IDT Energy, and other energy service companies, offer a number of ways to heat the home.  More than 50% of people use natural gas for this process.  The process of heating and cooling the home actually uses more energy and drains more of your electric bill than does any other system in the home.  In general, 43% of the utility bill is from heating and cooling.  In addition, heating and cooling systems add to global climate change, with 150 million tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere each year in the United States.
With all of this said, there are sage ways to save on your energy bill and to help the environment at the same time.  Here, IDT Energy explores a number of important tips to help you to save on your bottom line.

1. Set the thermostat as low as you can handle it in the winter and as high as possible in the summer.  Purchase a programmable thermostat as well so that you’ll only be using energy at key times throughout the day.

2. Clean filters on furnaces once a month and clean warm-air registers, baseboard heaters and radiators as necessary.

3. Turn off exhaust fans in the kitchen, bath and other areas within 20 minutes after you’ve finished cooking or bathing.  If you need to replace exhaust fans, use high-efficiency, low-noise models.

4. Pay attention to your drapes and shades (or install some if you don’t already have them).  In the winter, keep drapes and shades on your south-facing windows open during the day for more sunlight and closed at night to reduce a chill from cold windows.  During the summer months, keep the windows closed during the day to prevent extra heat from the sun.

It’s important to understand what Green Electricity is, and how it can help you to save the environment.  Green Electricity is really two different items.  It can be electricity that comes from an environmentally friendly and renewable location such as wind, hydro, geothermal or solar electric.  It can also be an arrangement between you, the electricity user, and the supplier, such as IDT Energy, who delivers the clean electricity to you.

Some people question if using Green Electricity really makes a difference.  The answer is that it certainly does.  When you sign up with a green supplier, you are telling that supplier that you want more green electricity in your package of electrical consumption.  The more people sign up for Green Electricity, the more the supplier will need to source.  As the customer pool grows and the demand increases, the supplier finds more partnerships with wind farms and other sources.  This means that less non-green power needs to be generated to meet the overall demand.

Each person really can make a difference when they choose to use Green Electricity.

According to analysis of the Renewable Energy Policy Project, 70% of the labor needed to produce both wind and solar energy is from manufacturing of the components of the machines which harness the energy, such as producing wind turbines or solar panels.

Because of this fact there is a large potential for the development of these industries to require a large work force with many new jobs being created.
According to a report published as a joint project of the United Steelworkers and Sierra Club, wind power component manufacturers have the potential of creating about 18,500 new jobs in New York State, and solar power component manufacturers could create 14,600 new jobs.

If geothermal and biomass manufacturing components are added to the equation, the total number of jobs created to supply the renewable energy industry in New York could be as much as almost 50,000 new jobs.

This re-industrialization of New York State could be enough of a reason to invest in green energy, but in addition clean energy development provides increased national security and improved climate and environmental health.

For these reasons IDT Energy offers its customers the option of choosing “Buying Green” and supporting the development of renewable sources of energy in New York State.

“Buying Green” at IDT Energy is a choice all of its customers can easily make if they want to participate in the development of clean and renewable resources for electric production.
The green choice is surprisingly inexpensive, too. According to estimates of monthly electrical use of individuals at 250 kWh and families at about 750 kWh, IDT Energy charges about 1.5 to 2.0 cents more, per kWh above the cost of standard electricity. On average this comes out to only 7 dollars more per person per month, or about $20 for an entire household. Not a lot of money to receive the following benefits.

Buying Green means:

•    There will be increased use of renewable energy resources.
•    Cleaner and healthier air for everybody.
•    Less of a need to build and use nuclear power plants.
•    Reduced dependence on foreign oil supplies
•    Increased opportunities for employment as “green technologies” develop.

Opening up the power supply industry to competition through deregulation not only allows individual consumers to choose their energy providers, but they now can also choose whether to support more environmentally friendly sources for producing electricity.

