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…
Previously, in part 1, Claudia Richter from OhmConnect explains how easy it is to get started with Demand Response. In part 2 of our interview, she now talks about the future of smart grids where residents get to “orchestrate” their energy use. In the future, people get to seamlessly be 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 part 1, Patti shares with us why local communities need to energy efficiency. It’s not only good for climate change, the electric grid but also lower all of our utility bills. This is part 2 of our interview with Patti where we cover how reducing energy bills is much Read more…
Sometimes, we hear people complain about unfair or wrong electricity pricing. They may say something like, “there is no way I used twice as much electricity though my bill doubled.” Well, they are almost always right. (Occasionally, we see some device start malfunctioning that is actually using more electricity.) However, Read more…
As a reminder, refrigeration is part of “always on” or idle load, one of the five ways to lower energy bills. We have a 3-part series on reducing electric idle load outside of refrigeration costs. Most of the time, we recommend installing timers or smart plugs to limit this waste Read more…
This article is part of a collection of articles devoted to cutting utility bills, including cheaper electric and gas bills. We cover recommendations based on five ways to cut your energy bills. This is part 3 on handling a high electric idle load. Read part 1 and part 2 if Read more…
This article is part of a collection of articles devoted to cutting utility bills, including cheaper electric and gas bills. We cover recommendations for different types of high utility bills. As always, we first look at the easiest fixes with the lowest upfront costs for energy conservation. This is part Read more…
This article is part of a collection of articles devoted to cutting utility bills, including cheaper electric and gas bills. We cover recommendations for different types of high utility bills. FYI, we explain things in terms of five our categories of energy use. In this article, we will look at Read more…