The typical U.S. family spends more than $1,600/yr on home energy bills, and a large portion of that is energy wasted. Most people want to reduce their bills but are not sure where to start, or what change will make the biggest difference.
Here is the catch: There isn’t one magic thing you can do, but there are many small steps you can take that will collectively add up. You can do several things without spending a dime, and you can do even more by spending a little bit of money.
1. Set your thermostat a degree higher for air-conditioning and a degree lower for heating. This could save you as much as $100/yr on your energy bill.
Cost: $0
2. Install a programmable thermostat for your heating and cooling systems. It can save you $100/yr or more, especially if you spend a lot of time away from home.
Cost: $80 more or less (example at Amazon.com)
3. Buy a Kill-A-Watt device to track the power consumption of any appliance in your home. You can calculate your electrical expenses by the day, week, month, even an entire year. Also check the quality of your power by monitoring Voltage, Line Frequency, and Power Factor. This little device could potentially save you many times its cost.
Cost: $20-$50 at Amazon (Manufacturer’s site)
4. Eliminate wasteful standby power and save on your energy bills by unplugging devices that you are not using. Ten percent of power consumption in your home is from devices that are turned off or in stand-by mode. You can unplug these devices manually, or use a power strip with a built-in feature, such as Monster Digital with GreenPower.
Cost: $47 and up at Amazon.
5. Lighting represents about 25% of home energy costs. The obvious solution is to turn off the lights in your home that you don’t use. Zero cost, big savings. Go a step further and, as your incandescent bulbs go out, replace them with CFLs, or even better LEDs. Compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) use as much as 70% less energy than incandescent bulbs and can save you as much as $10 per bulb per year. LEDs (light emitting diode bulbs) are slowly becoming widely available, although still a bit expensive, however they use 80% less energy over traditional bulbs and last 25 times longer.
Cost: $0 (turn off the lights) to $10 per CFL bulb (more for LEDs).
