Not so very long ago, if somebody had proposed to you the idea of working from home, you would have thought they were joking. The idea of working from home was a farfetched, idealistic thought. You might conjure up ideas of doing your job from the comfort of your bed, or keeping your pyjamas on all day long.
Fast forward to the modern day though, and working from home has become a pretty normal thing for people working in a number of industries.
In the face of the current Coronavirus outbreak, even if you have not worked from home much in the past, we are being told to do so to help limit the spread of the virus.
That all means that we as a population are having to make the adjustment to this way of doing things. Some will cope better than others, and some will treat each day like a normal work day while others will take the pyjama-wearing route.
However you approach working from home, one thing that is likely to be affected is our bills. Being within the four walls of our homes all day means a higher use of electricity and gas. The increasing amount of television we might be watching, gaming we might be doing, or just generally house activities could well lead to larger bills coming through our letterboxes.
What can be done to keep these costs down to a minimum? Well, fortunately there are ways to limit the amount of energy we use in our homes, and the latest Stoves & Solar blog will take a look at what these are. Read on for some energy saving tips and find out how you can keep costs down when working from home.
Low hanging fruit
Now this is a bit of a cliché phrase that you tend to hear in business meetings and the like. It generally means small tasks that bring rewards, that then collectively add up to achieve a bigger win. It is not really about fruit at all - although in lockdown eating right is important so adding some fruit to your diet is a good idea!
What this means in the context of saving energy in your home is doing the simple things that can save small amounts of energy.
These include turning off light switches when not in use and turning off things at the mains such as household appliances when you’re not using them. These are a sap on energy that we don’t tend to notice, but can make a big difference to your overall energy bill amount. There are plenty of drains on electricity related to working from home, including plugging in the laptops that many of us are working on at present. One way to save energy here is to only charge your laptop when it needs to be charged. Don’t keep it plugged in unnecessarily as this could add to your bills.
The role solar energy might be able to play
Solar energy is a great way to add to your energy supplies using mother nature. By using the sun’s rays to gather energy for your home, you can cut back on the use of mains electricity to help save on bill usage.
By introducing PV solar panels to home, you can build your solar energy supplies and convert this into usable energy for your home.
Additionally, adding in solar battery storage devices can help save and maintain energy gathered from solar sources and be used in your home. These allow for solar energy to be used over an extended period of time and become a fantastic form of alternative power.
With more energy usage coming from our homes, this is a suitable and sustainable alternative to mains energy supplies.
Is this the new normal?
While the current lockdown has taken some getting used to for sure, it may well be a sign of a larger change we will be making as a society. It’s hard to know for certain what the future holds, and whether we will truly go back to the way we used to do things.
This could well mean that working from home becomes the new normal, at least for a sustained period of time. Obviously, we are all hoping that things return to normal sooner rather than later, but the current lockdown will likely change things in a host of ways that we cannot predict.
With the government encouraging working from home where possible, most businesses will have adapted processes and procedures to enable this. With these changes now firmly in place, it seems likely many businesses will use working from home as a way of conducting business than they may have chosen to do in the past.
That means that the need to save on energy usage and costs is not necessarily a short term thing, but something that might need to be considered over a longer time by people.
This means that any investment in alternative energy sources is not necessarily a short term decision, but a longer term choice based on the new ways of working we are now facing.
How Stoves & Solar can help
At Stoves & Solar, we have long championed the use of renewable energy as an alternative power source for the modern home.
In these challenging times, any way that we can help our customers benefit is great, and our range of products are designed to give you that extra helping hand and save money on your energy bills over time.
As mentioned, there are many ways you can cut down on your energy usage when working from home, and we encourage people to do this not only to save cash, but also to limit the use of resources.
Be sure to take a look through the various technologies we have available at Stoves & Solar, and browse our online store for potential additions to your home.
We hope all our readers are staying safe and coping well with this lockdown. We at Stoves & Solar are currently operating a skeleton staff, but are able to process and dispatch orders so you can certainly still purchase from us during this time.
Be sure to keep visiting our site for any updates. And if you have any questions, simply contact the Stoves & Solar team.