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I hope you found last month’s look at home and office energy saving useful. I’m going to conclude the two-parter this month by looking at some practical measures you can take to reduce your energy consumption, saving both the planet and your bank balance.
Let’s start with switching things off at certain times. You might remember that last month I suggested you pretty much ignore all the advice out there about unplugging phone chargers when not in use, and not leaving TVs in standby – you just don’t need to do this with modern kit. Remember the “does it get warm?” test.
But there might well be things in your home or office where it does make sense to power them down when they aren’t in use. As a real-world example, a friend of mine has a long lease on a three-storey office block, and one of the facilities provided is a lift. In trying to help my friend’s business to reduce its energy costs, I discovered that the lift consumed around 2.5kW even when not in use. Don’t ask me how – it seems excessive. Although the lift is fairly old – maybe 30 or 40 years old – it’s regularly serviced and the engineers suggested that old lifts just tend to suck energy like this.
My friend couldn’t permanently switch the lift off and ask his staff to use the stairs because a couple of them have mobility problems (and, truth be told, the stairs are a bit grotty).
