A self-experiment with professional help

Young people want to protect the climate, but they don’t want to take shorter showers. They’re often in low-power mode—staying in bed all day is socially acceptable—but they’re constantly using electricity because all electronic devices are on. Teenagers manage to skip school for “Fridays for Future” and then go shopping because it happens to be “Black Friday”.

So nobody knows better how contradictory life can be than parents of teenagers. When the Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck recently called on Germans to use less energy and to have an energy consultant come to the house to identify savings opportunities, the editors’ eyes fell on me. Because I live with four young people. “Get advice and write it down,” was the assignment.

A whole machine park works in our five-person household: There are two refrigerators and a freezer, as well as a washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, of course internet, television, Playstation, countless computers, mobile phones, tablets. The advisor will be appalled, I’m afraid. Before his visit, I defrost the fridge and get annoyed.

Why can’t you just pull out a freezer compartment?

Why can’t I just pull out the freezer compartment like a cool box? I have to leave the door open for hours and watch the yoghurt spoil while the sun beats down on the plants outside, which I could water with the defrost water that runs into the fridge instead. Life is not only full of contradictions, but also full of faulty constructions. But I digress.

A mistake that doesn’t happen in our household: leaving half the machine running. I always stuff the washing machine drum full and efficiently arrange heaps of dishes in the dishwasher before turning it on. Apart from me, at most my ex-mother-in-law reaches this level. Hopefully the savings advisor will be impressed.

However – this will certainly have a negative impact – I am stubbornly convinced that washing cycles at 40 degrees only stir the bacteria. I use 60 degrees wherever possible.

Now the consultant just has to come. I call the consumer advice center in Berlin and end up in Rostock. “What kind of energy check would you like?” asks a man’s voice in broad North German: “Perhaps a boiler? Or electronic devices? Or the building check?» Each case has its own offer. I thought that a consultant would come to me and we would look at everything together, I reply. That works too, says the North German voice. There is, for example, the “Basic Check”, which is free of charge. “Someone coming to my house without money?” I ask. “Yes, exactly. It’s all funded by the Ministry of Economics.”

Citizens pay a maximum of 30 euros for the “Energy Check”

The website of the consumer advice center states that the energy advice has a “value of 77 euros per hour and up to 538 euros per energy check”. However, the citizen pays a maximum of 30 euros, the majority of which is taken over by the ministry. That sounds understandable. Hardly anyone would spend 538 euros, but as many people as possible should seek advice. But where can you find the “Basic Check?”

“Enter that into the search mask,” says the man from Rostock, whose name I now know is Fred and only swims in the Baltic Sea when it’s 20 degrees warm. The search mask gives nothing; the latest hit is one and a half years old and is about the city of Koblenz. “They changed that!” shouts Fred. “There was something completely different the other day.”

We keep on searching. Fred finds my responsible counseling center in Berlin, but they only offer online support. He keeps looking, in vain. “We have waiting times of four to six weeks anyway,” he tries to console. There is extra advice for households with energy debts. If the prices keep going up, I’ll have them soon.

With the help of the press office, I finally manage to get a “basic check” promptly – without my professional privilege I would have had to wait a long time. The topic drives the Germans. The whole country is discussing Habeck’s shower times, turned off hot water and the risk of a gas shortage if Russia should further reduce or completely stop its deliveries after the maintenance of the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline. However, the capacities of the consumer advice centers are not sufficient for the citizens’ need for advice.

Every centimeter of ice eats electricity

The energy consultants are freelancers and do this alongside their actual work. They are commissioned by the headquarters and then work through a checklist. Our house is now on Daniela Wrzesniak’s list.

The counselor shakes off her Birkenstocks when she comes in and walks barefoot through the house. The slim, sporty woman in her early 40s has a doctorate in civil engineering. Right at the beginning she looks in the fridge. “The main thing is that it’s defrosted,” she says. I think “Half a centimeter of ice increases energy consumption by 30 percent, a whole doubles it,” she explains. My freshly defrosted freezer compartment will have two centimeters of ice again in the next week, I say. That’s not normal, replies Wrzesniak; you have to see what the problem is. Hello Mr. Habeck, how about a scrapping premium for refrigerators?

In the course of the visit, I received tips that I mostly already know: Cooking in a pot without a lid uses three times as much electricity, an induction cooker is 40 percent more energy-efficient than a ceramic hob, the cast-iron plates of the past are the worst, yes because of the afterheat. I cook with gas.

As expected, Wrzesniak refuses to use my washing machine. 40 degrees would do it too, she says. When we inspect the machine that’s in the basement next to the dryer, it doesn’t say much. But in the report that I receive later, I learn that my devices are outdated and not very energy-efficient. “You fill your washing machine optimally,” it says at least. When it comes to the washing temperature, it is certified that I can save up to 60 percent electricity by lowering it from 60 degrees to 30 or even 20 degrees. They won’t get me for that.

Can’t Teens Pool Their Pizza Baking Times?

The gas boiler in the basement is also older, but the pipes are perfectly insulated against heat loss, which is noted positively. The water tank is big, maybe it could be set to a few degrees less instead of 55 degrees. It is also well insulated.

The individual devices – as I said, there are a great many – do not interest my consultant as much as our electricity and gas consumption overall. So I haul out the folders with the latest bills. Meanwhile, one of the teenagers heats the oven to 250 degrees because he wants to eat a frozen pizza. I wonder if the baking times couldn’t be bundled in some way, in the manner of earlier bakehouses, because as soon as the oven is cold again, the next child wants to make a pizza.

We used around 3000 kilowatt hours in the past billing period. Wrzesniak opens the “electricity mirror Germany” on the Internet (everyone can do it themselves). We enter the type of living and the number of people in the household in a text field – and to my surprise we are a relatively economical household in comparison. Apparently, replacing our light bulbs with LED lights made a difference.

The balance is less favorable for the gas we use for heating, cooking and hot water. I myself am a frugal showerer. But that’s because I hardly ever go to the bathroom – there’s always one in there. Body hair is abolished in youth, and goosebumps don’t shave well, so we have it rippling almost endlessly. And I hear it jingling: my money down the drain.

The heating shock

We use around 22,500 kilowatt hours a year. There is also a separate calculator for this: the «heating mirror». According to the results, more heating energy is consumed in our house than in similar houses. The costs are therefore 13.40 euros per square meter and year. This is of course a slap in the face, literally – and unfortunately it can hardly be changed without major investments.

The house is old, built in a cheap way and completely uninsulated. At the same time, it is a listed building, which means, among other things, that we cannot simply replace our leaking wooden double box windows with insulating windows. Insulation is only possible from the inside. An aesthetic nightmare, and we really don’t have an inch of space to give away.

I invest 30 euros so that my advisor can do a “building check”. I also get his balance sheet in writing a few days later. I can only score points with a well-insulated roof. All other values ​​are bad. What else can you expect with the simplest masonry and leaking windows with single glazing?

A list of the individual measures “funded by BAFA” also comes with the post. BAFA is the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control. For example, it promotes solar systems and heat pumps, both of which are out of the question for us. A solar system forbids the monument protection, and a heat pump often requires underfloor heating or additional new radiators. That would be too expensive.

What are my teenagers and I doing with the newly gained knowledge? Basically everything is going right. If we want to continue to save, then the only way to do it is to do without: take shorter and colder showers, heat less, bake in a coordinated manner. Buying a new refrigerator and a new dishwasher seems feasible and sensible. But how long will it take until the purchase price is reflected in the electricity costs saved? That depends on how much less the new device consumes, says Daniela Wrzesniak. Months or years? “More like years.”