This the first article of a two part series looking at the relationship between energy and pets. Nearly seventy percent of American households are home to a pet, resulting in a collective count of over 400 million fish, dogs, cats, Read more…
Note: This is a two-part series about reducing your summer electric bill. AskDrPower receives no financial incentive for references made to third-party services. They are there for your information only. In part 1, we covered the easy wins. In this Read more…
Some of you might be asking what is a heat pump? It doesn’t sound like an air conditioner, but people are saying you can use one instead. Does a “heat pump” heat or cool a place? A heat pump Read more…
In a nutshell, Demand Response (DR) is getting paid for using less electricity when others are pigging out. When everyone wants electricity at the same time, it’s called peak demand. Here is a definition from energy.gov. DR programs rewards those who Read more…
kWh stands for kilowatt-hour. On your electric bill, it’s a unit of how much electricity you used. For a water bill, nearly everyone has an intuition of how much a gallon is. We know that flushing the toilet is a Read more…
You used more electricity this month, but why is the bill this much higher?! First of all, check out our article on What is a kWh if you have no idea what a kWh is. It covers how to get a Read more…
What can you do to lower your electric bill without sweating in your home all summer? We have lots of ideas from working with different families over the years. Let’s first start with the easy wins and simple DIY ideas. Read more…
The smart home is coming. If it’s so smart, can it help me figure out how to cut my utility bills or manage the cost of maintaining my home? It seems like right now all these “smart speakers” do is Read more…
Idle load is what your home is costing you when no one is using anything. It’s called “idle” load because it’s the cost of your home idling. If you kept your car idling outside, it’s still using gas. Well, idle load Read more…
This is part 3 of a three-part series about standby power. If you’ve been reading up on reducing utility bills, you might be hearing about terms like “standby power”, “vampire power”, “phantom load”, or “idle load”. In this article, we Read more…