An energy audit is a detailed calculated evaluation of your electricity use. It helps you to understand where you use electricity in your home and where savings could be made. Check your results and identify which areas of the home use the most electricity. Then take simple, effective and cost-saving actions to help reduce your electricity consumption in the future. See Practical steps to being energy efficient at home.
Typical mid-income electrified homes use around 774 kWh/month (around R250/month) electricity. The majority of this – up to 60% – is used in heating water through their geyser. Lighting is often the second largest consumer of electricity. Solar water heaters and switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs provide opportunities to make a substantial saving in household energy.
What’s a kilowatt?
When you use electricity to cook a pot of rice for 1 hour, you use 1000 watt-hours of electricity! One thousand watt-hours equal 1 kilowatt-hour, or 1 kWh. The amount of electricity you use is measured in, and priced by, kilowatt-hours (kWh). Your utility bill will show what you are charged for the kilowatt-hours you use.
Calculate the operating cost of any electrical appliance by checking its wattage and using these formulas:
- Wattage x hours used / 1,000 = kWh
- kWh x cost per kWh = operating cost
Download an exercise to perform an energy audit for electricity use in your home [PDF 1.3MB]
Consider switching to green electricity. Green electricity is generated from renewable sources such as wind, solar and wave power.
Click here to download the 'ENERGY' section, or full version, of the Smart Living Handbook - a practical sustainability guide for people and households in Cape Town to make their homes safer and to save money and the environment.
Useful energy audit web resources:
Sustainable Energy Africa (SEA)
http://www.sustainable.org.za/resources/other-resources.html
Acknowledgment: These “Energy Efficiency at Home” web pages are made possible by funding from the Danida Urban Environmental Management Programme (UEMP).
NOTE: Information on this page was acquired from a variety of sources (print and Internet) and the City of Cape Town cannot be held liable for any errors or misinterpretations whatsoever. The City of Cape Town is also not responsible for the content of external websites, nor does it constitute an endorsement of these websites. They are solely intended to provide additional information sources that may be helpful.