IDT Energy Savings

In our last post IDT Energy discussed ways to get the heat into your house in a cost saving manner, such as exposing your home to daytime sunshine, lowering your thermostat and installing a programmable thermostat.

Here are some ideas on how to keep the heat you’ve paid so dearly for to stay inside where it belongs:

• When is the last time you checked the insulation in your attic? How about your ceilings, exterior walls, basement walls, crawl spaces and floors? Make sure the insulation is adequate for the climate that you live in. New York can have extremely harsh winters, and good insulation can make a huge difference in your heating costs.
• Check for air leaks around windows and doors, then use caulk and weather stripping to seal them.
• Be sure to replace the filters on your furnace regularly to keep the warm air flowing into your house efficiently.
• IDT Energy wishes you and your family a wonderful warm winter in New York.

Winter in New York is always wonderful. However it can be a challenge to stay warm and cozy without breaking the bank. IDT Energy has some helpful tips to maintain a comfortable and affordable New York winter.

When considering how to control heating costs, its best to take the broad view of the entire house:

• •    During the day the sun is in the south. By keeping the south facing curtains and drapes open, the sun will shine in and help keep your house warm. Don’t forget to close the drapes at night to keep out the cold chill that can come into the house through the glass.
• •    Consider turning down your thermostat a bit. Try to maintain comfort at a lower temperature.
• •    Even better than merely turning down your thermostat, install a programmable thermostat. This handy device can raise the temperature in your home when you are there; lower it when you’re not; and maintain another temperature when you are asleep, all completely automatically. You can actually reduce your heating bill by 10% by just lowering the temperature on your thermostat from 72 degrees down to 65 when you are sleeping or out of the house.

As part of IDT Energy New York’s goal of helping people save on their electric and gas bills, we surf around the internet until we find some great web sites with great money saving tips and advice and share them with you.

Check out this cool web site chock-full of ideas to help you reduce your power bill and help save the planet, too.
Follow the link to “Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.” Check it now!

Now that New York State is de-regulated for the supply of natural gas and electricity, substantial savings on your energy bill with IDT Energy is just a phone call away.

While Con Edison remains the company which delivers your power, New York customers can switch to IDT Energy for their supply of electricity and natural gas. When consumers do this, they can get great rates and seasonal discounts without having to pay a sign-up fee or any other fee, even if they choose to cancel.  Switching to IDT Energy requires no long-term commitment: you can cancel at any time for no cancellation fee.

Whoever your local utility might be, Con Edison or any other, they will continue to read your meter and send your bill, and service any problems you may have.

If you sign up to receive your energy through IDT Energy through the Switch and Save Program, you do not pay sales tax or gross receipts tax on the delivery of your natural gas and electricity.

Find out what other ways you can save by switching to IDT Energy.

In its ongoing desire to help you save energy this summer, IDT Energy has found some slightly creative ways to help you trim your electric bill.

1.    Quick Cook- The most efficient way to cook your food is in the microwave. It takes 2/3 less energy to use than your stove top. Who’d a thunk it?

2.    Dishwasher Ease- Not only does your dishwasher save you time, it actually uses less water than hand washing. Incredible!

3.    The Cupboard is NOT Bare- Did you know that the MORE food in your fridge, the easier it is for the fridge to maintain the cool temperature when you open the door? I didn’t know that!

We hope you stay cool this summer, without using too much electricity, and IDT Energy wishes its customers and friends a great vacation!

Spring is in the air, and in New York that means just one thing: soon it will be summer! Summer is great. Visiting friends, relatives, time off from work to vacation, go to the beach, whatever your heart desires. But in New York we are faced with a special climate which brings hot and humid air into our city, making its otherwise happy citizens distinctly annoyed. How do we deal with this extreme discomfort? Easy. Turn on the air conditioner! From home to car to office to shopping mall, we surround ourselves with cool, dry air, at a huge cost in energy resources.

Not to worry. IDT Energy New York is always on the lookout for great ways to help you save on your electric bill, and we found a few on Frugal Dad.

1.    Keep the room dark with curtains and blinds during the hottest part of the day in rooms that are not in use, like bedrooms, where the light from the sun is not needed.  It would be counterproductive to draw the curtains to keep out the heat to save energy but have to turn on the lights to see.  West facing windows which get the later afternoon sun should especially be curtained.

