Alliant Energy Offers Up Energy Saving Advice

(Madison) With the new year right around the corner Alliant Energy is offering up some advice for consumers whose resolution is to save money on their energy bills.  Alliant Energy is one of the first utilities in the country to test the Sense home energy monitoring technology in residents’ homes, and studies have found that the average home can save as much as 9% on their energy bills by taking a thorough inventory of everything that’s plugged in and selectively shutting down unused, always-on devices.

 

Jeff Adams, lead customer product manager, at Alliant Energy says  “Customers today lose track of what’s plugged in at home. A fan in the attic, a baby monitor that fell behind the dresser, multiple plugged-in cell phone chargers…these are examples of items our customers found plugged-in that didn’t need to be,”

 

The Sense monitor’s advanced technology helps identify individual devices so customers can track what’s on and consuming power in the home and how much energy each item is using. Feedback is delivered directly to a mobile app, which can translate usage into cost allowing customers to see in real time where electricity is in use and which changes will save the most money.

 

Adams advises consumers to take advantage of smart power strips for a set and forget solution.  These power strips detect when a device goes into standby mode and cut the electricity to the device automatically.

 

Preliminary results show that the 100 households that took part in the study combined could have saved enough energy on an annual basis to power more than eight average homes for an entire year.