If every month, your electricity bill makes you feel despondent, it’s time to do some tinkering.
The average U.S. household drops $135.25 per month on their electric bill, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Our homes are major energy guzzlers, which means they contribute to our planet’s rising temperatures. In fact, 20% of U.S. global warming emissions come from homes (that’s more than cars).
And so, lowering your electric bill is a great goal: doing so will benefit both your wallet and the health of the planet. Fortunately, there are plenty of accessible ways to reduce your bill. Find six of them below.
1. Prioritize energy efficiency
What is energy efficiency, exactly? The term means using less energy to do a certain job. When energy is efficiently used, less energy is wasted, which helps you save costs and help the environment. (Saving energy reduces pollution and conserves natural resources — all good things for a healthy planet.)
You want your home appliances to meet — and exceed — home efficiency standards. When it comes to ratings, the Energy Star label is a good one to go by.
The heating and cooling of your home is the biggest energy-sucking culprit of your space, so prioritizing efficiency in these realms is key. HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) consumes more than half of the energy U.S. households use to power their homes.
You can’t forgo home heating and cooling altogether. Instead, the fix here is to opt for energy-efficient products when you’re ready to update your equipment.
Electric heat pumps tend to be the most energy-efficient and cost-effective option for heating and cooling your home. Heat pumps don’t create heat; instead, they move it from the surrounding air into (or out of) your home to affect your home climate. They’re even more efficient than other electric options, using ¼ the energy to do the same job.
Quilt’s system adds on an extra layer of efficiency: With its smart technology, Quilt ensures no energy goes to waste. Features like room-by-room control let you change the temperature of any room (and you can do this straight from the mobile app, without needing to set foot in a room), and temperature preconditioning ensures unoccupied rooms aren’t needlessly cooled or heated.
2. Conduct an energy audit
This is a pretty smart and simple way to ensure your house is running efficiently on a holistic level. You could have the greatest HVAC system in the world, but if all the hot air on the inside is escaping through a faulty seal on one of your windows, well, that’s not really so efficient.
To conduct the audit, enlist the help of your utility provider: Oftentimes, your local power company will do an audit for free, you just need to reach out to schedule it. An expert will check your home for energy and efficiency problems — things like faulty seals, leaky ductwork, and poor insulation — and then make recommendations to improve these inefficiencies. Doing an energy audit can help identify some opportunities to save energy (and money), check for any safety concerns, and even increase a home’s resale value.
To find an auditor, you can check out the Residential Services Network.
3. Stop wasting energy on empty rooms
Heating or cooling your kids’ rooms when they’re off at school? Wasteful. Keeping your bedroom lights on when you’re on vacation? Also wasteful. Surely you can imagine some other home habits — allowing the ceiling fan to spin into oblivion, leaving a window open while your AC’s on blast — that decrease your home’s efficiency and jack up the monthly statement on your energy bill.
We’ve all been guilty of committing at least one of these household faux pas in our lifetime, so don’t beat yourself up. The power is in noticing the waste and then doing something about it. Spread the word among your housemates that you’ll no longer be running fans for ghosts, and watch as your electric bill decreases little by little.
Again, Quilt’s smart technology levels things up: Quilt knows when a room is occupied or empty, and will only expend energy when someone’s around to benefit.
4. Don’t slip on maintenance
Those energy-efficient appliances won’t run as efficiently if they’re not in tip top shape. You’ll want to keep up to date with the maintenance recommendations that most user manuals recommend.
In the case of your Quilt, you’ll want to inspect both the indoor and outdoor unit filters on a monthly basis, and clean the indoor unit filters every three months. You can find more information on maintenance in our guide for cleaning your Quilt.
5. Use less hot water
After HVAC, it’s hot water that contributes to the high cost of your energy bill. While cold plunging is all the rage, freezing showers aren’t for everyone — and they don’t have to be.
You can start lowering your bill by taking shorter showers (even shaving off a few minutes can make a difference), running your washing machine on cold (which will also keep your clothes looking better for longer), and turning off the tap when you brush your teeth. Seeking out energy-efficient dishwashers and washing machines will also help you waste less and save more.
6. Let the government help you out
The U.S. government wants you to run your home more efficiently because doing so benefits all of us.
Enter the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), an enormous climate and health care package that was signed into law in 2022. The intention of the bill, in part, is to incite a massive renewable energy boom across the U.S. that will curb emissions by up to 40 percent. As part of the IRA, Uncle Sam is offering plenty of rebates to Americans for choosing electric heat pumps, solar panels, vehicles, and more. While the rebates won’t directly impact your energy bill, they will lower the costs of your purchases, which can go a long way.
Many of these rebates can save you thousands (and thousands) of dollars — the number will vary depending on what home improvement you’re focused on and which state you live in, since the rebates are managed at the state level. You can find more information on the U.S. Department of Energy website.
We at Quilt are so jazzed by this program that we’ve built the savings into our purchasing process. When you reserve a Quilt, your Quilt Advisor will work with you to ensure you take advantage of every applicable rebate — and then those savings will be applied to your bill upfront.
Beyond rebates, you can qualify for tax credits up to $3,200 a year in tax credits for making energy efficient updates to your home. Check out the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit page on the IRS website to learn more about these potential savings.