2.    Allow the hot air that accumulates in your attic a way to get out, either with a fan or a vent, so that the hot air will be drawn away from your ceiling.

3.    Make sure the vent for your clothes dryer is not blocked or clogged with lint. If it is the hot air from the dryer will blow back into your home, adding extra, unwanted heat.

4.    Check your doors’ and windows’ insulation. The strips around the windows and doors can become ruined by the weather, dog scratching, and any other number of ways. The better the insulation the more efficiently your cooling system (and heating system, too) will work.

5.    Compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) not only save energy by creating light more efficiently than regular incandescent bulbs, they also create less heat. Less heat produced by your lighting means less cooling by your air conditioner needed.

Thanks to Frugal Dad for these great tips.

Summer’s coming and IDT Energy wants you to think about saving on your electric bill. We all know that summers in New York can be challenging when it comes to staying cool, so here’s a simple summary of the basics of saving energy, and keeping cool, too.

It’s always important to keep in mind that there are two aspects to saving, efficiency and conservation:

Conservation refers to how you use energy; do you only use exactly how much you need, or do you leave lights on when you’re not in a room, or let the water run when it’s not in use. Recycling would also come under the category of conservation, because whenever you don’t need to use resources, for instance if you can use paper, glass or plastic over again, you have conserved the resources that would have been needed to produce new paper, glass or plastic.

The other half of the saving equation relies on energy efficiency. This often refers to how well a machine or appliance, such as an air conditioner or refrigerator, turns energy into the form that you need it, such as turning electricity to cold air. Efficiency can also be increased using insulation and other mechanical ways of focusing or directing the effect you want to the place that you want it. For instance, if you want to cool off your living room you can increase the efficiency of your air conditioner by closing curtains to keep out excess sunlight and heat, and closing doors to keep in the cold air. In this way your air conditioner does not need to work as hard to produce the same cooling effect.

IDT Energy wishes you a cool summer in hot New York!

New York does not need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to creating a greener environment. In Curitaba, Brazil an ongoing experiment in urban planning to maximize green space and minimize waste of resources has been going on. In the early 1970s, when Brazil was welcoming any industry, no matter how toxic its by products, Curitiba admitted only non polluters; it constructed an industrial district that reserved so much land for green space that it was called a “golf course” by its detractors until it succeeded in filling up with major businesses while cities in other Latin American countries were in the doldrums. Through the creation of two dozen recreational parks, many with lakes to catch runoff in low-lying areas that flood at times, Curitiba managed to increase its green areas from 5 square feet per inhabitant to an amazing 560 square feet. The city promoted “green” policies before they were fashionable and called itself “the ecological capital of Brazil” in the 1980s, when there were no rivals for such an honor. Today, Curitiba remains a pilgrimage destination for urbanologists who are fascinated by its bus system, garbage-recycling program and network of parks. It is the answer to the question: How would cities look if urban planners, not politicians, took control?

New York City, in partnership with IDT Energy should lead the way in utilizing safe, clean energy generation, responsible use of resources, intelligent use of green energy and cost savings for its citizens. This will insure that New York continues to influence worldwide trends throughout the 21st century and beyond.

New York City, the vibrant hub of international commerce, art and fashion during the 20th century must set its goals on maintaining its status into the 21st century and beyond. IDT Energy recognizes that as the demands of an increasing population and decreasing space continues, the city will need to explore new ways to save energy resources such as electricity and gas and find other methods of energy generation, such as green energy production. To maintain the high level of satisfaction with living in New York it will also be necessary to maintain, if not increase the green space it’s citizens now enjoy.

IDT Energy maintains a developed energy resource available to the public on the internet. Visit the New York energy company IDT Energy Resource Center to read up on Green Energy, Energy Saving Tips and general energy information.

The IDT Energy Resource Center offers information on many different aspects of the energy industry.

• How to to conserve energy & save money
  What is green energy?
  The energy industry
  Business opportunities in the world of Energy

Visit the online resource center from IDT’s site www.idtenergy.com for all this information and more.