Not a day goes by without another media report highlighting the benefits of using solar panel systems. And as the Sydney Morning Herald recently reported, solar panel systems are no longer luxury items. Although there was once a time when only select households invested in them, today their lower-than-ever costs allow for people from all wage brackets to benefit.
If you’re looking for ways to reduce your household bills and live a greener lifestyle, installing solar panels is a brilliant start. With some of our tips for maximising their use, you can save even more money once they’re installed.
Switch to LED light bulbs
There are multiple benefits to using LED light bulbs and maximising your solar panel system use is just one of them. While incandescent light bulbs lose 80% of their energy to heat, LED light bulbs contribute 80-90% of their energy towards producing light. Additionally, they tend to last for 35,000 to 100,000 hours, so you won’t need to replace them as often as a halogen or incandescent bulb. When using them alongside a highly efficient 5 kW solar panel system, you could see your energy and monthly spending pills plummet. In addition to tackling the lightbulbs in your ceiling, make sure you replace remaining bulbs in your lamps.
Say goodbye to standby mode
Leaving your devices in standby mode probably seems like an innocent enough habit. However, some estimates claim that a combination of standby mode and an appliance’s baseload consumption account for 10% of your energy bills. As such, it’s not efficient to leave certain items plugged in and emitting lights. Some key unessential culprits include televisions, computers, games consoles, and smart home devices. Switch all of them off when nobody is at home and let your solar panel system dedicate its energy elsewhere.
Run appliances during the day
Do you really need to set your dishwasher to work in the evening while you’re there? Or, could you leave it until the morning when nobody is at home? The main rationale for doing this is that your solar panel system is at its most effective when the sun is shining. So, if you can leave high-energy appliances to run during the daytime and then unload them in the evening, you’ll save a lot of money on your usual electricity bills. For households using one of our popular 6.6 kW solar panel systems, this is an excellent way to say goodbye to hefty electricity bills.
Start selling your energy back to the grid
Let’s say you live in a small to medium sized property, but you chose to install a 10 kW solar system anyway. Producing extra electricity isn’t a bad thing. Your first option for dealing with it is to use a storage system and allocate the excess to low sunshine hour days. Or, if you want your solar power system to pay for itself even faster, consider selling your energy back to the grid. In most areas, it’s still the case that you’ll receive money for generating electricity that the main grid then uses. On the off-chance that this ceases to be the case, make sure you look into battery storage for the future anyway.
At Arise Solar, we’re committed to helping our customers throughout Australia make the most of their solar panel systems. Our journey always starts with a thorough appraisal of your home and what it’s capable of using in terms of energy. In addition to serving residential properties throughout Australia, we meet the needs of business customers. To learn more about our solar panel system, call 1300 274 737 or complete our contact form.
