Generally most people do complain of high electricity bills or the amount of money they spend on electricity units for prepaid meters. However they do little or nothing in ensuring that they reduce their costs.  A person who spends about K170, 000.00 on electricity can reduce the cost to about K90, 000.00 with proper use of electricity. Generally high electricity bills are caused by the bad habits of electricity use and not that the electricity tariff are high as perceived by the majority Zambians.

Here are some tips that can help you reduces your electricity bill.

Electrical appliances

• Do not leave your electrical appliance such as Television sets, video recorders and radios etc. on stand by when they not be used within a short period. Home electronic products use energy when they are off to power features like clock displays and remote controls
• Ensure that you switch off all those equipment that you are not using there and then. Most people will have a fridge and deep freezers in their homes. A fridge is the most used of the two however some people will still have there deep freezers on even if there is nothing in it. This increases your bill. Doing the following will help your fridge not to use a lot of electricity.
• Position your refrigerator away from a heat source such as an oven, a dishwasher, or direct sunlight from a window.
• To allow air to circulate around the condenser coils, leave a space between the wall or cabinets and the refrigerator or freezer and keep the coils clean.
• Make sure the door seals are airtight.
• Keep your refrigerator between 1.5oC and 3o C and your freezer at -17 degrees Celsius
• Minimize the amount of time the refrigerator door is open.

Heating

• Ensure that when you are heating your water using the stoves, switch of the stove immediately you reach the desired temperature. People have the tendency of letting the water boil on the stoves for a long time; this consumes a lot of electricity.
• When cooking food on the stoves and you bring it boil adjusting your knob for the cooking plate from maximum to medium just to ensure that the food continues boiling.  By maintaining the maximum you will be wasting the electricity units as the water will not go beyond the boiling temperature.
• Most people leave there geysers on all the time. This consumes a lot of your electricity units. Observe the time your geysers takes to warm you water. If it takes 30 minutes then ensure that you only switch on your geyser 30 before having a bath and switch it off. If there are a lot of people  in the house give it more time before switching it off so that the water become very hot so as to cater  for a number of people then switch it off. A geyser is one of the electrical devise in the house that consumes a lot of electricity units.  It is also advisable to install solar geysers for those who can afford.

Solar heater geysers

Lighting

• Use energy serving bulbs in your house and for your outside security. Most people have security lights outsides their homes which remain on for more than ten hours a day. In Most cases this are incandescent bulbs and not energy serving bulbs.   The substitution of all your security bulbs with the energy serving bulbs which uses about 75% less energy than standard lighting, produce 75 percent less heat, and lasts up to 10 times longer, you will be enable to reduce your units of electricity used per day. This will translate in reduction of your electricity bill.
   Energy saver bulbs   
• Ensure at all times that the no rooms in house should have lights on if there are no people. In most homes there is a tendency of switching on all the lights in the house at night even were they are no people and only to switch them off when they go to bed. This increases your bill.
• Do not use of bulbs during the day time; try by all means to use  the sun light.