{"id":5539,"date":"2023-03-01T11:59:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T02:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/how-to-reduce-electricity-usage-at-home\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T11:33:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T02:33:52","slug":"how-to-reduce-electricity-usage-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/how-to-reduce-electricity-usage-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Reduce Electricity usage at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reducing energy use in your home saves you money and reduces the pollution emitted from non-renewable sources. With the prices of power rising in Japan, you can save yourself some significant coin if you learn to reduce your usage at home!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Switch off, and unplug electrical devices when not in use.<\/li>\n<li>Check the power settings on your appliances; TVs, for example, will often go into standby rather than turn off. Unplugging your TV is the best option, though.<\/li>\n<li>Turn down the temperature in the refrigerator; many people keep it too cold anyway and end up with frozen milk. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fsis.usda.gov\/wps\/portal\/fsis\/topics\/food-safety-education\/get-answers\/food-safety-fact-sheets\/safe-food-handling\/leftovers-and-food-safety\/ct_index\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Leftovers and Food Safety by USDA<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Let frozen food thaw well in advance without using the microwave.\u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fsis.usda.gov\/wps\/portal\/fsis\/topics\/food-safety-education\/get-answers\/food-safety-fact-sheets\/safe-food-handling\/leftovers-and-food-safety\/ct_index\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Leftovers and Food Safety by USDA<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Turn down the temp on the hot water heater. In summer in Nagoya, you do not need hot water anyway!<\/li>\n<li>Wrap your water heater in an insulating jacket. I used one of those foam mats you sit on at festivals; it cost me 500 yen.<\/li>\n<li>Try to use a fan instead of an air conditioner.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t try to cool the whole house; shut off the room you are using and run the air conditioner only in there. (If you must use it!)<\/li>\n<li>Set the air conditioner to keep the house a little warmer this year; Japanese offices generally keep the temperature at 28 degrees C. If you need to go colder, try incrementally instead of immediately going down to 20! Every little bit helps.<\/li>\n<li>Clean out the filter on your air conditioner. This will lessen the load on the unit, making it run more efficiently.<\/li>\n<li>Buy energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs<\/li>\n<li>Install low-flow shower heads to reduce your hot water use.<\/li>\n<li>When you shut down your computer, shut down your monitor as well. Many people just let it run until they start up the computer again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Photo: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:2017-11-20_(227)_Electricity_pylon_in_Pottenbrunn.jpg\">GT1976<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\">CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reducing energy use in your home saves you money and reduces the pollution emitted from non-renewable sources. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-in-japan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49831,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5539\/revisions\/49831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}