Electrify me (a little less) - Part 1

Before we electrify everything, let's use a little less (#sustainabilitygoals)

If electricity production is the single biggest contributing sector to Australian greenhouse emissions (including from residential emissions) then the best way to reduce emissions would be to use less electricity, right?

That's a yes, and - as we progress, we'll get to the topic of electrification (making more things run on electricity from sustainable sources). I'm all for electrification, a topic for our 'greater good' vibe and hopefully another ride in a sweet, sweet Tesla - for research purposes of course.

Meanwhile, here in the home, you can bet I'll be cranking all sorts of appliances this summer and making the most of my now 'free' power from my solar panels. But first, its a bit like having a savings goal for something big and valuable - a fridge, a holiday, or a car. First you look to where you can save on any frivolous spending, before making deeper cuts to the budget or finding new incomes streams. Too many streaming services anyone?!

So where is the best place to save electricity in the home?

#Kitchengoals , oh to have a space big enough for a side-by-side fridge

According to average sources* we tend to use the most electricity heating and cooling our home. Just which aspect of heating and cooling depends a lot on the climate in the city you live in. For MidGreenFamily here in sunny Perth we care about COOLING costs, because our summers have been HOT lately. As in, the summer of 2021/22 was the hottest summer on record (with 120 years of records). Our mean max. summer temp was 33.3 deg C (92 deg for the Americans), with 13 days over or at 40 degrees. Insane. So when it's that hot, if you have aircon its definitely on, and if you don't have aircon you may have gone and bought one of those portable aircons or five electric fans and draped yourself in wet towels at night.

Now we aren't all lucky enough (!) to be basking in the sweltering dry goodness of Perth and our pristine white beaches, so if you live in Tasmania you will be belting the heating (in fact, Hobartians consume the most electricity on average by household of any city in Australia).

I want to save on cooling

Cool, well you came to the right place.

In this order, here's is what you are going to do -

1. Reverse cycle air-con is the most energy efficient source of cooling (sigh - my old evaporative ain't with the times but that's a cost for another day). Set that reverse cycle to 25-27 deg in the heart of summer. Just know that each degree of extra cooling or heating is going to increase your energy consumption by about 5-10%.

2. Also, you're going to start that aircon earlier in the day, before it gets hot. Yep, you heard me, start it early to keep the house at relatively the same temp all day and consuming less electricity overall. Don't wait for the house to feel like an oven before you crank up the cooling. If you have a super modern system you can probably autoset this from your phone. If you're me, you can walk upstairs and hit the button on the wall.

3. Don't have aircon? I feel you. The same principle applies though, we want to prevent the house from heating up as our primary goal. This is where some good block-out curtains come into play in the middle of summer. I have heavyset roman blinds in the bedroom, and last year upgraded my living areas to have sunblock or sunscreen blinds. If you are a bit handy like me, you can measure up and order straight from the internet, drill them into the window frames and voila! (To be fair, I attempted this then also called in the cavalry for the tougher installs - thanks Pop!). If you're not handy, Spotlight actually do a home measure and install, I had these at my old house and to be honest, comparing the Spotlight, order online or fancier curtain places like Kresta its hard to tell the difference except the online version install is a little fiddly - see if you can spot the difference!

4. Finally - as soon as you feel that breeze, release the dungeon vibes, open up those curtains and windows and cool the place down for the evening, prepared to do it all again the next day. Simples.

Next time lets tackle heating.

*I don't know about you, but I don't have a wonderfully detailed inventory of where the munchkins and I consume power. I'm going to have a starting go at this in the new year to build our baseline carbon footprint, for now we are going to have to rely on averages.