Warmth on a Budget

With electricity costs always on the rise it makes sense to try and cut back whenever and wherever you can.   Some ways that you can save power are:

-          Close the curtains at night to prevent heat loss through windows.

-          Only heat the rooms you are using.

-          Use the right sized heater for your room.

-          Turn off lights when you leave a room.

-          Make sure your clothes dryer has adequate ventilation.

-          Make use of natural light where possible.

-          Use a dehumidifier to remove cold, damp air.

-          Consider installing a heat pump which is significantly more efficient than traditional electric heaters.

 Beat Those Autumn Blues

Now that the nights are starting to cool down once again it is time to think about heating for your home.  No matter what room in the house, there’s an efficient way to heat it with electricity.

Fan heaters are a cost effective way of heating rooms quickly and efficiently. Compact and portable, or built into walls, floors or fireplaces, fan heaters warm rooms rapidly. Special models are also available for wet areas such as bathrooms.

Storage heaters store energy overnight and release a constant background heat during the day. They are great if you are home during the day, and because they use off peak rates to store electricity overnight, they are very economical.

Possibly the best form of heating are heat pumps.  Read the article below to find out more!

What’s Hot!

Heat pumps are the most efficient way to heat your home or business.  Working like a refrigerator, a heat pump extracts heat from the air outside and delivers it into the home or office.  The use of a heat pump can provide efficiency gains of three or more.  That means for every kilowatt of energy supplied to the heat pump it will provide 3 kilowatts or more of heat. 

By running the heat pump in reverse, it extracts heat from a room and dumps it outside (again just like your refrigerator).  By installing a heat pump you’ll be warm in the winter and cool in the summer - two functions for the price of one.

Heat pumps can be installed in individual rooms or ducted to several rooms depending on their size and your requirements.  If you are thinking of building, or of installing a new heating system in your home or office, investigate an air conditioner or heat pump.  They may not be as expensive as you think, and are certainly most economical to run.

 How Much Does It Cost?

Because none of our appliances have individual meters attached to them telling us how much power they are using it is difficult to know just how much they are costing us.  Our power bills do not help either, since we only receive them once a month and they provide us with a total consumption rather than for individual appliances.  To help you out, we’ve listed some of the more common home energy users and how much it costs to run them. 

Just remember that appliances on standby still use power so make sure you turn them off at the wall.

 Don’t Get In Hot Water Over Your Power Bill!

Heating hot water accounts for about 40% of the average domestic customer’s electricity usage.   Your choice of electricity tariff can have a major influence on how much you pay for your hot water.

The majority of our domestic customers have just one electricity meter, which means that they pay the same amount per unit for all the electricity they use.    One option to help reduce your bill is to switch to a tariff that allows your hot water to be metered and charged for separately.   For most customers this will not affect their level of service as Waipa Networks remotely controls most electric hot water to keep costs down.   The Consumer Powerswitch website (www.consumer.org.nz/powerswitch/) will help you determine which tariff is best for you, and will let you compare the different charges between electricity retailers.  If you would like to change your tariff please call your electricity retailer.