SmartZone

Programmable thermostats work well during the times of year when temperatures are consistently hot or cold. You can set your thermostat to the appropriate heat or cool mode and forget about it. But they aren't as effective nor convenient when fluctuating temperatures are the norm. Home owners and businesses are forced to repeatedly change the modes to adjust for each day's conditions. Recent weather across much of the country has provided an example of the unpredictable temperatures the fall and spring seasons bring. These conditions are when smart thermostats are true heroes of energy efficiency and your nerves.

Holiday lights can increase the average customer bill by $20 to $40 during the holiday season. But it doesn't have to be if you make the right changes to your holiday lighting display. Energy efficient lighting goes beyond day to day applications around your house. It can provide much needed relief for your wallet during the holiday season too. So relax and enjoy some more egg nog as we give you the gift of 5 tips to make your holiday lighting more energy efficient.

On November 3rd AEP Ohio announced an extension of the application deadline for participating in the 2014 energy efficiency incentives programs. In order to qualify for incentives under the 2014 program a final application, signifying that installation of all equipment has been completed, must now be submitted to AEP by the year's end.

The lighting isle at your local home improvement stores used to be very easy to navigate. All you had to decide was did you want a 40-watt bulb or a 60-watt one and did you want soft white or standard. Now those same isles are filled with light bulbs of all shapes, sizes, colors, and types. Incandescent, compact florescent (CFL), Halogen, LED, dimmable, non-dimmable, outdoor, indoor, make the madness stop! When presented with so many options it's easy to become overwhelmed. And when people become overwhelmed they rely upon what they know, or what they're most familiar with. More often than not, the factors of price and light color are what the average consumer bases their purchase decision upon. While that may have been fine in the past it's not today. Why? You're costing yourself 1000's of dollars!

A new startup company called Honest Buildings is striving to heat up the competition between buildings to promote making more of them green. The company has created a web site which aggregates data from a variety of sources including public databases, building owners, and companies which provide green products and services to create transparency and go-to reference for green building information. Their ultimate vision is to create a site where potential building space lessors could compare buildings to find those with lower energy costs due to energy efficiency technologies used within them. They also aim to provide a system which enables building owners to distribute RFPs and contractors and service providers to respond them for energy efficiency projects such as installing building energy management systems.

How much you pay for your business' electric utility bill is determined by a number of factors. Most of us are familiar with actual electric consumption being a factor, but many are unaware of an equally important factor called peak demand. Peak demand is the greatest amount of electrical consumption your building requires at any single point in time. The more electric consuming devices and systems you have running at the same time, the higher your demand. More importantly, devices containing power supplies, compressors, motors, or pumps require a higher initial amount of electric to operate until they are up to speed or capacity. An example would be an air conditioner or furnace. On the air conditioner the compressor has to power up along with a motor for the blower which pushes the cooled air through your ducts. With the furnace, even gas furnaces has blowers to push the heated air through the ducts.

When considering energy efficiency projects for your facilities it's important to ensure you're taking all the financial benefits into account. Most organizations have a firm understanding of the savings from a resulting reduction in energy consumed but often overlook or are unaware of less obvious or indirect windfalls created by these types of projects. These oversights can make a significant difference in the ROI and thus potentially cause a feasible project to look unfavorable. Here are some areas of savings to take into consideration for all energy efficiency projects:

The best ways of making our businesses and homes more energy efficient are the ones which cost little or nothing to implement and do not effect the comfort of our environment or the use of devices we rely on. One of the devices most commonly used in people's daily lives, computers, are a significant source of energy consumption. But, it's not like we're going to start using them less or stop using them altogether to save energy either. Fortunately when it comes to computers there is a painless, cost-effective solution; use laptops instead of desktops whenever possible.