Knowing how much energy your family consumes each month is important for a number of reasons. If you are concerned about the environmental impact of your home, knowing how much energy you consume is the first step towards taking steps to reduce your environmental footprint.
In addition, knowing how much energy you consume can help you to budget more effectively, and you can also take steps to make savings on your energy bill.
But how should you estimate the amount of energy your family consumes each month? Here is a guide to help you.
Check Your Energy Bills
You can easily work out how much energy you use in terms of kWh a year. This will usually be a figure in the thousands, and it could range anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000 for a typical home. You may already know how much you spend on your bills, but you may be unaware of how much energy you actually use, so this is worth finding out. Once you do this, you can start looking at ways to save energy.
Start by looking at your energy bills, which should provide details of the energy you use. Once you have this figure, you can divide it by 12 to work out your monthly average. The amount will be different every month, but having an average figure will make it easier for you to budget, and you can also compare it to the average.
Work Out How Much Energy You Use for Heating
You may want to work out how much you use for heating your home. If you only use gas for heating, this should be easy. But what if you use electricity for your heating and everything else in the home?
Because heating is seasonal, look at how much electricity is used during the months when you are not heating your home. This is likely to stay fairly constant throughout the year, so you can assume that you are using the same amount during the summer and the winter. You can then use this to estimate how much of your electricity goes towards heating during the winter months.
And what if you use gas for both heating and cooking? Again, look at how much gas you use during the months you are not heating your home, and this figure will stay fairly constant. A quick calculation will allow you to work out how much energy you use on your heating each year.
Work Out the Average Energy Per Meter
It can also be useful to work out how much energy you use per meter in your home. This is easy to to once you know how much energy you use because you can simply divide the total kWh figure by the number of square meters in your home.
You will get a figure of kWh per m2a, which means meter squared per year. You can then compare this to other homes and buildings to find out how energy efficient your home is. You can work this out for the total energy as well as for the energy you use for heating.
In addition to working out the amount of energy you use in your home, you may want to find out other information related to electricity and gas usage. Here are some guides to gas and electricity that can help you with a range of areas including suppliers, tariffs, and more, to give you greater control over the amount of energy you use, as well as how much you pay for your bills.
Take Control Over Your Energy
Once you know how much energy your family uses each year, you may decide to take steps to reduce it. This will not only help the environment, but it will also make a difference to your energy bills. So find out how much energy you use, and then come up with some ways that you can reduce the figure further to take advantage of the benefits.