Kitchen

The kitchen is another area of your home that uses a lot of energy. There are many simple things we can do to decrease the amount of energy used in this busy room:

• Using an electric kettle instead of a stove-top to boil water is faster and uses less energy.
• Place aluminum reflectors below stove elements to reflect heat. One third of the energy used for stove-top cooking can be wasted if reflectors aren't clean and shiny. You should also keep the elements and oven clean too.
• Use top elements rather than the oven when possible.
• Make sure the oven door closes tightly and keep it closed during use. Every time you open the door, the oven cools down by 20%.
• Using your microwave, toaster, pressure cooker, double boiler or slow cooker instead of your oven, saves lots of time and energy.
• Convection ovens which circulate hot air are more energy efficient than regular ovens because of the reduced cooking time.
• Reduce pre-heating time to a minimum and shut off the oven before the end of cooking time and let the contained heat finish cooking. While the oven is still warm from baking, take advantage of the heat to start the self-cleaning process on your self-cleaning oven. It saves energy by not having to heat the oven just for the cleaning process.
• Save cooking time and energy by cooking more than one thing at a time. For example, while a casserole is cooking, bake a cake or cookies at the same time. Cooking times remain the same as if cooked alone.

Utilising these common sense tips can help consumers to save on their winter heating bills and reduce energy consumption.