Your mobile phone can play a surprisingly big part
You may find it surprising that one of the most effective ways to conserve electricity is to pay for it in advance. Some studies have shown that simply by switching to pre-paid electricity, the average consumer will cut a whopping 8% or more off their electricity usage.
Seems surprising, but not really when you think about it. We all know that most of us don’t pay enough attention to the electricity we use. Electricity is – relative to most people’s monthly budget – fairly inexpensive. Leave a light on here or there and it won’t blow your monthly budget.
Still, that 8% result shows that when we are mindful, we can easily use much less. When you watch your prepaid electricity as you use it up, simple steps to slow it down become second nature.
Even without a prepaid electric plan, MyMeter is a powerful tool to put energy mindfulness in consumers’ hands.
Easy-to-use alerts and benchmarks in MyMeter tune consumers in to their energy use. In fact, many utilities use MyMeter to deliver their conservation programs, creating meaningful savings with simple behavioral changes.
Slowing down the impact of energy use on the climate will require some big changes. But we should all keep in mind that big changes take time and small changes – like watching our usage – can happen instantly and are, literally, in our hands.