With over 25 years of experience in global energy statistics, Enerdata specializes in global energy and fossil fuel markets. They recently released their Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2019. In this report, they shared a complete breakdown for the consumption of electric energy by each country. The top 5 countries that consumed the most units of electricity in 2018 included the United States, India, Japan, Russia, and China topping the list with the consumption of 6,167 TWh of electricity that year.
To clarify just how frightening that figure is let us give a quick rundown of what watt-hour is. You see a water heater or a clothes dryer uses 4,000 watts in an hour. That means it has an energy rating of 4kWh which means that it uses up 4kW per hour of use. Furthermore, 1MWh is equal to 1,000kWh, 1GWh is equal to 1,000MWh, and 1TWh is equal to 1,000GWh.
Hence the population is China in 2018 ended up using 6.167 million GWh which is huge! However, an average household’s consumption is substantially lower. The average American household uses 8-10kWh per day and 867kWh per month. Going any higher means you are going to pay a higher electric bill and nobody wants to do that. A skilled electrician like Plateau Electrical offers electricians in Northern Beaches and Lower North Shore with reliable electrical services.
In this post, we would like to offer you some of the reasons why people incur higher electricity bills. So let’s take a quick look at each one of them:
Faulty Electrical Appliances At Home
Probably the foremost reason why you are seeing your electric bill to spike up more than usual is due to using electrical appliances at home that are not functioning well. This is a concern since identifying whether an appliance is working correctly or not requires specialized assistance from professional service providers like electrician Northern Beaches or technicians to name a few. These faulty appliances are often known as vampire appliances as they can suck your electric supply dry without your notice. Their ability to draw out electricity even when turned off can be a huge problem for any homeowner.
We strongly recommend that when you observe your electricity bills increasing unusually, then it is better to call a professional electrician to give you a quick inspection of the electrical appliances that you have installed at your home.
Using High Power Rating Appliances without Check
While electrical appliances over the years have become more of a necessity rather than a luxury at many urban settlements across the planet, there are several of them that you need to be wary of. Here are some of the worst electrical appliances when it comes to hogging electric supply running through your homes:
- Air conditioning units – on average use 15,000 watts per hour.
- Clothes dryer – 4,000 watts every hour of use.
- Hairdryers – 1,200 watts per hour of use.
- Ironing your clothes – can use as much as 2,000 watts per hour.
- Refrigerator – 1,000 watts per hour of use
While some of these appliances require you to use them regularly, a lot of them can be easily switched off when not in use. Take the iron for example here. While a typical iron uses 1,100 watts when heated on higher control options it can cost you even more. Using iron for 15 minutes every day can cost you as much as 10 cents per kWh. Hence our point over here is to make sure that when you are not using an electrical appliance, make sure that it is turned off and adequately disconnected from the power source.
Using Outdated or Broken Down Appliances
There are times where we neglect to take the appropriate action on time and that can cost us even more in the long run. Our proactive approach can often guide us to make better decisions as compared to being reactive towards a hazard that was brought about due to our own doing. If you find electrical appliances that are old, redundant, and not working properly then instead of choosing to save money by not replacing them with new upgraded equipment, you should consider the long-run cost.
You see the longer you let an old or outdated appliance run in your home, the more it is going to cost you by the end of each month. We recommend replacing old devices from years before 1997 as they are most definitely outdated or might be in need of urgent repairs.
If you don’t have the budget to replace your device then make sure whatever anomaly it has must be fixed through a professional and their expertise. This will allow you to stall some time while you can arrange funds to buy a new appliance.
Power Supply Theft
While in more civilized parts of the world we would rarely find such a thing happening, nevertheless there is no doubt that stealing power is not a new concept. There have been several instances and recordings in the past where even neighbors in a locality would get their hands dirty and find some unruly tactics to steal power supply from a house. Here are some ways you can prevent this from happening:
- The two most common ways of electric power theft are meter fraud/tampering and power tapping.
- Get to know them in detail and stay informed.
- Power tapping can be detected by comparing how the power is distributed to every line. A professional service provider can help you resolve this matter.
- Similarly to detect energy meter tampering you need an IR LED and a photodiode. To learn how to use them you can visit power theft prevention techniques and learn more about them.
Installing Unusually High Spec Lighting Systems at Your Home
We cannot go about doing what we do at home at night without proper lighting. However, you will be surprised to know that the electric bill contributions from using lights are much higher at offices rather than homes. In fact, residential lighting is considered one of the most significant opportunities to save energy.
Nevertheless, there is always a chance where a homeowner might deploy high-spec lighting systems at their homes which are quite literarily overkilling their budget. Hence the best way to go about this is to install suitable lighting for your homes than are more practical and do not cost you that much by the end of each month.
Conclusion
Finally, we would also like to suggest that even though electricity is undeniably a requisite for a fully functional urban home, there are still better choices available. One of the best alternatives is solar energy and this can also help you cut down your electric bills considerably. So if you really want to take control of the situation you should consider saving for solar now. This will definitely help you cut down your house’s dependency on grid electricity in the future. We wish you all the best to take an affirmative action soon to resolve such issues once and for all.
