Done those, every socket in the house save one.  Our PG&E bill was $49 this month, up from $29 the past month.  But found a draft through the kitty-door to the garage.  I'll be plugging that tonight--cat generally ignores it anyway, and we had to move the box inside or face her wrath.

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Oh, and multiple spouses really helps you stay warmer at night.  Another tip.

Another place to look is for appliances that use power even when off.

I once did a throrough audit of my home for invisible energy wasters.  I yanked out what added up to a 240-watt continuous load that was doing absolutely nothing.

A TV that used 9 watts when off;

Two "backup power supplies" for my computers that each used 20 watts continuously when idle;

My cable modem uses 5 watts continuously -- it's now on a switched power strip;

And other assorted slow leaks of wasted energy that I can't remember right now, but added up to quite a sum.

(Oh yeah, and stuck a compact fluorescent in my porch light.  Anything that is on for long periods benefits greatly from even small reductions in consumption.)

My electrical consumption dropped 60 percent.

And Random, I suspect my next hotel stop will sleep three women.  So there.

Well, some of us is just pickier than others, I guess, Hardliner...

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By the way, check supermarkets--due to a PG&E subsidy, those compact florescents are often sold at FOUR TO THE DOLLAR.  Albertsons had 'em last time I stocked up.

Hee hee...

I saw those bargains.  Sam's Club had them last time I stocked up.  (I try to shop at Costco now when possible, but there wasn't always a Costco nearby, so I have a Sam's membership.)

Kill-A-Watt...

I built one of my own.  I'm an electronics whiz and a woodworker.

Way too many hobbies.  At least some visiting spice last weekend gave us a break.

And if you want to keep your energy costs down in the summer, there's always...

Barbecue!!!

I bought a Weather Station that monitors the indoor & outdoor temperature, along with wind gust, humidity inside & out, etc. Now that is winter, I watch the indoor temperature and do not turn on the heater unless it is below 68 degrees in the house.

The bad side of this is that my daughters room at the back of the house, always seems cold. But when I relocated the weather station back there it showed the same temperature! I can't figure that out, as it seems her room is always freezing.

Also, I want to go and get a magnetic thing for the vent - we have two vents in the den which is the closed room to the heating unit in garage. The den is small, and heat just blasts out of those vents!

Tom and Anglo,

give me more info on the heater vents if you would please. The den in our house is located next to the garage where the AC/FAU unit is. So the two vents in the den blast heat. So if I close off one vent using the magnetic thingy, that will force the heat into the rest of the vents, right? But then, in the hallway, where we have our four recliners (ha, ha) there is a huge vent, so should I close that one off too? Or is it truly a vent or only where the ac screen thingys are changed?

and.... you can quit laughing at me now....

Bakonative, what you trying to do is balance the system.  My guess would be that you should cover one of the vents in the office.  You may even want to cover half of the other one if you're still getting too much heat.  The large vent in your hallway is probably a return vent.  This is where your HVAC unit draws air in.  When you turn on your system, if you hold a sheet of tissue near the vent, it should be pulled towards it.  Don't cover this.

There are some screens and I'm glad you brought it up.  Everyone should check the filters on their air systems yearly.  The filter will be in the unit itself.  If you can't find it, PG&E will come out for free to check your pilot light.  When they are there, you can ask them about your filters.

I don't think the vent needs moved. I think that the Installer didn't use any vibration cushions for the Furnace, or main return duct. It's probably nailed/screwed directly to the house framing. The noise that you're hearing is probably vibration through the wall, floor or ceiling (wnatever it's attached to). The empty pockets between the studs and plaster act like a drum and actually amplify the noise.

I installed a Whole House Fan in the ceiling above my stairway several years ago, and attached the frame directly to the ceiling joists. When it was runnung, you couldn't hear the TV over the noise. I took it out and fashioned some vibration pads out of foam insulation tape. It did the trick. We can still hear it run, but the noise is more from the fan blades hitting air. If you crack enough windows to eliminate the vacuum, it quiets down a lot. The fan is 4 feet in diameter and has 5 blades.

