Conservation

A great teacher once stated: “Nobody sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, otherwise the new, unshrunk patch pulls away from the old and creates a worse tear. And nobody pours young wine into old wineskins, otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and destroy both the wine and the skins. Instead, young wine is for new wineskins.” And so it is with energy as well.

Many Indiana homeowners are interested in purchasing and installing some form of renewable energy generation at their homes to reduce, or even eliminate their monthly energy bills. While this is a worthy goal, most of the time these homeowners will end up spending more money purchasing and installing their renewable energy systems than they will save in reduced energy bills over the lifetimes of their projects.

Because renewable energy is typically more expensive to produce than fossil energy, the first steps most homeowners should consider when trying to reduce their energy costs are conservation and energy efficiency measures. Once you’ve reduced the amount of energy consumed in your home, then it makes much more sense to install a smaller, less expensive source of renewable energy generation. Most Indiana homes could reduce their energy consumption from between 30 to 50% by following these guidelines.