Don’t despair on energy bills: Latest podcast shares advice for landlords and homeowners
A quarter of households are in energy arrears and nine out of ten households are worried about increasing energy bills.
That is the message from the latest Utilita Energy podcast which features Ella Jones, sustainability manager at Utilita Energy, and Tim Constable Maxwell, co-creator of Procode’s Ecofit.
On the podcast, Ella says “20% of the heat that we pay for gets lost through either the walls, the roof, or just not good energy behaviours and not being energy efficient.”
But householders and landlords shouldn’t despair. The answer is getting smart with electricity consumption and understanding just what help is out there to make your house as energy efficient as it can be.
For homeowners trying to cut their energy bills, the benefits of smart meters is they can now tell you how much energy you’re consuming every half an hour.
“They can help you set your budget so you can be in control of the energy that you consume, and you can see when you turn your electric radiator on or when you’re using the hair dryer, you can see those spikes in energy consumption,” she says.
Access to smart meter data can help landlords identify issues their tenants are facing.
Tim says, “If tenants are complaining about the bills, you can have a look at their smart meter profile and say, actually for a house of that size it’s maybe running the hot water immersion. The energy company can get involved and really help make those very easy retrofit measures.”
Maxwell says that landlords and homeowners often don’t know if their properties are eligible for various energy-efficiency schemes and measures.
He says the inspiration for Ecofit was looking at government schemes and the funding that’s available, both from the public and the private sector as well.
“What we’re trying to do is surface some of this data and notify people there is a lot of money here,” he says.
The podcast also talks about other methods to help with cutting bills, such as making a family game out of reducing consumption or simple fixes that can cut bills including installing LED lights or heat reflectors, as well as practical measures to avoid problems such as damp and mould.