Lowering Your Summertime Electric Bill

01. Clean house, use a clothesline and hand wash your dishes - Keeping your air conditioner (AC) filters clean helps to save both energy and money. The same goes for cleaning lighting fixtures and ceiling fans. Hanging your clothes outside can save as much as $85 a year on your dryer costs and hand washing your dishes saves water and energy costs rather than using a dishwasher. Even if you only hang your clothes outside or hand wash dishes a few times a week, it still adds up.

02. Plant trees around your house - as little as three trees planted around your home will help with air conditioner costs (and also heating costs in the winter) by adding installation. Check out this link for more information on where to plant and which types of trees are best.

03. Place your electronics on power strips - if you have kids, you know that summer is the time when they are eating away at your wallet with video games, television watching, and computer usage. You can help counter that wallet-munching by hooking all your electronics (TVs, DVD players, computers, video game consoles, satellite or cable receivers, and etcetera) to power strips. Not only are these great for protecting your them from lightning strikes, but they actually turn off your appliances. Because so much these days is built with remote controls, when you turn off something like a TV or video game console, it is really in standby mode, not fully turned off, and is continually soaking up electricity. Flicking the switch on a power strip completely turns them off, saving you money.

04. Grill out more - get outside and cook your lunch and/or dinner on the barbeque instead of using your electric oven or stove. The amount of foods that can be cooked on the grill is astounding, so take advantage of the lovely weather and cook outdoors.

05. Only run ceiling fans when you are in the room - ceiling fans were not built to cool rooms, but the people within that room (by drying the sweat on your skin, according to Bill Nye on an episode of Stuff Happens). Therefore, if no one is in a room and still your ceiling fan is running, you are wasting energy and money. Only use them when you are present.

06. Keep blinds or curtains closed in empty rooms - this will block out the sun's hot rays and keep the temperatures down in rooms that are not being used.

07. Keep the lights off more often - take advantage of the glorious summer sun by using it for a light source rather than turning on a light bulb that will suck away energy (and warm up a room). Better yet, do this year around! If you need to use an artificial light source, keep reading on to #8.

08. Switch to Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFL) - this type of light bulb uses 75% less energy, will save over $30 within its lifetime (lasting ten times longer than a regular incandescent bulb) and pay for itself in just six months according to Energy Star. If one bulb save $30, imagine your savings if you changed out every bulb in your house!

09. Build a solar oven - harnessing the power of the sun will help you cook things like stews, chili, cakes, brownies, cobblers and much more which cannot be done on the barbeque. Solar ovens can be constructed from simple things, like pizza boxes, and need not be elaborate in order to do its job.

10. Use the air conditioner sparingly - unless it is absolutely sweltering, there's no reason to use the air conditioner. As an alternative, when you are home, open windows all over the house. This will allow the breezes to run through your house instead of around it, cooling it naturally by creating a cross draft. Also, when you are not home, set your thermostat on a lower temperature so it will not click on as often when no one is even there to benefit. Having a programmable thermostat really helps with this one.