at the time of save energy at home There are several measures that we can take to try to spend as little as possible, especially when we use the appliances that consume the most electricity.
However, we may be left with the question of whether we are doing it right or if, on the contrary, we are still we are wasting more than the bill. What can we do to find out?
Well, one of the options we have is compare our electricity consumption with the consumption of our environment to find out if we are spending more or less than the average.
It is not an exact figure and of course it will depend on multiple factors, but it will give us an idea of How is the energy cost of our home being? compared to our neighbors.
Electricity consumption in homes, measured in kWh, It is a parameter that depends on multiple factors, such as the type of home we have, the climate, the number of residents in the home, the level of insulation and, above all, the type and use we make of our electrical appliances.
The average electricity consumption of a home in Spain
According to Red Eléctrica Española (REE), the average monthly consumption of a household in Spain reaches 270 kWhwhich means a average annual consumption of 3,272 kWh. The Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) gives us a similar number of 3,487 kWh in your report Consumption of the Residential Sector in Spain (2020-2019)which means some 290 kWh a month.
Source: IDEA
Regarding the distribution of this average consumption, heating represents 7.4% of the total, air conditioning 7.5%, kitchen appliances correspond to 9.3% of consumptionwhile refrigerators and freezers are equivalent to 2.3%.
Home lighting represents 11.7% of total consumption, while the rest of household appliances account for 55.2%. Finally, the stand-by function of the appliances has a consumption of 6.6%.
If we analyze the consumption for each appliance, the refrigerator consumes 30.6% compared to freezers that account for 6.1%. The washing machine corresponds to 11.8%, while the dishwashers are equivalent to 6.1% and the clothes dryers to 3.3% of that figure.
Average consumption in your neighborhood
Last October 2022, the Council of Ministers at the request of the Ministry for the Energy Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) approved a new proposal to contain the high prices of electricity in Spain that they baptized as the More Energy Security Plan (+SE).
Among these changes, the new household electricity and gas bills must give information about him average consumption in the district. In order to compare if we have spent a lot or little light with respect to our neighbors, the first thing we have to do is know how much we have consumed at home, data that is usually shown on the bill itself both as a number measured in hundreds of kilowatt hours and as a graph, depending on each electricity company, as we can see in the following image:
Once we know our monthly consumption, we can now search the bill for the data related to the average consumption in our districtsomething that is usually on the second page after the total amount to be paid that month.
In general, it can appear as a simple informative paragraph at the end of the bill that can go unnoticed, with a phrase similar to this: “for the period of this bill, the average electricity consumption of supplies in the same zip code has been XXX kWh”.
Cover image | Johannes Plenary
More information | IDEA | ENDESA
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