Making your home energy efficient can sound like a daunting and expensive task. The market is currently awash with various products that claim to save you money on your energy bills, but often you need to pay a premium for the savings. But, luckily it is possible to reap the savings promised by these gadgets without spending a fortune for the privilege.
So, here’s the challenge: we get a budget of £100 to spend on energy saving technology that can be used around the home. The aim is to rack up to largest savings possible whilst keeping under budget.
Radiator Booster Mk3 £19.97
First up we have the Radiator Booster Mk3 that claims to increase the efficiency of your radiator by circulating heat around your room. A traditional radiator loses as much as 70% of the heat it produces, into the wall behind it. The Radiator Booster Mk3 has a built in fan that circulates this heat into the room which means you are able to heat your room more efficiently and turn your thermostat down by up to three degrees.
This may not seem like a big deal, but over the space of a year the Radiator Booster Mk3 could potentially save you up to £140 off your household energy bills. With a miniscule price of just £19.97 this means you stand to save £120.03.
Total saving: £120.03
OWL micro+ monitors £25.95
OWL claim that the micro+ can save you up to 25% off your energy bills every year, and Google has recently applauded to use of energy monitoring devices for creating a close link between our gadgets and the energy that they use.
According to ukpower.co.uk the average energy bill for a medium sized house is £992 per year, so this means your total estimated saving would be £248 a year. When these savings are compared to a retail price of just £25.95, you can stand to save a total of £222.05
Total saving: £222.05
Belkin conserve smart power strip £11.99
One easy way to take control of your energy bills is to have greater control over what devices are consuming the energy that you pay for. Often you will have gadgets and appliances at home that continue to draw large amounts of energy even when switched off or left in standby mode. The Belkin conserve power strip lets you control the power consumption of all your peripheral devices like a computers monitor, speaker, hub etc by simply turning a master device on or off. This means that a computer’s monitor cannot run without the computer first being powered up.
The Belkin Conserve offers huge potential for savings, but it is dependent on how the device is used. For example, Belkin claim that a computer, with heavy use and a printer, monitor, speakers, phone charger, home hub and power block charger connected, could stand to save £584.07 over the space of a year.*
*Please note: This is based on a computer being used for 113 hours per week @ 0.150 kWh
The cheapest retail price for the Belkin conserve was £11.99 which brings the devices total savings to whopping £572.08.
Total saving: £572.08
Ecobutton £3.99
You don’t have to use your computer frequently to save on the energy that it uses. The Ecobutton is a nifty little gadget that controls the power to your computer and its peripheral devices, and lets you turn them all of simultaneously with the touch of a button.
This simple little gadget makes running an energy hungry home desktop much more efficient and is even light enough to carry around on a business trip.
The Ecobutton boasts savings of up to £65 per year, depending on your PC and the devices you have attached to it, which, with a retail price of £3.99, brings the total savings to £61.01 -not at all bad for less than a fiver.
Total saving: £61.01
Energy Saving CFL Light bulbs £5.99
Next we turn our attention to your lighting. Energy saving light bulbs have been available for a while now, but there are a number of different types and makes, so finding the most effective one for you can be difficult.
LED light bulbs offer great savings and the bulbs themselves last over 100x longer than your traditional halogen bulb. Unfortunately, the manufacturing cost of LED bulbs is still fairly high, so they are not as cost effective as you may first think.
The wisest choice in energy saving light bulbs is a CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) bulb. It manages to balance both great savings with a cheap cost making it the best bulb for savings.
A typical CFL bulb costs around £5.99 and is estimated to help you save around £7 a year per bulb. This means that you stand to save £1.01 per bulb, and the average household has around 35 light bulbs in use*, so the savings build up fast.
*according to Panasonic
Total savings: £1.01 (per bulb)
Eco Kettle £30.00
All this saving can be thirsty work, but before you sit down and put your feet up for a cuppa, consider how much energy your current kettle uses to boil water. Kettles are notorious for being energy vampires.
A kettle costs on average around 2.5p to boil and considering the average kettle is boiled on average 4 times a day means you boil your kettle 1,460 times a year, which works out to a cost of £36.50 a year on brews.
Wahl’s Eco Kettle claims to help you cut this cost by up to 60% per boil, which means your yearly savings could be £21.90. The cheapest retail price we found was £30.00 which means this will be a two year investment before you start to see a return in your savings, but well worth it.
Total savings: £21.90
Our final total for the gadgets combined comes to £97.89, just under our £100 budget. However when you consider that the savings per year are just under £1000, it seems like its £100 well spent.
It’s important to note that these figures are rough estimations that can vary depending on your energy habits.
TOTAL AMOUNT SPENT: £97.89
TOTAL AMOUNT SAVED: £998.08 per year