This concerns significant savings in a family budget; depending on the energy consumption it may amount to three to five thousand crowns per year. Usually, advice concerning energy conservation is based on laboratory conditions, remarked Petr Holubec, PRE spokesman, but these are totally different to normal day to day life. Finally, PRE selected three families for their campaign, a family of three (with a small child), a family of four (with two boys) and another family of three –a mother and two teenagers. Posters appearing in Prague show how these savings were used.

How to save

Energy conservation is a popular topic for today. The campaign should show consumers ways and measures of saving energy leading to specific electricity conservation and subsequently a decrease in total expenditures, and this excluding any major limitations on their standard of life, said Petr Holubec, spokesman for PRE. The most important thing has been a change to the so called consumptive behaviour of our customers. Among these belong for example switching off lights, using energy saving bulbs and modern washing powders which have the same effect at 40 degrees as they do at 60 degrees saving up to sixty percent of energy. Also the sleeping mode of a computer consumes large amounts of energy and so it is good to switch it off fully, stated Petr Holubec. Other energy saving strategies are disconnecting the recharging unit of a laptop from the power socket after the laptop is charged, switching off appliances such as televisions, and various players from their stand by regime and the regular defrosting of fridges. Even small deposits of frost mean a significant increase in electricity consumption. The replacement of old appliances is also important; some may consume seventy five percent more than their new economical counterparts.

Finding information

The majority of consumers lack such information therefore they are not aware of the importance of such simple rules. The families involved in the project were able to use the free advisory services provided by PRE staff. They learned that by having an LCD television they may save around three thousand crowns per year and by using an extension cable with several sockets and a switch, they can plug in several appliances and can also switch them off all at once saving four thousand crowns per year. They were interested to learn according to what criteria they should select new appliances. P. Holubec said: “We are providing all this information to our customers free of charge at the consultancy centre of Pražská energetika“.

Return of Investments

The quality of information at the consultancy centre will depend on the quality of inquiries of a customer. “The customer will come and ask questions regarding lighting, water heating, heating, etc. But it is possible that they will also come in with information from the labels of their appliances regarding energy consumption, and they should also be aware of the age of their appliances. Advisors will help the customer in selecting an optimum saving method, said Petr Holubec. For example, one of the families owned a seven year old boiler, they bought a new one from the same company even almost of the same type, and the energy consumption became significantly lower. The most common way of saving is the replacement of appliances. One of the families replaced all their appliances at once. This investment consisted of approximately 20 thousand crowns. This will be repaid within five years, in addition to this it has to be taken into account that energy prices will go up, and so in the end the return of the investment could happen sooner.

Personal experience is the best

I had always been convinced that as a small household we had a low consumption of electricity, but the results surprised me a lot. We had already been using energy saving bulbs for a while but I was not paying attention to our electrical appliances. Thanks to the project I found out that it pays to read the labels on the products, added Jana Muchová, the representative of one of the families involved. Comprehensive recommendations and advice for the conservation of energy including the results from the research regarding the three families are available at the following websites: www.uspora-energie.info (available only in Czech) or www.pre.cz. You will also find more detail regarding energy saving options. After acquiring essential information you may want to visit the consultancy centre of PRE. Time dedicated to energy conservation definitely pays off.