One easy way to save money is to use less electricity around the house. The good news is that making some simple changes in habits, it’s fairly easy to reduce this bill by quite a bit. Below are a number of ways that you can start reducing the amount you pay each month for your electricity bill.
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Energy Audit
Before you can begin reducing your electricity costs, you need to know where you're wasting energy. One of the best ways to do this is to have a home energy audit. The good news is that many utility companies offer home energy audits and energy inspections for free, or for a discounted price. They will also have valuable information pamphlets on ways to reduce home energy consumption. As part of the energy audit, they will tell you what areas of your house are costing you to lose money and recommend low-cost ways to solve the issues. Often times the solutions will pay for themselves over time.
If you don't want to pay for an audit specifically for your house, you can go through virtual energy audit for free at [Home Energy Saver](http://hes.lbl.gov/consumer/). This site will also let you compare your energy costs to others in your area.
Taking the time to find where your house is wasting energy and making appropriate fixes should save you $100 or more in savings each year after including the costs of making the improvements.
Energy Timer
An easy way to save on energy is to make sure that the products that use energy are off when you aren't using them. A great way to do this is to use an energy timer plug. These plugs usually give you set time periods they allow energy through (such as 30 minutes, 3 hours and 6 hours), then cuts off the power when the end of the time period is reached. An added benefit is that these also help with safety if you accidentally forget to turn something off like an iron or space heater.
Kill A Watt Meter
Another great way to help motivate you to reduce the amount of electricity you use in your house is to realize exactly how much you are using/wasting with the appliances you have. The Kill-a-Watt monitor allows you to do this. You attach it to appliances and it will help to assess the efficiency of that appliance. The display will tell you the consumption of the appliance by the kilowatt-hour and then calculate the expense by day, week, month, or year. By seeing first hand where you are wasting electricity (probably in places that you never even thought you were) you'll be more conscious to turn off those appliances not in use. This gadget should pay for itself in no time.
Turn Off Lights
Photo Credit: Reuben Whitehouse
This is one of those things that we all know we should do, but we don't always do it. getting in the habit of always turning off the lights when leaving a room is a simple way to reduce electricity costs that only takes a split second to do. it's a great habit to get into that will save a significant amount of money over your lifetime.