high costs for electricity, price volatility and of course a fairly constant or increasing demand within our households. Why not take the time and discover some ways to conserve electricity around the house in order to take better control.
Perhaps you are not yet feeling the effects, but there are some who are suffering from the burden that energy related costs are having on the family budget. This is acting as a catalyst for many to both understand the importance of conserving electricity, and more essentially, taking actions that save money on electricity.
Another driver if you will for increased interest in how to conserve electricity or energy is the increased attention or awareness to the environmental effects. Collectively these points are encouraging consumers to be more aware and also take actions to save energy where possible.
This leads us to the question of how to conserve electricity in the home? The starting point in my opinion is to pull together a status of your current situation. Establishing information on your current spending on electricity and other forms of energy will help you later in determining options.
As a benchmark, it is quoted that the average US family spends about $ 1,900 per year on their utilities. You can categorize these average costs into heating and cooling (43%), water heating (12%), computers and electronics (9%), appliances and refrigeration (17%), lighting (12%) and other (8%).
Just how much electricity or energy can you save in your home? Your situation may be somewhat different from the above allocation, none the less; this gives you a general way to estimate where your spending may be going. From there, you also can determine where you may want to put you time and effort.
What are the challenges for conserving electricity in the house? In my opinion, it is mainly about the behaviors of the people in the household. There are certain actions that can be taken that are sustainable in terms of energy conservation and savings. However, there are other actions where human intervention or behaviors can affect the amount of energy savings.
What you should be targeting is an outcome whereby people are more aware of the energy used and more importantly how their behavior can influence this. At the end you want people to be more responsible in managing the energy or electricity used because they have understood the importance of conserving electricity for example.
So your next step is to understand both how and where energy is being consumed in your home by members, which gives you some ideas on when you can take actions.