3 great reasons to save electricity in 2024
If you’re exploring potential ways to save money, reduce bills and lower your impact on the environment this year, here’s some electricity-related inspiration to get you started.
These are the three main reasons saving power could be worth the effort – and some easy ways to save energy around your home.
Reason #1 to save electricity: You might save money
Overall, using less electricity means you will pay for less electricity.
You might already know that the cost of your electricity (on your Synergy bill) is made up of two main parts:
- Charges for how much electricity you use (which is measured in units of electricity)
- A fixed daily cost for your connection to the electricity network.
While your electricity bill comes from Synergy, the fixed cost and rate Synergy can charge residential customers for the supply of electricity are set by the State Government. You can’t change the fixed cost or the rates – but you CAN take steps to manage how much electricity you use, especially if you want to try to reduce bills.
Saving power doesn’t need to be hard – there are some really easy changes you can make around your home. For example, you could try cooling your home with a fan instead of switching the air conditioning on. You could also switch off your mobile and console chargers when they’re not in use since these still draw power from the wall if switched on.
Explore more ways to save energy at home.
Reason #2 to save electricity: It could benefit the environment
Our energy system in WA is changing, but at the moment, electricity in WA is generated from both renewable and non-renewable sources. Some non-renewable sources such as coal can produce a lot of carbon emissions compared with other energy sources.
Although there are a number of factors that impact the actual generation mix, including the time of day and operation of the electricity market, generally speaking if you use less electricity, you could help to reduce the overall demand on the electricity system, which could in turn lead to less reliance on generation from non-renewable sources.
At Synergy, we are on a mission to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% (compared to 2021 levels) by 2030. This involves retiring the rest of our Synergy coal-fired power stations and investing more than $3 billion into renewable energy solutions, including wind farms and battery storage systems.
Learn more about WA’s renewable energy transformation.
Reason #3 to save electricity: WA’s electricity system could benefit
Our electricity system needs to work hard to balance supply and demand:
- The supply is the electricity generated from renewable and non-renewable sources.
- The demand is how much electricity all the homes, businesses and other customers need from the grid.
As an example of how this balance needs to work, electricity demand is usually highest between 5pm and 9pm on the hottest days of the year. This time, also called peak demand, is when many people arrive home from work or school and switch on their aircon, appliances and devices. Across the electricity network, the demand for electricity spikes. Since this is the same time of day that the supply of electricity from solar panels drops (as the sun goes down), it’s important to keep the grid in balance.
When everyone is using energy at the same time, saving power can help to make sure there’s enough reliable power for everyone.
Learn more about peak demand across the South West Interconnected System.
My Account could help you find ways to save electricity
When you’re exploring ways to save electricity, it can help to understand how much electricity you’re using.
If you’re not already using My Account to manage your Synergy account, now could be the perfect time to start. It’s easy to register for My Account – and then you can use it to see how much electricity you’re using, how you can save electricity, pay your bills and much more. If you have a smart meter, you can even see exactly how much electricity you used the day before. This is a great way to test out the impact of any changes you make at home.
Easy ways to save energy around your home
You can make some small changes to your energy habits to help you save power at home. You could try to:
- Set your air conditioning to 24°C in summer, and heating to 18°C degrees in winter.
- Switch off your appliances at the power point when they’re not in use.
- Sell your second fridge, if you have one.
- Look for energy efficient appliances – the more energy stars they have, the more energy efficient they’ll be because they use less electricity to run, compared with other models.
If you’d like to enjoy the potential benefits of saving electricity and would like to start making some small changes around your home, try our energy saving tips. You could also try our Home Energy Management action plan to get everyone in your household on board with ways to save energy.
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