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The Deans of Green

10 Ways to Cut Utility Bills

Martin Holladay, Senior Editor, GreenBuildingAdvisor.com

13 users recommend

The energy-saving measures at the base of the pyramid give you the biggest bang for your buck. Click to enlarge.

Photo: Minnesota Power

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Here's a ten-step program that's guaranteed to reduce your utility costs.

The steps are not set in stone; every house is different, and different climates may dictate different strategies, which will be determined as soon as you take the first step.

1. Get a home energy audit
Before beginning any energy retrofit work, have a home energy audit done to identify and prioritize problem areas.

A good home energy audit always includes a blower-door test. To be sure your auditor is well trained, choose one certified by RESNET or BPI.

The audit can cost as much as $600. Subsidies are available from some utilities and local governments, so check there first.

Why spend money on an energy audit?

• When considering energy retrofit work, most homeowners prioritize the wrong steps. An energy audit provides valuable information to counterbalance misleading advertising pitches for worthless products.


• Your audit is likely to reveal unseen defects in your home — for example, thermal bypasses (air leaks) through convoluted, hidden chases, or insulation gaps revealed by an infrared camera.


• At the end of your audit, you’ll receive a customized list of the most important energy retrofit steps for your house — a list that may differ from your assumptions (or even from the recommendations of the energy conservation pyramid).


• By identifying the most important retrofit tasks for your specific house, a good audit can save you hundreds of dollars that might have been wasted on inappropriate work.

2. Unplug and turn off

This step, though obvious, is often neglected: turn things off.

Inattention and laziness are responsible for a significant amount of energy waste; this step off can yield significant savings for a very small investment. To lower your electric bill:

• Turn off the lights when you leave a room.


• Turn off appliances that aren’t being used.


• When not in use, unplug chargers for cell phones and similar battery-operated gadgets.


• Put televisions and other “instant on” appliances on a plug strip — and remember to turn off the plug strip when the appliance isn’t in use.

3. Use efficent light bulbs
The next step is very cost-effective: make sure your house is incandescent-free. Since most LED lamps are still less efficient than CFLs — and far more expensive — CFLs are still the best lamp for most fixtures.

For kitchens and basements, consider installing fixtures that use efficient linear fluorescent tubes (T5 or T8 tubes).

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Green Building Myth #1: It's More Expensive

Comments (1)

armature writes: I was surprised not to see anything about using a programmable thermostat. Because you can get it to start heating your house early enough so it’s already comfortable when you get up, you can afford to set the overnight temperature way back, saving lots of energy. A 7-day programmable thermostat can accommodate odd schedules such as 3-day work weeks and so on; other simpler-to-program ones allow you one schedule for weekdays and another for weekend days. The myth that if you set a thermostat too low you’ll use more energy reheating the house than you’ve saved, is false both in scientific theory and reality.
Posted: 8:37 am on October 17th

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