KARACHI: If you want to reduce your utility bills throw out your 20-year-old fridge, get a front-loading washing machine (if you have to have one), buy energy savers and correctly-sized energy-efficient air-conditioners and learn to understand your units, volts, watts to amperes.

Well, that was Nida Rizwan Farid’s advice at The Second Floor here on Thursday to everyone whose head starts spinning on receiving high electricity bills.

The aerospace engineer and renewable energy consultant, who has besides other things, also worked extensively with wind farm development and management, energy policy and gas turbine combustion in North America and Europe, says that there are methods that will put money in your pocket, and not in your utility company’s account.

“While everyone talks about energy conservation, energy efficiency is often overlooked. With energy efficiency you can cut your electricity bills and generator size drastically, without impacting your comfort levels in any way,” she pointed out during the seminar on energy efficiency called ‘Reduce your electricity bills’.

The engineer wants people to look at and understand their electricity bills. “How many units do you use in a month? At what rates are you paying? What is your average bill? How many people live in your home?” she asked.

It was also explained that consumers were charged in slabs or tiers. “If you use 50 units or less in a month in Karachi you are charged Rs2 per unit. This is for the social welfare of people who are too poor to afford electricity. Fifty units mean that you can either run a TV or a fridge, a couple of light bulbs or a fan. Fifty units is your basic right, but anything beyond it is ‘luxury’ as every unit exceeding those 50 units will cost you Rs5.79 each. And if you are in tier III, a unit will cost you Rs8.11. Tier IV will be even higher at Rs12.33,” she said while also pointing out that if a consumer happened to find themselves in tier IV it meant that something was wrong or their appliances were not efficient.

But before going to the appliances, Nida explained about commercial and industrial electricity billing that was carried out on an entirely different system.

“There your average load is calculated, which becomes your sanctioned load and you are charged according to it. If any company or factory feels that they are being overcharged, they should call the power utility and ask them to recheck their sanctioned load.”

But, it was also explained, that some factories generate their own power and even give the extra power to the grid.

Going back to the basics when focusing on appliances, she pointed out that power in Pakistan in general was 230volts and in Karachi it was 240volts. “Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) bulbs have one to two per cent efficiency while energy savers had 10pc efficiency. Light Emitting Diode or LED bulbs are the future but right now they are also 10pc efficient though more progress is expected in making them more efficient,” she said.

The engineer also advised the people to replace old appliances with new ones as they were more energy efficient.

She also taught how to calculate lifecycle costs of appliances, where something may seem expensive, but after calculating its efficiency you’ll find out that in 10 years time while paying less for the power it uses up you have in fact saved a lot of money.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2014