IDT Energy has a ‘Buy Green’ option for its customers. Choosing this option means that a certain amount of the electricity a consumer receives is produced from sources which use our natural resources in a way that does no harm to the environment. These sources may include wind power, running water, solar power and organic matter, which are all renewable and are relatively clean compared to the more standard sources of electricity which often include the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas.

IDT Energy is proud to say that they have joined the State to help create a center for environmentally friendly technologies here in New York. Within 10 years New York hopes to obtain 25% of its power from green sources, and IDT is playing an important role in this development.

The United States House of Representatives passed legislation in early July, 2009 creating an energy standard requiring utilities to acquire at least 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by the year 2020.

The Senate will debate in the fall similar legislation which would create demand for up to 100 GW of new wind capacity by the same year, 2020, if it passes, which is not at all certain.

“That would show that the U.S. has a significant dedication to renewables over the next decade,” says Vic Abate, the head of the renewable energy generation unit at General Electric.

The recent economic downturn has had a stifling effect on the advancement of wind power projects in the second quarter of 2009. According to the American Wind Energy Association, only 1,200 megawatts of new projects were completed in that quarter, as compared to almost 10 GW completed in the previous 12 months. That turns out to be a reduction down to about half the average of completed wind power projects.

Wind power development in the United States has made the U.S. the largest wind market in the world. This fast development was fueled mostly by 30% tax breaks which appealed to big investment banks that have a fondness for tax equity investing deals. Now that the economy is in the pits and many of those banks no longer exist and others are more cautious about their investing despite the tax breaks, the wind industry has taken its share of the economic blows.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is optimistic that the present U.S. Congress will try harder than in past years to pass legislation which would pursue and endorse a strong national renewable energy standard, (RES) whose goal would be to require utilities to produce at least 25 percent by the year 2025 of their electricity from green, renewable energy sources, including wind, biomass, solar and geothermal energy.

An updated analysis produced by the UCS shows that this high standard would create jobs in the “green” energy sector, lower energy bills for consumers all over the U.S. and would reduce harmful emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants, which is the largest contributor to global warming pollution in the United States.

Typically when we size a renewable energy system, because of the higher cost of larger wire, we usually will allow and account for a 2% line drop loss. Although, we don’t really follow this rule when it comes to battery cables. Oversize your battery cable and shoot for a 0% loss. American Wire Gauge (AWG) #4/0 is the minimum wire size we suggest for typical battery banks, but 500 MCM sounds good too. All right I’m kidding, 500 MCM is far too difficult to work with. We generally use X-Flex #4/0 cable, similar to welding cable with its fine strands and flexibility. Flexible cable is a lot more cooperative and can make your short battery-to-battery connections and longer runs much easier to deal with. You’ll find that Trace inverters don’t give us much room to work with so flexible leads are pretty important although Outback Power Systems has done a super job of making this much less of an issue with their well designed system components. The point is, in low voltage systems we need all the current carrying capacity we can get. We don’t want our cable size to strangle our batteries and we don’t want any high resistance connections interfering with our flow. A big pipeline will reduce resistance and give us a greater load surge capacity.

California Power Companies are obviously feeling the heat. Grid-tie systems are an extremely attractive option for those looking to go solar. When you take batteries out of a PV system you eliminate a costly component that requires maintenance. In turn, this eliminates the need for charge controllers, a large amount of wiring, disconnects, fuses, etc. This makes the cost associated with going solar plumet to a much more manageable level making solar financially available for most people. When we “do the math” on grid tied systems, we usually find very near term investment returns with the Net Metering laws on the books. For those of you that don’t know, grid tie systems offset our power consumption by spinning our meters backward whenever there is surplus power from our panels. In Net-metering states, California for example, the kW’s we send back into the grid are worth the same as the kW’s coming in. The power companies are trying to tax our use of the grid to bring the price they pay us for our power down to their “avoided cost,” the price they pay for power, instead of what they resell it to us for. This would negate the whole purpose of Net Metering and is only a ploy from electric companies to maintain their pollutive monopoly. The verdict is in, CPUC Rules Against Solar Tax! This is obviously a huge win for renewables. Visit SEIA