People ask often enough what to buy that it is worth one plain page. This is the whole list: six things that genuinely move a British energy bill, and what each one is for. There are no pictures and no prices here. Prices change every few weeks, and a stale number on a page like this is worse than no number at all, so check the current price yourself before you buy anything.
The list
In the order I would spend the money.
- Plug-in electricity usage monitor. Plugs between the socket and the appliance and shows the watts and the units it has actually used, which is the only way to stop guessing at what anything in your house costs to run.
- Under-door draught stopper. The gap under an external door is usually the biggest single hole in a British house, and sealing it is a ten-minute job that you feel the same evening.
- Thermal-lined curtains. A heavy lined curtain closed at dusk cuts the draught and the radiant chill off a cold window, and it is the cheapest thing you can do about single glazing short of replacing it.
- Radiator reflector foil. Goes on the wall behind a radiator on an outside wall and sends heat back into the room instead of into the brickwork, which is worth having on a solid wall and worth very little on an insulated one.
- Hot water cylinder jacket. An old or thinly lagged cylinder loses several units of heat a day doing nothing at all, and wrapping it pays for itself in weeks rather than years.
- Heated clothes airer. Draws a couple of hundred watts against a tumble dryer's two or three thousand, so a load costs pennies instead of pounds, as long as you accept that it takes most of a day.
Each of those has a guide behind it on the site: using a plug-in energy monitor, draught-proofing, curtains for warmth, radiator reflectors, cylinder jackets and pipe lagging and heated clothes airer running costs. Read the guide before you buy the thing, because for two or three of them the honest answer in your house might be that you do not need it.
Why the list is this short
Almost everything sold as an energy saver is a waste of money. The giveaway is a product that promises a percentage off your bill without naming the appliance it is supposed to be cutting, because a saving has to come from somewhere specific. The plug-in "power saver" boxes are the clearest case of it, and there is a whole guide on why they cannot work on a domestic meter.
Everything above passes one of two tests. It either measures something, so you stop guessing, or it stops heat leaving the house. Nothing else has made the list, and I would rather this page stayed at six items than padded it out.
What is deliberately not on it
- Smart plugs sold as energy savers. Useful for timing a heater or an airer, and they save nothing at all by themselves. See do smart plugs save energy.
- Anything that claims to optimise, stabilise or condition your electricity supply. Your meter measures the units you draw, and no box on a socket changes that.
- Insulation and glazing. Loft insulation and secondary glazing save far more than anything on the list, but they are jobs rather than purchases, and buying the materials off a product page is rarely the cheap way to do them.
If you want the cheap end of all this first, the quick wins under a tenner page is where to start, and most of it costs nothing.
Affiliate disclosure
The product links on this page go to Amazon and carry an affiliate tag. If you follow one and buy something, Power Saving Guide earns a small commission from Amazon. It costs you nothing extra and you pay the same price either way.
Power Saving Guide is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the Amazon EU Associates Programme, affiliate advertising programmes that let a site earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites. As an Amazon Associate, Power Saving Guide earns from qualifying purchases.
The links point at the US store, and Amazon's own OneLink service sends you to your local one, so a reader in Britain lands on amazon.co.uk and a reader in Germany on amazon.de. That is also why there are no prices here: the page cannot know which store you will land on, let alone what the price will be when you get there.
Nothing is on the list because it pays. Every item matches advice that was already on this site before there was a commission to be had, and if one of them stops being worth recommending it comes off, whatever it earns. Any pages elsewhere on the site that carry one of these links say so in their footer. Questions about any of this go to privacy@powersavingguide.com, and the privacy page covers the data side.