It CAN effect only the attic/roof framing. The distence of the return air chase isn't as much a factor as the paterial that it's made of, and the method of attachment to the house framing. Maybe the Furnace is sitting directly on the ceiling joists. If that's the case, it'd be an easy thing to lift it slightly (maybe 1/2 inch max) and slide some dense foam biscuits under it. It's really not hard and would take maybe 30 minutes.

My upstairs return air chase is about 8 feet from the Furnace and it's made of foam insulation lined sheet metal. The Furnace at the end of it is suspended (horizontally) from the rafters on metal straps. There is a soft joint between them.

My downstairs return air chase is about 18 feet long and actually boxed into the framing with plywood, with the seams calked and sealed. The Furnace at the end sits on top of the opening, with a thick, rather dense foam gasket for vibration damping. It also has metal support straps attached to the rafters.

They're both very quiet, but the downstairs set-up seems to be the best.

And you won't even get a thank-you from the power company

Here in Long Island, NY, ads for the Power-Save 1200 are on TV. "Reduce electric usage by OPTIMIZING the power to each of you appliances!"

With a single box wired into the main circuit panel. Ha!

JW

Answer:
The Power-Save 1200 people even go on to say that the thing's a whole-house surge protector.

I was interested to see the "university study" (PDF) that allegedly confirms this gadget's effectiveness. It's from Santa Clara University, which is a real institution with a real engineering department, and the authors appear to be real people. But this study starts out reading like a rah-rah piece for the Power-Save, and then fails to actually support the claims made for the thing. If the study's to be believed then the Power-Save - or, at least, the device they tested - really is a power factor corrector of some kind (I've talked about them before, here and here). But since few (if any) countries bill household electricity consumers by power factor, that doesn't matter.

Household electricity meters, as I've mentioned before, ignore power factor very effectively. Swap out the old-style PF0.7 power supplies from your twelve computers for new shiny PF0.99 ones, or install a whole-house power factor corrector, and there'll be bugger all difference in the speed at which the little meter wheel goes around. You'll be doing your bit to reduce unnecessary load on the power grid, but you won't be saving any money.

The "study" doesn't mention this. Nor does it say anything about surge protection.

Hey, what about the DoE report (PDF)? Well, that says that "many utility companies" "usually" charge extra for bad power factor. That's true for commercial customers, but I've never heard of it happening for residential ones. It's possible, especially with modern electricity meters that no longer have the spinning disc, but as far as I know power companies usually just install their own capacitor banks in substations, rather than honk off their customers by billing them extra for something they don't even understand.

The DoE report is clearly labelled as being part of their "Motor Challenge" program. That's aimed at industry, not householders; it's talking about production lines, not washing machines. Once again, though, the Power-Save people don't go out of their way to point out that their supporting evidence is not in fact supporting them.

What else have they got? Um, some stuff about tax incentives for energy-efficient products "like the Power-Save 1200!" ...but not actually, you know, including the Power-Save 1200. Actually, the term "power factor" does not seem to be used anywhere on that site.

And then, there are the inevitable testimonials. Like the prominently featured one from one Bob Kleebauer, who's so impressed with the Power-Save that he, uh, promotes it on radio and TV.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Power-Save people have some genuine testimonials, though. People who sell worthless fuel mileage improvers also have them.

(The people on alt.engineering.electrical found the Power-Save so uninteresting that they wandered off into a discussion of more straightforward scams after the first couple of posts.)

 I don't want to derail Tom's thread, but perhaps here's a future topic for this blog: hybrid cars. I'm looking to buy a hybrid, but I'm looking for something meatier than a Prius: room for four and luggage, and a little oomph if I want to get off into the woods.

Save energy in the summer:

Clothesline.

They're fighting over used cooking oil up here on the North Coast.

I agree about the feasibility of hydrogen. Unless it comes from using solar, wind or nighttime hydroelectric power to separate it from water, it's not worth doing. Recharging your electric car, when your electricty comes from fossil fuel, is a cheat to me.  

And ethanol, as we know it now in this country, is inefficient, cost nuetral at best and survives as a federal welfare sop to the midwest.