With the war in the Ukraine, energy prices in Europe reached new record levels. This initially affected the gas price which does not affect me directly. But it had a big impact on the price for electrical energy too. In my village, the price for electrical energy is now at 0.45 CHF/kWh, starting October 1st 2022. It is twice as much as what it used to be, and three times more what it used to be the price for the energy at night time.

Saving energy always makes a lot of sense, now even more, both for the environment and directly saving money. Luckily, I started thinking about optimizing the electrical energy used in my house back in 2021, and now in 2022 it really pays off: The daily average of 16 kWh/day (including heating and cooling) came down to 7 kWh/day, or from 4.5 MWh/year down to 2.4 MWh/year, or a reduction of 47%.

There were different areas contributing to this very positive result:

The above graph shows the changes in the different categories, from 2021 (blue, 4.5 MWh) to 2022 (orange, 2.4 MWh).