Simple No Cost Actions for Winter

Check your hot water heater’s temperature. If you have a dishwasher you can heat it up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius). If you don’t have a dishwasher you can keep it lower. Try lowering it to 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius). In some homes, those savings have amounted to more than 10-12% of the total energy usage.

Use a hot water heater blanket. If your water heater is in an unheated space like an unfinished basement, wrap it in an insulation blanket to prevent heat loss. They cost about $40 and can be found at your local home improvement store.

Clean or replace your filter every month. A dirty filter makes your furnace work harder, which uses more electricity. Your home improvement store sells permanent filters that you can wash so you don’t have to replace the filter each month. Changing your filters can save you up to $60 a year on heating costs.

Dust and vacuum those radiators and vents. Dust acts as a great insulator and will actually stop the heat from getting to where you need it.

Don’t empty the bath until the water has cooled down. The heat will dissipate into the air. It will also add needed humidity in those winter months.

Open the stove door after cooking. By leaving the oven door open slightly after you have used it to cook you will allow all the heat to move into the room versus it staying put inside your insulated oven.

Use an old towel to block the air at the bottom of the door at night. Putting an old rolled up towel along the base of your door or windowsill will block any drafts from coming through.

See our SAVING $ tab for more ideas.

SaaS-Based Solution Maximizes Energy Efficiency Programs for Utilities and Consumer Service Providers, While Delivering Substantial HVAC Savings to Consumers

EcoFactor, a provider of personalized solutions for managing residential energy use, has announced the availability of its residential energy management solution – making it one of the first companies to offer intelligent, automated action to optimize residential heating and air conditioning (HVAC) usage as well as its first commercial deployment. EcoFactor will participate in the “Take A Load Off, Texas®” residential energy efficiency program sponsored by Oncor, a regulated electric utility delivering power to more than three million homes and businesses in Texas.

EcoFactor’s automated energy management service delivers real benefits to consumers, utilities, energy retailers and home service providers. It offers cost-effective and self-validating energy efficiency, demand response and load forecasting to utilities, energy retailers and consumers. EcoFactor claims its solution provides an estimated 20 to 30 percent reduction in HVAC energy usage without sacrificing comfort or convenience. Given the fact that more than 50 percent of the typical energy bill for American homes goes towards heating and cooling, such HVAC reductions could result in significant cost savings. These benefits flow from EcoFactor’s technology, which analyze and act upon thousands of data points collected throughout the day from the thermostat, local weather stations and other geographic inputs, in order to create a continuously evolving heating and cooling profile for each specific home.

“Most HVAC energy solutions currently available – like the ‘Energy Saver’ mode on many thermostats – follow a one-size-fits-all model. But what works in February won’t work in April, and what works in a new house won’t work in an old one,” said EcoFactor CEO and co-founder John Steinberg. “EcoFactor is a personalized approach to energy management that takes into account thousands of data points, such as weather patterns, a home’s unique thermal characteristics and the occupant’s ever-changing preferences, in order to provide a more effective solution that is responsive to the conditions at each individual home.”

EcoFactor’s participation in the “Take A Load Off, Texas” program comes on the heels of two years of successful field tests in diverse climates, including Minneapolis, Minn. and Adelaide, South Australia. In these trials, the solution’s accurate assessment of the thermal characteristics and occupant preferences reduced manual thermostat overrides by up to 90 percent, eliminating the need for homeowners to constantly readjust their thermostats with the “up” and “down” arrows, while also optimizing HVAC usage for an average cost savings of 20 to 30 percent.

EcoFactor’s optimized HVAC management service enables utilities to realize a greater yield of peak load demand response by accurately assessing each home’s thermal characteristics and creating a customized pre-cooling strategy. The result is an increase in available demand response by as much as 20 percent per home, without sacrifices in occupant comfort.

“EcoFactor’s approach to residential energy management represents a major advancement in the industry,” said Robert King of Good Company Associates, a business development firm specializing in energy efficiency, renewables, and smart grid applications. “The depth to which EcoFactor’s solution automatically generates and implements customized plans for each home provides an important competitive edge in today’s market. Service providers are in need of solutions that lower energy usage and save consumers money without sacrificing comfort or control. That is the future of energy efficiency.”

EcoFactor’s SaaS-based solution operates with a two-way communicating thermostat and a broadband Internet connection, and is hosted on-demand so there is no software to install or maintain.

EcoFactor was founded in 2006 to provide an effective alternative to the current one-size-fits-all residential energy management solutions. More can be found online at www.ecofactor.com.