Turns out they're right - in most cases anyway!
For those of you who, like me, didn't know much about the technical side of the 'ol geezer, here's the quick and dirty:
So, the argument for turning your geyser off when you are not at home is that the element will not periodically kick in to heat up the water and, therefore, you'll use less electricity. But this doesn't take into account that once switched off, the water in the geyser eventually cools down completely and, when switched on again, a huge amount of energy is required to heat the water back up to the set temperature. In most cases, more energy than if the element was periodically kicking in throughout the day.
The factors that affect the energy consumption of your geyser are:
So the best ways to help your geyser conserve energy are the following:
So there you have it.
Happy geyser energy conserving!