How can you know if your existing home’s heating and cooling systems are efficient? New homes are often modeled in software before they are constructed, and in many states this model is required to result in a certain level of heating and cooling efficiency. But after a home has been Read more…
It’s logical that household energy use will go up while we’re all spending more time at home. But how much more? Ohmconnect thinks it may be as much as $1.2B in increased utility bills for California residents. Ouch! Happily, there’s lots of low- and no-cost things we can do to reduce our home energy Read more…
Lisa Schmidt from HEA talks about a free program to lower energy bills for Californians. HomeIntel focuses on “easy savings” with no purchases or $20-25 devices. Fyi, the California Energy Commission (CEC) supported HEA and volunteers to put together this educational website. This is part 3 of our interview with Read more…
This is part 3 of an interview with Bruce Mast, who runs Peninsula Climate Comfort, a pilot program to help California residents go from using natural gas appliances to using electric ones. This is often called beneficial electrification. The benefits include more comfort, safer, healthier and helping reduce pollution and Read more…
Message from San Mateo County We recently heard that San Mateo County residents can receive a $35 reward for recycling a used, working refrigerator or freezer. It’s through a new program from Peninsula Clean Energy, the county’s electricity provider. Go to PeninsulaCleanEnergy.com/fridge for details. According to Peninsula Clean Energy, “households can Read more…
In part 1 and part 2 of this interview, Patti talks about how our communities really need energy efficiency and how easy it is if people knew to focus on unnecessary waste. This is part 3 of the interview where she shares examples from her energy coaching where people were Read more…
In the article Five Ways to Reduce Energy Bills, we mentioned that variable use as one of the foreground loads to your energy bill. We covered reducing variable electric use previously. Now, we will talk about how to lower your bills for variable natural gas use. People are often more Read more…
If your household use lots of devices turning on at various times of the day (and night), it can get quite hard to figure out what is really giving you high electric bills. In our experience, it hardly means giving up your favorite activities or becoming less comfortable. Recall from Read more…
In the article Five Ways to Reduce Energy Bills, we mentioned that recurring use as one of the background loads to your electricity or energy bill. Your recurring load comes from devices that come on at the same time every day. In the background, they are easy to forget about Read more…
We’ve covered how to reduce summer bills in a two-part series. For winter, we’ve also covered expensive resistive electric heating. This is part 1 of a two-part series about cutting winter bills by looking at how to reduce inefficient space heating. In this article, we first cover things you can Read more…