High energy usage causes your home or commercial building to have an increased utility bill. With rising brookshire electricity rates, it’s more important than ever to focus on reducing energy consumption.
Also, it increases your carbon footprint and creates a barrier to environmental sustainability. Therefore, there’s a great need to lower energy usage on your property.
You must first identify the consumption rate in your home or commercial building to achieve this goal successfully.
A local energy auditor can help you evaluate and measure energy use. After the audit, you need to find ways to reduce energy consumption on your property.
Below are five simple ways to make your building more energy efficient:
Insulate And Seal Your Building Properly
High energy consumption is inevitable if your building isn’t well-insulated. On the other hand, insulating your property can reduce your cooling and heating needs, lowering energy usage.
Ensure your property has insulated walls, floors, and ceilings. You may consider installing structurally insulated panels from Raycore or other building material suppliers.
In addition, you should have your building well-sealed. Air leakages prevent your heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) unit from running efficiently.
Since hot or cold air will get into or out of your property through leaks in the garage, attic, or elsewhere, your HVAC unit will work harder to ensure your building is comfortably cool or warm.
As a result, the system uses more energy. Check if there are air leakages in your property. If there are, ensure proper sealing.
The goal is to make your building airtight. This will help maintain stable temperatures inside the property.
As a result, your HVAC unit won’t use up much energy cooling or warming your space. Furthermore, ensure proper ventilation too. This will keep the air in your building healthy and fresh.
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Upgrade To Energy-Efficient Equipment
Your refrigerator, television, heater, washing machine, printers, and other appliances make life more comfortable and work easier.
However, they use a significant amount of energy in your residential or commercial building and could be the reason for your high utility bill.
Upgrading to energy-saving equipment can help lower your energy consumption. When shopping for new appliances, look for the energy rating label.
In some countries, a machine’s energy efficiency is indicated by a star rating. The more stars, the more energy-efficient an appliance is compared to other units of the same size.
Other regions rate appliances’ energy efficiency using letters from A to G, with A indicating the most efficient and G the least efficient. You may also find machines with energy-saving features. These are good to consider too.
In some areas, you can find organizations with sites that promote energy-efficient products from different companies. They have various appliances you can choose from. Use such websites to find the best equipment for your property.
Switch To Energy-Saving Lighting Fixtures
The lighting fixtures in your building may consume more energy than you think. So, consider shifting to energy-efficient bulbs.
You can replace the incandescent lighting fixtures with fluorescent ones. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use less electricity and are more long-lasting.
Alternatively, go for light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs. LED lighting fixtures are considered more energy-efficient and are thought to last longer than CFLs.
You can further reduce energy consumption on your property by keeping lights off in rooms that aren’t in use.
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Take Advantage Of Natural Lighting
You can make the most of natural illumination to reduce energy consumption on your property.
Install skylights, picture windows, and sheer curtains to let natural light into your building. Mirrors and shiny accessories can help by reflecting more light into your space.
The colors in your building also matter. Usually, darker ones absorb light, making a room appear poorly lit. On the contrary, lighter shades reflect light into your building, dispelling darkness.
You’ll enjoy several benefits from using natural illumination. This type of lighting can boost the body’s production of vitamin D. The body needs this essential nutrient to absorb calcium, ensuring strong bone development.
Natural lighting is also believed to enhance mood and focus, thereby increasing productivity. Overall, it could improve your psychological and emotional well-being by alleviating anxiety, agitation, stress, and depression.
Leverage Smart Technology
You can use smart technology to optimize your energy usage. In most cases, power consumption in buildings increases because people forget to turn off lights and other appliances when done using them. This could be the cause of your high utility bill. In this case, smart technology can help.
You can also install light sensors. These will keep electricity use down by ensuring lights are only turned on when in use.
You can also buy thermostats for your property. These can be connected to your HVAC system to automatically adjust indoor cooling and heating.
Smart thermostats use the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to access wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) connections. With such, you can control the temperature in your building remotely.
You can set a consistent schedule and turn your HVAC on or off while away from your property.
Furthermore, smart thermostats can access weather predictions in your area in real time. With this, they can establish and ensure the optimal temperature in your building.
Generally, smart technology is ideal if you’re looking to reduce energy consumption on your property and save money. So, research before buying any to find the best ones.
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Final Thoughts
Increasing energy efficiency in your building lowers your utility bill, decreases your carbon footprint, and promotes environmental sustainability. Given these benefits, you’d want to improve your home or commercial property’s energy efficiency.
The initial step is to let a professional audit your energy usage. After that, you can make the necessary changes.
To save more energy, you can insulate and seal your building well, switch to energy-efficient lighting fixtures, and take advantage of natural illumination. Furthermore, use smart technology and upgrade to energy-saving equipment.
After making these changes, evaluate their effectiveness in reducing your energy usage.
Further adjustments can be made as you identify areas that consume more energy and discover other suitable ways to lower usage. More important than cutting costs, you also help preserve and protect the environment.