CHEAPER POWER: Nowra resident Ivan Goozeff has encouraged households to take a closer look at their power bill.
A NOWRA man is offering some simple advice on how some home-owners could save money on their electricity bill.
Ivan Goozeff, a retired electrical engineer, raised a large family and used plenty of hot water in his day.
Like many of the region’s older people, hot water consumption has dropped as the children grew up and left home.
However, Mr Goozeff said too many people didn’t think to change their electricity off peak settings or were not aware they could.
“In the past many seniors raised large families and when the need came for more hot water the easy answer was to get an extended off peak electricity supply.
“This was called off peak 2 or off peak 3 and gave 12 to 16 hours of electricity in 24 hours instead of just eight hours on off peak 1.
“It didn’t cost much extra in those days, off peak electricity was cheap, however today the cost of off peak electricity has increased faster than the cost of general electricity.
“Now with the family gone and our washing machines using cold water there is less usage of hot water so households need to look at their electricity account to see if they are spending too much to heat hot water they are not using.”
Mr Goozeff said the same issue also applied to tenants who had moved into a rental property where the electricity supply selected by the previous occupant may have been off peak 2.
“A phone call to your electricity supplier to make a tariff change to off peak 1 could save you $50 or more per quarter without suffering a shortage of hot water if you find you are on off peak 2,” he said.