Energy Savings for Your Home
Our customers count on us for energy to power every moment of every day and for solutions to power a sustainable tomorrow. We want to encourage you to be energy efficient.
Here are a few tips to help you reduce your electricity use and save money on your electric bills.
General Tips
- Set refrigerator temperatures between 37 and 40 degrees (F). Clean the coils. Keep the refrigerator stocked; it takes more energy to cool an empty refrigerator.
- When washing clothes, use warm or cold water and rinse with cold. Air dry clothes, but not indoors as this creates unwanted mould and moisture problems.
- Shut off lights, computers and other electronic appliances when you’re not using them. Many computer monitors have a sleep mode setting which, when activated, greatly reduces energy consumption.
Lighting
- Lighting accounts for about 15 percent of a typical residential utility bill. So, turn off the lights when not in use.
- Electric lighting also adds extra heat to a space that must be cooled by air conditioning in the summer.
- To improve energy efficiency even more, replace the light bulbs in your home with LED lights.
- Install dimmer switches to save energy and extend the life of light bulbs
- For outdoor security lights, install lights with motion detectors so they only come on when needed.
Kitchen
- Use energy-saving products such as small electric pans or toaster ovens to cook small meals instead of heating your large stove or oven.
- Save considerable energy by using your microwave oven and pressure cooker whenever possible. They cook quickly using less energy.
- Foods will cook faster and use less energy if you put lids on the pots and pans and make sure they’re the right size for the burner.
- Preheat the oven only when the recipe calls for it. There’s no need to preheat the broiler.
- When you open the oven door to peek at food inside you lose 25-75 degrees of heat. Look through the oven window or wait until the food is almost done before opening the door.
- If you have a self-cleaning oven, clean it immediately after use. Because it’s already hot, it will take less energy to get to the heat cleaning stage.
- Let hot foods cool on the counter before putting them in your refrigerator or freezer. Hot foods cause the unit to work longer and harder.
- If cold air is escaping around the refrigerator door seal, adjust or replace the seal. To check, close the door on a dollar bill. If it’s easy to pull out, cold air is escaping.
- Set the temperature in your refrigerator between 35 and 38 degrees, and the Freezer between 0 and 5 degrees F.
Appliances
- Look for the Energy Star label for when buying home appliances.
- Avoid leaving transformers and charging units for appliances and battery-operated devices (e.g cell phones, tools) on when they are not being used.
- Defrost your refrigerator’s freezer regularly so it can operate more efficiently.
- Use the right temperature setting for your refrigerator and freezer. Keeping foods colder than necessary costs more and rarely pays off in extended shelf life.
- Vacuum and clean the condenser coils, motor and evaporator pan of your refrigerator once or twice a year.
- Leave space between your refrigerator and the surrounding walls and cabinets to allow air to circulate around the coils.
- Organize your refrigerator and freezer to avoid leaving the door open while you locate items.