home energy bills

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How to Read an Energy Guide Label

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

How to Read an Energy Guide Label In an earlier post, I shared about how to use a Kill-a-watt meter to determine home much energy your major home appliances are using. This handy electric meter told me my 1996, 18.2 cubit foot GE refrigerator cost me $137 per year to operate. Newer, energy-efficient refrigerators cost [...]

The Home Solar Energy Learning Curve

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

The Home Solar Energy Learning Curve Worried about home energy costs? Concerned about your impact on the environment? Perhaps you are one of the many Americans who are considering using solar energy for your home. Everywhere you go these days people are gathering to learn about solar energy. Going solar for your home energy needs [...]

Reduce Home Energy with Solar PVs and Solar Hot Water

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

One Example of Net ZEH Is it possible to create a net zero energy home by renovating an existing home?  Yes!  This 2,400 square foot house was built in the 1970s.   With a desire to live sustainably, the homeowners decided to set an energy budget of 10 kWh/day for their home. A budget of $100,000 [...]

Reducing Your Home Energy Use With Simple Maintenance

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Simple Maintenance Can Reducing Your Home Energy Use My husband and I are on a quest. We want to make use of all this Texas sunshine and harness it to replace some of our electric energy. Eventually, we’d love to go completely solar. But our budget dictates we go there in stages. Phase 1 of [...]

Home Energy Price Increase

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Home Energy Price Increases My home utility bill came in January 2008, with a friendly little note saying that my power cooperative was, “…ringing in the new year in 2008 by reducing rates…by $0.0015 per kilowatt-hour beginning with bills rendered after January 1.” Nice! In May, my energy bill came with a little note attached [...]

How Much Energy Does Your Freezer Use?

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

How Much Energy Does Your Freezer Use? Reducing energy consumption begins by knowing how much energy you consume in the first place. Having acquired our electric power monitor, a Kill-A-Watt meter, we are learning where the high-energy consumers are in our home. First, we plugged our refrigerator into the monitor. The results were posted Tuesday, [...]

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