January 10th is National Cut Your Energy Costs Day

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – January 10th is National Cut Your Energy Costs Day, a day to raise awareness of how homeowners can reduce energy costs and improve energy efficiency.

Eric Pauli, Community Relations Manager for Xcel Energy in Sioux Falls has some tips for cutting energy costs around the home.

“There’s a lot of different things that folks can utilize in order to reduce energy costs, so think of the small things, think of the ceiling fans in your home or closing and opening the shades at various times throughout the day if the sun is shining. Open the shades up and let that warm air in, otherwise making sure you close them at night to keep that cold air out. Checking for cracks throughout your house, check your windows, seals around your doors, things of that nature you can also make sure you’re checking on your furnace filters, those are big energy users if they’re clogged up and full and haven’t been changed out for a long time, you’ll notice it after a while, especially in your energy usage,” said Pauli.

Pauli also has some advice for making the home more efficient.

“A lot of it goes to appliances, energy-efficient appliances are huge now, the technology has advanced a long way as we all know so there are opportunities out there if you’ve got an old refrigerator or an old freezer and you’re due for an upgrade you’re going to notice that in your electric bill, you’re going to notice that you’re using a lot less energy. Xcel Energy actually does have a mobile app so you can actually see that so we’ve installed smart meters throughout the community and within that you can actually see fifteen-minute intervals of your actual usage so say you’ve got an old appliance in your home and you go change that out you might be able to see that usage drop from what you’ve actually had in the past,” said Pauli.