A modern home consumes a lot of energy on a broad range of appliances, lighting and heating requirements. We have become an inter-connected gadget-based world, and this means more electronics and power use in that area of the home. Electricity is used by the majority of NZ to heat their homes (79.2% in 2013) and that number is growing every year quickly. None-the-less heating remains the dominant culprit taking up a whopping 30% of your monthly power bill. This is an approximation and average over the year and does go up and down during the summer and winter obviously.
This makes it very important you;
Get your insulation sorted properly. Which you incidentally can’t do with old downlights that get too hot and thus it’s illegal to insulate in the roof cavity above the lights. But this also includes insulating walls properly and getting good blinds installed, even double glazing on the windows if you can afford it.
Ensure your downlights are sealed so you don’t lose all that expensive heat almost immediately through the chimney gaps in the downlight fitting. More on this in our chimney effect article below.
Lighting with old incandescent bulbs comes in at around 8% of your bill for the year. You can reduce this part of your bill by up to 80%!! So as you can see, if you combine the savings of having sealed LED downlights throughout your home (so you’re not losing expensive heating) and having LED bulbs you can really start saving a significant amount of money each year, thousands in fact.
Becoming aware of these core energy saving techniques at home can help you a. make changes to insulation and lights and b. regulate your method of energy use accordingly. The bottom line is you save enough money from making these changes in the ‘long’ run (3-5 years or so depending on particular circumstances) to pay for the cost of making the changes. So it becomes obvious that change is a great choice to make and will save you considerable money down the track.