How to Choose a New Home Appliance

Buying a new home electrical appliance can be confusing. In addition to value for money and longevity, more and more people want to ensure that the items they are buying are also energy efficient. With the help of the Energy Saving Trust, here’s our guide on how to chose a new home appliance.

So how should you chose your appliance? The following guide has been supplied by the Energy Saving Trust.

Cookers

We recommend ovens that have an ‘A’ energy rating as they are the most efficient of all; hobs that carry the logo are highly energy-efficient too. A new A+ rated electric oven will consume 40 per cent less energy than a B rated oven.

Microwave ovens

Microwaves often provide a much more energy efficient way of cooking food than in the oven. This is because microwaves oven use energy to directly heat your food, whereas electric ovens must also heat the air inside the oven.

Dishwashers

Dishwashers can take up a significant chunk of your electricity bill, costing on average £41 a year to run. Over a year, it costs around £8 less to run a typical new dishwasher than it does an old, inefficient machine of the same size, and it will use less water.

Fridges, freezers and fridge-freezers

These are switched on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so it’s well worth finding models that are energy efficient. Typically choosing an A+++ fridge freezer over an A+ unit will save you about £190 in energy bills over the lifetime of the product. However, as the energy rating is based upon classification by size, a smaller A-rated fridge could use less energy than a larger A+ rated fridge. You can compare the total energy consumption of appliances by looking for their yearly energy consumption in kWh / annum displayed on the bottom right of the energy label.

Kettles

Kettles are one of the most commonly used appliances in the kitchen. ECO kettles that only boil the amount of water required can use 20 per cent less energy than a conventional electric kettle. On average a UK household boils the kettle 1,500 times a year.

Tumble dryers

Drying clothes outdoors on a washing line or indoors on a rack costs nothing and uses no energy so it is the ideal way to dry your clothes. But if you need to use a tumble dryer, choose one with a good energy label rating such as a B. This will help to keep your energy bill down as much as possible.

Choose one that has a sensor that tells when your clothes are dry enough, preventing your clothes from being over dried.

• Gas tumble dryers are one of the cheapest and most environmentally friendly type of dryer to run. But this type of dryer can be slightly more expensive to install as it needs a gas connection.
• Electric heat pump tumble dryers are also very efficient as they recycle the heat from the ventilation tube back into the dryer, but take away the water vapour from the air.

Washing machines

An energy efficient machine will save you money on your electricity bill and, if you have a meter, your water bill too.

Digital or DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) radios

Digital radios have been one of the biggest selling consumer electronic products in the last few years due to superior sound quality, a wide range of extra channels and rapidly falling prices. Digital radios generally consume more power than their analogue equivalents.

Digital television recorders

Recording your favourite shows doesn’t have to cost more in energy bills. In most homes, entertainment equipment accounts for about ten per cent of your electricity bill.

Televisions

Televisions can be the most power-hungry of all entertainment appliances, particularly the larger ones. The larger a television is the more energy it will consume, regardless of its energy rating. For instance, an A-rated 22″ LCD TV would typically cost £4 a year to run whereas an A-rated 60″ TV would cost £33. Choosing a smaller TV generally means choosing a more efficient TV.

• HD and 3D TV: many homes now have cable HD TV and most televisions on the market are HD ready. HD TVs have more pixels per square inch of screen area and therefore tend to consume more energy than SD (Standard Density) televisions. Buying a smaller SD TV is likely to use less energy than an HD TV, but with the move towards HD broadcasting you might wish to consider how long into the future you are happy to continue using an SD TV.
• LED, LCD and plasma screen are most common forms of flat-screen TVs on the market. LED and LCD TVs are not as good for seeing the screen from sideward angles, but otherwise there is little difference between the picture quality of these and plasma screen TVs. However, plasma screen TVs tend not to come in smaller sizes, and generally use more energy than similar sized LED or LCD TVs.

Desktop and laptop PCs

Laptops typically use 85 per cent less electricity over a year than desktop PCs. Choosing a laptop over a desktop and reducing standby could save up to £17 per year.