The best way to pay for energy
28 Mar 2024
In this article
Using your heating and appliances more efficiently will make a big difference to your energy costs. Follow our 10 tips to use less and pay less, while making your home more comfortable.
The choice of cheap energy deals is limited in comparison to Ofgem's price cap. But the steps you take to be more efficient can still make a difference.
That's because energy unit rates – how much you pay for each kilowatt hour (kWh) of gas or electricity you use – are capped, rather than your total bill. So the less energy you use, the less you'll pay.
Small habitual changes add up. And some of the tips below take just a few minutes to set up.
Use our free, independent energy comparison service to compare gas and electricity prices and find the best provider for you.
Washer dryers are the priciest appliances to run, costing over £206 on average per year, according to our testing.
Condenser tumble dryers and American-style fridge freezers are also costly to use, both adding well over £100 per year in electricity on average to our bills.
Changing how you use them will make a positive difference to your energy payments. Try these tips:
Find out how much your appliances cost to run.
Improving your insulation will have the most impact on your bills of any of our tips.
Adding insulation can cost as little as £15 (that's for DIY fitting foam insulation around exposed hot water pipes). The more you add, the more you'll save.
Loft insulation is the cheapest and easiest way to boost your home's insulation credentials. If you have none to start with and add the recommended 270mm, you could save up to £250 per year in a semi-detaached house. Plus you'll feel cosier too.
Once that's done, consider cavity wall insulation if your home is suitable. It's pricey – around £2,700 for a semi-detached house, according to the Energy Saving Trust – but a third of your heat is lost through your walls. For older homes, you'll need solid wall insulation instead.
Read our full loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and solid wall insulation guides to learn what you need, how much it costs and what you could save.
Find out more about how to make your home more energy efficient.
Stopping heat from escaping through gaps around doors and windows could save you around £45 a year, according to Energy Saving Trust.
It can help make your home feel more cosy at lower temperatures, too.
Professional draught-proofing of your whole house costs around £270 for a typical household, but there are plenty of DIY draught-proofing jobs.
Start with these areas:
Just remember that you do need some ventilation in your home, so don't cover up holes that are supposed to be there, such as trickle vents in window frames.
Already repaired large draughty areas? See our guide to draught-proofing for tips on draughts from keyholes and letterboxes.
It's tricky to save money by switching energy tariff or provider at the moment as few suppliers are offering deals cheaper in the long-term than the price capped variable tariff.
But there are still things you can do to save.
If you get paper bills, ask your energy company to change to paperless ones and manage your account online instead. Some companies charge customers for paper billing.
Paying by direct debit is usually cheapest, and has the most choice of fixed deals. Prepayment price-capped tariffs will be cheaper than direct debit ones from April though.
If your supplier wants to increase your direct debit by more than you'd expect, ask it to explain why. Over a year, your usage and payments should balance out.
If you've built up too much credit in your account, you can ask for it to be refunded or for your direct debits to be reduced while you work through it. We'd recommend you keep around two to three months' worth of payments in your account.
Sending your supplier regular meter readings will also keep your payments accurate and prevent estimated bills. If you have a smart meter, it should send your meter readings automatically.
Read more: energy tariffs explained.
Even if you only turn your heating on in winter, you use energy year-round to heat your water. So heating and using it wisely will impact your bills.
If you have a hot water tank (rather than a combi boiler), use your heating controls to turn your water heating on and off, so you only heat as much water as you'll need.
High-volume power showers can use more water in less than five minutes than running a bath, so fit an eco shower head. Your shower will still feel powerful, but it'll cut down on your hot water use.
Try using a shower timer to keep your shower to four minutes or less. This can save a typical household £95 a year on energy, according to the Energy Saving Trust. You'd also save another £60 on water, if you have a meter.
Avoid washing up under a free-running tap – wash up in the sink or a bowl instead. Also try not to leave the hot tap running for too long while you're rinsing items.
Fitting an aerator onto your kitchen tap will reduce the amount of hot water coming out. It could save you £30 a year.
Find out more about eco shower heads and other water-saving devices.
You may not be using your boiler efficiently – which will make your home more expensive to heat over winter.
While your boiler won't be doing as much hard work in autumn compared with winter, it's a good idea to use the down-time for servicing and maintenance.
Upgrading an old G-rated gas boiler to a new A-rated condensing one with a programmer, room thermostat and thermostatic radiator valves could save you:
Savings are according to Energy Saving Trust.
Of course, you should only replace your boiler if it's old and faulty. Buying a new boiler can cost around £4,000, including installation and new radiator valves, so you need to weigh that up against any potential savings.
Find out more about how much a new boiler costs.
