IDT Energy Savings

IDT Energy wants you to save on your energy costs.  Here, you’ll find some incredibly easy tips for saving money on your energy bill. Here is a great one.  Reduce your water heater thermostat from 140 degrees Fahrenheit to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.  You won’t notice a difference whatsoever in your showers or your household water use.  What you will notice, instead, is a savings between 3-5% in energy costs with this simple adjustment.

What you’ll also notice is a slower buildup of minerals and corrosion in the water heater and pipes.  This will help your water heater to last longer and to operate to its maximum capacity.  In addition, you’ll avoid scalding which is possible when the water heater temperature is as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit.  This win-win change can have a great influence on your energy bill and your safety!

There are many easy and quick ways to save money without even feeling the changes. One such way is to wash your clothing differently. Using just a few new strategies, you can save on your energy bill; a goal that IDT Energy certainly has for its customers.

Make sure to separate out your laundry so that you aren’t drying light weight laundry with heavier items. The heavier items take longer to dry, and you’ll be using more energy than necessary by combining the two. Maintain your dryer to run effectively and efficiently.

After every load of laundry, clean the lint filter. This helps with air circulation and makes the dyer work more efficiently and quickly. Occasionally, you should check the dryer vent and the vent hose to make sure they aren’t blocked and that they are letting air flow without obstruction.

When you first start to think about saving money on your energy bill, the first step is to take an energy audit.  What is an energy audit?  It’s a chance to take a look at all of your energy use in the house and to see where you are using the most energy – and where you can save the most.  There are many online resources where you can take energy quizzes and see where your money is going each month.  IDT Energy offers these suggestions.

The Department of Energy has energy audits that can help you to evaluate all of your energy usage.  There are many similar tools available online as well.  Then, once you’ve looked at your resources and expenses, you can begin to pinpoint areas where you can save each month.

President Obama and the White House have made great strides lately with clean energy investments and more.  They have over $80 billion in clean energy investments as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  This should jump-start the economy and help to build the clean energy jobs for our future.

This initiative includes $11 billion for a highly advanced grid that will move renewable energy from rural places where it is produced into the cities.  It also includes $40 million for smart meters for American homes.  In addition, it includes $5 billion for low-income home weatherization projects.

These are a few of the many initiatives the White House is putting in place for helping the environment and for creating better energy investments in our future.

Certainly, when changing energy companies or making any other choices in your life, you will always have questions.  IDT Energy wants every customer to be comfortable with this change, and to understand exactly how this energy service will bring customers added savings.

With the deregulation of the energy market, you have choices with your energy supplier.  When you choose IDT Energy with Switch and Save, you are making the choice for IDT Energy to supply your home with the electricity and natural gas from your local utility company. By selecting IDT Energy as your qualified energy supplier, you can save money on the energy that you already receive.

With no sign up or cancellation fees from IDT Energy, the switch is an easy process.  People look forward to having choices in their lives – IDT Energy offers you one more choice for a great way to save money on your bottom line.

IDT Energy has recently made some interesting partnerships with the goal of saving customers even more money.  They have teamed with The NIA Group to create “Protection First” so that customers can save money while protecting their homes.

The NIA Group is offering reduced insurance rates for the home, card and other valuable possessions with additional savings if you own a hybrid car.  For your auto insurance, you can save, on average, $500 if you are two adults with one young driver and two cars; for homeowner insurance, they say you can save, on average, $500 for a framed home in the suburbs valued at $500,000 or more.

In addition, the partnership between IDT Energy and The NIA Group enables customers to receive discounted insurance for condominiums, jewelry, collectibles insurance, identity theft coverage, boat insurance, flood insurance and much more.

First of all, you should know that refrigeration is based on a simple principle: the evaporation of a liquid to keep things cold. You already know about this principle, you experience it every time you perspire to release extra heat from your body, or cooling off by getting wet.  When the water evaporates off your body, it uses energy by absorbing heat and cooling you off. The effect of putting alcohol on your skin is even better at cooling, because alcohol evaporates at an even lower temperature.

In a refrigerator the liquid that evaporates does so at an extremely low temperature, cold enough to create the icy cold conditions inside your fridge and freezer. If you should be foolish enough to put some of the refrigerator’s coolant on your skin, your skin will freeze as the refrigerant evaporates.

Your refrigerator is made up of five basic parts:

1.    Compressor

2.    Heat-exchanging pipes- coiled or serpentine, found outside the fridge

3.    Expansion valve

4.    Heat-exchanging pipers-coiled or serpentine, found inside the fridge

5.    Refrigerant- the liquid which evaporates inside the refrigerator to create the cold environment of the fridge.

Have you ever given much thought to how refrigerators work? Here is a brief discussion of how the most important appliance in your home has revolutionized the way we live.

Even though many things taste better cold, like drinks and other foods, the real purpose, and revolutionary effect of refrigeration is to keep foods from spoiling, especially sensitive foods like meat and dairy products. For example, milk would spoil in a matter of hours if left at room temperature, but at the normal temperature of a home fridge, milk can last a week or more. If milk is kept frozen it will last much longer. This is because there are bacteria in food that grow quickly at ordinary temperatures, and if left to themselves they will reproduce until the food is no longer edible. These same bacteria grow much, much less rapidly at extremely cold temperatures, like 40 degrees Fahrenheit (about 5 degrees Centigrade.) At zero degrees Centigrade (32 degrees F) the growth of bacteria is entirely checked.

Without refrigeration we would need other ways to preserve foods, like old fashioned ice boxes, or salting food which also inhibits bacterial growth.

You probably already know that a large percent of the total energy you use at home is in the kitchen and laundry room. Did you know that it was as much as one third of home energy usage? That is a big chunk of your budget. Therefore the choices we make in the kitchen and laundry can have a big effect on our energy bill.

Most of that energy is devoured by your refrigerator. So what are some ways to get our fridges to work at peak efficiency, using the least amount of electricity but giving the best results?

Start by setting the thermostat on the fridge to between 38 to 42 degrees Fahrenheit to allow your refrigerator to run about 25% more efficiently.
Another simple and obvious thing to do is to make sure the door of the refrigerator is always kept closed, except for just the few moments when you are removing food out of or putting things into the fridge. Some new refrigerators even come with an alarm that alerts you if the refrigerator door is open for more than just a few moments. If your refrigerator does not have such a device, you can buy one separately.

Understanding your energy usage, and particularly that of your electrical appliances is essential to properly manage your budget and home expenses, and it is also essential in order to become part of the international efforts in looking after our world.

When an appliance is labeled “X watts” this meant that this is the maximum measure of electricity the appliance uses. While some appliances will indeed use this volume of electricity constantly and consistently, refrigerators, for example, only use the maximum energy consumption when the compressor is running. When the fridge is quiet after having reached its goal temperature, it will simply maintain that temperature and it will then be using far less electricity.

IDT Energy, the New York ESCO, is not merely a supplier of energy, but it is concerned with the environment and your pocket. Therefore, IDT focuses on green energy and on consumer education.