About once per month or so, everyone that has electric service receives a bill from their power company, whether through the mail, email, a website or an app.
If you’re like most people, you probably send the amount due to your power company by the due date listed without really digging into the numbers.
But, if you’re interested in becoming a smarter energy consumer, understanding what your bill is telling you is an excellent place to start.
Let’s look at four key tips that can help you understand your power bill:
1. Check how many… >>
As the first day of summer approaches, temperatures are heating up around most parts of the country, which means higher power bills for most.
If you’re looking to minimize the increases to your power bills over the summer months, there are fortunately a lot of different strategies that you can take.
You could, for example, add a smart thermostat to your home, which could lead to savings of 15 percent or more on your cooling costs. You could also upgrade to energy-efficient >>
With hot summer weather just around the corner, now is a great time to begin thinking about how you can improve the energy efficiency of your home and prevent sky-high bills.
While some energy-saving upgrades require a significant financial investment on your part, there are fortunately plenty of low-cost ways to make your home’s energy use a bit more manageable.
Let’s take a look at four of these strategies and the estimated savings you can expect:
1. Prevent hot summer air from getting into your home.
A drafty home can cause your cooli… >>
Like other areas of society, there has been a data revolution in the energy industry in recent years. In the past, power companies delivered data to customers only in the form of paper bills with basic information, usually the total amount of energy used over the month and the dollar amount owed.
Today, however, many consumers have greater access to their energy data than ever before due to the implementation of smart meters by power companies and the arrival of WiFi-connected devices in the home, like smart thermostats, smart appliances and smart lighting.
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In the past, most consumers didn’t have many options (if any at all) when it comes to paying for the electricity that they use at home. However, with smart grids in place in many areas of the country, power companies are now able to offer different options.
Depending on what kind of energy consumer you are, these rate plans m… >>
Over the last decade, there has been considerable progress in updating our power grids, which until recently had remained largely unchanged since the early days of electric power. Using digital technologies, like smart meters and sensors, today’s modern “smart grids” are optimizing the delivery of power to your home and around your community.
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Along with changing leaves, cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice everything, fall means cooler temperatures. During this brief respite between the heat of the summer and cold of the winter, now is the perfect time to make your home more energy efficient.
Even if you’re mostly remaining at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic or not able to make significant financial investments in energy efficiency at this time, there are still many impactful steps that you can take to reduce your home’s energy consumption.
Here are five ways to improve your home’s energy e… >>
Today, solar panels, electric vehicles, energy storage and other technologies are garnering a lot of attention as we look for ways to decarbonize the economy and address climate change. But there’s one important area that sometimes overlooked in this conversation: energy efficiency.
Energy efficiency means using >>
The dog days of summer are in full swing, and you have probably noticed some changes in your energy bills accompanying the heatwaves. COVID-19 quarantine precautions of staying at home may have also contributed to higher bills these last few months. Why do energy bills go up during extreme weather months?
There are two reasons: weather impacts how much energy you use, and ene… >>
As new technologies are developed and introduced to various aspects of our lives, it can be difficult to decide which upgrades are worth committing to. Despite previous directives to use less electricity, there’s now reason to use more as electricity generation becomes cleaner. Beneficial electrification is the process of switching your energy sources from direct fossil fuel burning to electricity, which can be generated using renewable energy and low-carbon sources.
The three main goals of beneficial electrification for consumers are lowering prices, increasing the re… >>