If your boiler is still working, there are still savings to be made. Start by booking a boiler service and asking your engineer to make sure it's running as efficiently as possible.
Lowering your combi boiler's flow temperature is quick and can lower your bills straight away. Condensing combi boilers tend to have heating flow temperatures set to 75-80°C, but many homes with one can be suitably warmed at 50-70°C.
You could save 6-8% on your gas bills by lowering a combi boiler's radiator flow to 50%, according to the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council (HHIC) in 2022.
If your boiler was installed after April 2005, it will be a condensing boiler.
The extent to which you can decrease your boiler’s heating flow temperature is highly individual. But lowering it means your boiler uses less gas and runs more efficiently. So you'll save money and your home will still be warm.
Start with a small change and see if you're comfortable before lowering it further.
The HHIC recommends that you adapt your boiler settings with the advice of a boiler engineer.
However, if you've made sure it's safe and you've checked your boiler's technical manual, you can adjust these settings yourself via your boiler controls.
The flow temperature for heating is generally symbolised by a little picture of a radiator, and for hot water, a picture of a tap. Up and down arrows will change the temperature settings.
Nesta has created an interactive boiler temperature tool to walk combi boiler owners through changing your heating's flow temperature settings.
Use the warmer weather to update and get to grips with your heating controls so you're ready to heat your home efficiently this winter.
Heating controls enable you to:
Installing a room thermostat, programmer or thermostatic radiator valves (and using them well) could save a typical household around £180 on energy bills each year, according to Energy Saving Trust.
It costs around £580 to install the lot in a typical semi-detached home and will take around three years to see savings.
If you already have a thermostat and programmer, installing thermostatic radiator valves could save £55 a year if you then use them well. Find our more about them below.
Try these tips to use heat as efficiently as possible:
If you only have one thermostat for your home, turning it down by 1°C (and putting on a jumper) would save you around £145 a year, according to Energy Saving Trust.
For most people, the lowest comfortable temperature to set your heating at is somewhere between 18°C and 21°C.
Read more on how boiler controls can save you money.
Electric heaters are best used sparingly. Electricity is much pricier than gas, so costs will quickly mount up. Plus our tests found that some heaters don't have very good thermostats so don't give you the room temperature you want.
On the whole, for short bursts you're better off heating yourself rather than the air – using extra clothes, hot water bottles and electric blankets and throws.
If you are using an electric heater, try using your smart meter monitor to compare how much it costs to run an electric heater compared with turning on your central heating.
Find out more about buying the best electric heater for your home.
Smart thermostats let you operate your heating remotely via your mobile phone, tablet or computer. Some can also learn your routine or adjust your settings depending on the weather conditions.
Coupled with smart thermostatic radiator valves, you can control exactly which rooms are heated, and which aren't.
For example, you might want the radiator in your living room to turn on when you come home from work, your bedroom to stay cold until later in the evening, and your kitchen to warm up in the morning. Just make sure all the kit you buy is compatible with the rest so that you can use it most effectively.
Thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) aren't all digital. Traditional ones allow you to turn down manually the radiators in rooms you're not using.
Whether a smart thermostat could save you money will depend on your lifestyle and how efficiently you control your heating already.
Find out how to buy the best smart thermostat.
Some energy companies' customer apps give detailed information about your energy usage, particular if you have smart meters. There are third party apps which do this too.
A smart meter shows you how much energy you’re using and how much it costs in near-real time. You can use this to work out where and when you can cut back on your use.
Smart thermostats, such as Hive or Nest, also come with apps, as does Samsung's SmartThings hub.
Apps such as the Energy Cost Calculator tell you exactly how much energy your products use. Enter the energy consumption of an appliance in kWh (this should be on its packaging or specs that you can find online), how many hours you run it for and how much your electricity costs per kWh. The app will give you a cost per usage by day, month or year, along with the CO2 emissions. It's available for iOS and Android.
Buying a very cheap appliance can be a false economy if it ends up costing a fortune to run.
Choosing energy-efficient appliances can save you hundreds of pounds each year in running costs compared with the most power-guzzling products.
Running costs are now included in our appliance reviews. We test energy consumption in a way that reflects how you actually use appliances.
For example we test washing machines on the 40°C cottons program because that's most commonly used by Which? members (rather than the 60°C cottons program which makes up 60% of EU Energy Label tests).
Then we use the results of our energy tests to calculate how much each appliance will cost you to run. We update this every time the price of electricity and gas change.
Read more about how much your appliances cost to run to see which use the most energy and get tips on how to minimise your spend.
Energy schemes and grants can help pay your energy bills or support you with the costs of renewable heating. These include:
Find out what home energy grants you're eligible for.