Energy Savings

About 14 percent of your electricity consumption goes toward lighting. By using lighting efficiently and making informed choices when purchasing new lighting fixtures, you can save significantly on your energy bill.

Tips for saving money on lighting:

• Replace your incandescent and halogen bulbs with LED bulbs. With LEDs, you can save significantly on lighting: an LED bulb is 90% more energy-efficient than an incandescent bulb and 85% more energy-efficient than a halogen bulb.
• Always turn off the lights when you leave the room, even if it's just for a short time.
• Make the most of natural light.
• Energy-saving bulbs are just as energy-efficient as LED bulbs, so you don't need to replace them.

Modern appliances use less energy than older models. Older appliances can therefore be major energy consumers. It’s best to replace household appliances manufactured before the year 2000. When purchasing new household appliances, check the energy label. If possible, choose appliances with an A+++ rating; only that rating is truly energy-efficient.

According to Milieu Centraal, a household uses about 450 kWh per year on appliances left on standby. You can prevent two-thirds of this by turning off the appliances completely instead of leaving them on standby. This will save you tens of euros on your energy bill. Sometimes it’s difficult to turn an appliance off completely or unplug it from the outlet. In that case, you can use an energy-saving power strip between the appliance and the outlet. This completely disables the standby mode.

Saving on heating starts with a properly adjusted boiler. The websitezetmop60.nlfeatures a short instructional video for every boiler model, so anyone can easily do it themselves. Of course, you can always ask your maintenance technician to adjust the boiler for greater energy efficiency.

Other tips include:

• When you're at home, set the thermostat one degree lower than you're used to. This will save you an average of about €80 per year.
• Set the thermostat to 15 degrees one hour before you leave the house or go to bed. Note: Do you have underfloor heating? If so, set your thermostat to 17 or 18 degrees; otherwise, it will take too long to heat up.
• Don't heat your entire house. Turn off the heat in rooms where you aren't, including the bedrooms.
• Do you have walls in your home that are poorly insulated or not insulated at all? If so, attach radiator foil to the back of your radiator to prevent heat from escaping through the walls.
• Install weatherstripping to seal the gaps around windows and doors, so you'll have fewer drafts in your home.
• A mailbox brush keeps out the cold, dust, and moisture, and keeps the heat from the house inside.

More than 20 percent of your gas consumption goes toward hot water for the bathroom and kitchen. You can easily save energy in the kitchen with the following tips:

• Use a small pot on a low burner, and keep the lid on while cooking.
• Choose an electric kettle instead of a boiling-water faucet
• Do not boil more water in the kettle than you need.
• Do not let the hot water run any longer or at a higher flow rate than necessary.
• Heat it up in the microwave. It's faster and more energy-efficient than using the stovetop or the oven.
• Check to see if the kitchen faucet has a water-saving nozzle.
• Defrost your freezer regularly. A 2-mm layer of ice uses 10% more energy.

More than 20 percent of your gas consumption goes toward hot water for the bathroom and kitchen. You can easily save energy in the bathroom with the following tips:

• Don't shower for more than 5 minutes.
• Use a water-saving showerhead. It will help you use less water while showering, but you won't even notice the difference. 
• Do not let the hot water run any longer or at a higher flow rate than necessary.
• For more tips on saving water in the bathroom, visit the Milieu Centraal website. 

A well-insulated home can save you a lot of energy and money. You can find more information on this on the page about insulation.