Can household appliances generate savings?

Find out how you can lower your electricity bill by replacing old household appliances with new and more efficient ones. Home appliances typically represent a large share of your household electricity bill. How much can you save by using more energy efficient appliances.

Could you – and by how much – reduce the electricity bill if you replaced old large household appliances with new and efficient ones? When would the investment pay off? We investigated.

Home appliances are typical consumers of electricity. Some of them are constantly on (refrigerator, freezer), so they consume large amounts of electricity. When buying new appliances, it pays to choose the ones that belong to a higher energy class (A ++ or similar/better). These are usually slightly more expensive than ordinary and less efficient ones, but the investment usually pays off itself in a couple of years on lesser electricity consumption alone.

The biggest consumers of electricity, of which a household cannot do without, are the refrigerator and freezer, as well as the dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, and the oven. Sure, you could give up the tumble dryer and air dry the laundry, but if you were to give up the dishwasher, for example, you would only increase energy consumption and electricity bills considerably, as hand washing dishes is up to four times less efficient.

Electricity consumption depends on the efficiency of each appliance and is indicated on the energy label. Surely enough, the efficiency is of course also influenced by the size, age, and method of use.

By using raw data of electricity prices, we calculated by how much approximately you could reduce our electricity bill if you replaced older wasteful household appliances with the most efficient ones on the market.

Saving hundreds of euros – yearly

Suppose you have all the electricity guzzlers in your household, namely a refrigerator, a washing machine, a dryer, a freezer, an oven, and a dishwasher. If all of them are ten years of age or older, they most probably belong to worse energy classes. According to the average annual consumption of individual appliances, we can estimate that their total energy consumption is about 3000 kWh per year. Converting this into the cost of electricity, depending on a specific country and electricity provider, the amount is a few hundred Euros. In Gorenje’s homeland, Slovenia, the heart of Europe, such consumption would amount to about 450 Euros per year.

Exchanging all those appliances with most energy-efficient ones, would bring the total consumption down to about 1650 kWh of electricity, or about 250 Euros worth. Should you aim higher and opt for the most energy-efficient devices – class A+++ (or better) – the electricity bill would stop around 150 Euros (roughly 1000 kWh per year).

Doing the math – twice

Saving a (couple) hundred Euros per year sounds nice. But to achieve those savings one has to invest first. The purchase of six new large and energy-efficient household appliances would cost about 2500 Euros. This means the appliances would pay off in under 10 years, depending on how efficient ones you get.

It makes the most sense to replace the old freezer and refrigerator, as they are three to four times more wasteful than the most efficient current models. Next in line should be the oven, as it falls into the category of the largest consumers of electricity among household appliances – especially if you use it on daily basis.

In this comparison we disregarded any and all other advantages modern appliances might have, so please put those into account when buying new items.

Order and discipline also deliver savings

However, you can always save some money no matter how efficient your appliances are if you use and maintain them properly. We have gathered some tips on these pages too. Check them out.

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