10 easy ways to reduce electricity and gas use in the home

telegraph.co.uk:

increasing its price cap on April Fools Day. And sadly they weren’t joking either.The regulator this morning confirmed that the price cap will jump to £3,549.

The 80pc increase equates to bills of almost £300 a month on average for a typical household.While the rise officially comes into force from October 1, British households will start to feel the pressure of already-strained budgets ahead of a tough winter.With every penny counting, half-truths abound about how to save energy around the home.So if you're not sure whether to flick off the light switch or not, let us illuminate you by answering 10 essential questions about saving energy in the home.“Yes,” says Andy Smale, Technical Director at Expert Energy.

While there is a rumour that turning them on and off all the time uses more energy than leaving them on, Smale says: “That was only an issue with old fluorescent strip lights which used up enough power on startup to run the light for a very short time, but even then the advice was the same: switch if off, assuming you were leaving the room for more than 30 secs.”Traditional light bulbs and modern LED lights don’t take any extra energy to turn on, so you should always turn your lights off when you’re not using them, or when you leave a room. “This will save you around £20 a year on your annual energy bills and 16 kg of CO2, the equivalent to driving 61 miles from London to Canterbury,” adds Brian Horne, senior insight & analytics consultant at Energy Saving Trust.

Replacing all the lights in your home with LED bulbs could help you save even more.Ahh, the age old cooking conundrum. Who wins in the race to boil? “Kettles are more efficient than a hob for heating water,” says Horne. “As the kettle is heated from the.