• Switch off all appliances in the home that are not really necessary.

• Switch an appliance off (if possible) with a mains switch and not with a standby button or remote control.

• Compact fluorescent lamps are a lot more economical then incandescent lamps (but you knew that already!), this has the biggest impact in places where the light is on for the whole evening.

• Switch the computer off via a plug box with manual switch and connect all the other computer peripherals such as monitor, scanner and printer to the same plug box.

• Mains power adapters also use power when nothing is connected to them. Remove them from the wall socket when they are not in use.

• For appliances that are continuously powered from a mains adapter it helps considerably if the old (linear) mains adapter is replaced with a modern (switching) version. These have a higher efficiency and use much less power in the idle state.

• Some appliances consume just as much power in the standby- state as in the on-state (for example a cable TV receiver). It is therefore pointless to switch these from one state to the other.

• Wireless routers are not used the whole day. Switch them off when you don’t need them

• Finally, look at the total energy consumption of your whole house on a quiet afternoon (when no appliances are manually turned on) by noting the reading of the kilowatt-hour meter in your meter box and check the reading again an hour later. This will give a good overview of all the ‘silent’ consumers in your house.