Summer months bring some of the highest energy bills of the year. But why? Cooling your home accounts for a large portion of your monthly energy use, and the hotter it gets, the harder your air conditioner works to keep you cool.
One of the great things about being part of San Isabel Electric is that we’re locally owned by you, our members. So instead of making profits, we can focus on helping our community. That’s why we’ve developed incentives and programs to help you keep your money in your wallet.
Save money with these easy incentives and programs:
Rebates – San Isabel Electric offers nearly two dozen ways to give you money back for efficient equipment you purchase, like heat pumps and water heaters. Many of our rebates can be claimed by simply filling out a form. Find a list of all our rebates at siea.com/rebates.
Recycle – If you have an old refrigerator or freezer that’s running but is not used much, it’s costing you. Contact us to get it recycled and receive $60. EnergyStar.gov has a nifty calculator to find out how much getting rid of an old refrigerator or freezer could save you, or to calculate the savings of replacing your main fridge/freezer. You can also save a few bucks by adjusting your refrigerator and freezer’s temperature, so they don’t run as often.
Take Control of Your Use – Use SmartHub, our account management app, to track your energy use. You can even get alerts when your use spikes so you can make changes in real time. Visit siea.com/smarthub to sign-up or download the app.
Free Energy Assessments – Our energy advisors can determine the overall efficiency of your home or business and help you with ways to improve it. Our Empower program provides free energy assessments to evaluate energy savings opportunities. Professional in-person energy assessments are available for homes and commercial businesses and include appliances, heating and cooling equipment, water heating equipment, insulation, venting, outdoor power equipment, and electric vehicles. Or, you can also do it yourself with our interactive self-home energy assessment tool. Visit siea.com/empower/#assessments to request an in-person assessment or start your own self-assessment online.
Turn up the thermostat – The U.S. Department of Energy estimates heating and cooling account for 48 percent of home energy consumption. “You can save as much as 10% a year on heating and cooling by simply turning your thermostat back 7°-10°F for 8 hours a day from its normal setting,” according to energy.gov’s programmable thermostat webpage.
Add fans – Adding fans can have quite a chilling effect on your comfort level and electric bill. We’re not talking about small fans. We’re talking big fans! Fans that use very low amounts of electricity. Small fans, like the ones that stand on a pedestal that you can plug into the wall, or small ceiling fans, rely on speed to create small turbulent air streams that quickly disperse air. Therefore, they typically use a lot of electricity. Whole house fans, like QuietCool, can reduce your cooling costs by 50-90% if you have central air conditioning. If you’re using an evaporative cooler, or a swamp cooler, as we southern Coloradoan’s call them, a whole house fan might not reduce your cooling costs, but they can make your home feel five to ten degrees cooler within minutes.
Then there are high-volume-low-speed (HVLS) fans, which rely on size, not speed, to minimize energy usage by moving more air at a lower speed.
San Isabel Electric is an authorized QuietCool whole house fan dealer and a Hunter Fan vendor. Which means you can purchase any fan from those companies directly from us. Plus, we offer zero-percent financing for up to a year. So, you can pay for your energy efficiency improvements through your electric bill. Our prices are often the same or lower than local competitors.
We also sell water heaters, HVAC systems, and more. To check out our energy efficiency products visit siea.com/empower.
Most people don’t know everything about electricity, and that’s why we’re here to help you. There are no investors making profits here. Just knowledgeable people with local jobs, working for our neighbors to ensure there is electricity available when you need it. Contact us and we can work with you to find more ways to save energy — and money.
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