Exploding energy costs: Saving electricity despite working from home

The PC in the socket, the coffee machine in continuous operation and preparing lunch in your own kitchen – given the increased number of employees working from home, their power consumption has also increased. But there are a few tips and tricks that can be used to implement cost-cutting measures.

reduce power consumption

If you are working from home and are taking a break, you should note that it is also worth shutting down the device or putting it into energy-saving mode during a short coffee break or lunch break. So you should only have the devices in operation for as long as they are used.

A normal laptop consumes about one kilowatt hour for a 40-hour week, which corresponds to around 30 cents, as the consumer center in Saxony calculates. With a desktop PC with a separate screen, on the other hand, consumption is around three times as high. It is also worth using switchable power strips that can be switched off completely after the work is done.

As far as power consumption is concerned, the WLAN router usually gets little attention. However, switching off your own router from time to time can be worthwhile, “because a router with a continuous output of twelve watts, for example, consumes around 105 kilowatt hours a year,” explains Martin Brandis from the consumer center’s energy team, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Chargers for smartphones, for example, can also consume a lot of electricity if they are plugged in for a long time. “Your power consumption can be seen, among other things, from the fact that they get warm. Here it is advisable to consistently pull the plug or use a multiple socket with an on/off switch,” says Tom Raulien from Dena, again to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Is buying new equipment worth it?

In order to reduce the power consumption in your own four walls, it is important to use the existing electronic devices as efficiently as possible and possibly to switch to new, energy-saving devices in the case of very old devices.

The main factor here is the intensity of use. A new washing machine would only be worthwhile to a limited extent for a single household, for example, but it would be different for a whole family. Here it can be worthwhile to compare the old device with one of the newer generation.

Editorial office finanzen.net

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