Households could save as much as £797 a year on energy bills with simple checks around the home. With the price cap set to increase to £3,549 per year for dual fuel in an average household from the autumn, most people are becoming ever more conscious of what's using up gas and electricity.
The typically big energy-wasting culprits in British homes include electric heating left on while you're out at work. This could add a whopping £1,355 to an annual bill after October - a jump from £616 per year.
Electric underfloor heating is the second biggest power drain, reports Birmingham Live, and the cost of leaving this on for an extra hour a day could leap from £309 to £567 per year. Most of these things are running in the background without you realising or remembering they're making your meter display tick over by the minute.
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These 'always-on' appliances are what's known as the Phantom Load and they account for a third of an average energy bill. A Phantom Load of 275w currently costs £683 but this will rise to £1,253 in October.
Some simple changes now could easily reduce this to 100w and yield a saving of £434. Come October, this saving would be worth £797. What's more, if the price cap shoots up again and prices increase by another 20 per cent in January 2023, these changes would equate to a whopping £957 saving.
How to reduce the Phantom Load
Some things like fridges and freezers must stay on all the time. The best advice for these appliances is to focus on efficiency and running costs when it's time to replace them. An older or less efficient model could easily cost twice or three times as much to run as the most efficient models.
You may already be aware that appliances continue to drain energy, even when left on standby. However, while it's sensible to turn things off rather than leave them on standby, the bigger energy stealers are the things that are left on all the time, either intentionally or accidentally. You might leave them on because you don’t realise how much they're costing to run, or accidentally because you’ve just forgotten about them.
Things that fall into these categories include computers, media servers and set-top boxes, plus easy-to-forget things like underfloor heating, heated towel rails and extra drinks fridges.
Common phantom load culprits
Dr. Steve Buckley, Head of Data Science at Loop, says: "Many people I speak to are really worried about their energy bills right now, and sadly the situation is not set to improve for some time yet. The reality is that the only way we can lower our energy bills right now is to reduce the amount of energy we use and the key to that is measuring our use. If you measure it, you can control it. If you measure it, you can see the impact of changes you make."
He pointed out that every unit of wasted energy around your home will cost you over 80 per cent more when the price cap increase takes effect this October.
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