Saving electricity

Why is saving electricity important?

Our lives largely rely upon electricity to work, study, relax, eat, heat, cool…you get the picture. So it’s unlikely something most of us can do without. There’s no getting around it, though - power usage without some careful consideration can creep up and start to really dent our pockets. But there’s a number of reasons why you should think about your power usage and ways to practically reduce this.

Free up budget for other things

If you’re running up unnecessarily high power bills each month, you’re taking your budget away from other parts of life that would undoubtedly benefit more. If you are like the majority of people in New Zealand and need to stick to a sensible budget, then poor power usage habits shouldn’t even be an option. Think about some of the recurring expenses we encounter:

• Groceries
• Mortgage
• Rent
• Insurance
• Transport
• Phone
• Internet

We haven’t even touched on repayments or savings. Households aren’t cheap to run these days; so why make it harder on ourselves?

By saving electricity usage through a combination of techniques we’ll cover in this guide, you’ll start to see extra money show up that takes the pressure off other more  important life expenses. 

The environment

It’s not just a matter of saving you money personally. A reduced demand for generation, even though we are a country that’s over 80% renewable energy-powered, makes a big impact. Remember every component of generation, transmission and retailer operation requires infrastructure, transport, logistics, people...and power! If everyone in New Zealand adopted good power usage habits, we’d see a reduction in grid demand throughout the year. 

The good news is that New Zealand (thanks to efforts from generators like our friends Meridian), is showing an excellent example on the world stage when it comes to prioritising renewable generation that’s less harmful to our natural world. 

New Zealand’s use of power

According to statistics released by MBIE, our usage of power is divided up into households (about ⅓ of the total demand), industrial (another ⅓), commercial (about ¼ ) and the remainder from transport, agriculture, fishing and forestry. 

With 33% of usage coming from residential users, there’s plenty of reasons for us to all adopt some positive electricity saving habits into our daily lives. 

We look to hydroelectric, geothermal and wind sources of power, which makes up the majority of our generation. While there’s still combustion sources that exist like coal, gas and oil, there is a government objective to achieve 90% renewable by 2025!

Other help online

Saving electricity is often just part of a broader household or workplace initiative to reduce costs. If you’re looking for general cost cutting advice, we’d suggest checking out these great websites:

• Sorted - NZ-based money and finance guides.
• NZ government website - Getting help with your budget.
• Kidspot - Cutting the family budget.