I ran a competition recently over on Nested, asking people for their top power saving tips. There were some truly amazing ideas, many of which had never even occurred to me, so I thought I'd share with you all some of your awesome ideas.

"Switch every appliance off at the wall when not in use (exception being fridge of course), and only boil enough water in jug for what you need it for - no need to boil a full jug for one cup of coffee!" - Cory

"Using clothes horse in lounge where heat pump is already operating rather than using the dryer everyday." - Catherine

• "I teach good habits to my children by playing a game called turn off all the switches. The only ones on in our house most days is the fridge and freezer. However a friend of mine has these on timers so I will do this. It is annoying when I have to go behind the TV to turn it on but at least I'm saving power." - Tapene
  
  
• "Plan, think about your day, make one trip instead of several short ones. Saves fuel, your car battery, tires, etc." - Chris
  
  
• "Assess the age of your appliances. I replaced a 20 year old fridge with a new 4 star rated one - I believe it will pay for itself in energy savings over time" - Shane
  
  
• My partner's idea of energy-saving is telling me to wear an extra layer, or get a blanket, rather than turning on the heat pump. Stingy but effective ;) - Monique
  
  
• "Turn off your washing machine at the wall. Apparently your machine uses ALOT of power on standby!" - Angela
  
• "I have my Wifi router on a timer so that it switches off at night and comes back on in the morning. It switches off again when I leave for work and back on about 6pm when I get home. No point in it being on when I'm not using it and it saves me power!" - Bradley
  
  
• "Don't use the dryer. Ever. Ha ha. It's insane how much they cost to run. Took an insane power bill for me to learn my lesson. Now we have a clothes rack (the kind with with coat hangers) directly in front of the heat pump, which is on every evening anyway." - Jodine
  
  
• "As devices use more power than  you'd expect on standby, turning off the cluster in the lounge can be a pain (TV, amp, freeview etc, etc), plug all these into a multiboard/power strip allowing you to turn them all off all once." - Adrian
  
  

• "When cooking turn off the over, element or burner when the food is almost cooked, and allow the existing heat complete the cooking." - Adrian
  
  
• "Our best tip at home for saving power is to do our washing machine and dishwasher and whatever else we can between the hours of 11pm and 7am as we have a night rate meter which is cheaper than the day rate.  We have appliances which have timers on them so they come on after we are in bed." - Kim
  
  
• "I had a hot water cylinder issue recently.  The lovely repair man suggested having the cylinder temperature set hotter than it really needs to be was wasting power. Especially if you have kids its a good idea to have the temp set a little lower. Top tip tho - use a pro.  My friend tried to change the temperature on his own cylinder and shorted it out.  Turns out he could have electrocuted himself.  Oops...!" - Renee
  
  
• "I good power saving tip I got told is to fill up empty freezer space with bottles of water. This apparently makes less work for the freezer when its trying to keep the space at the set temperature" :) - Jamie