If you’re considering switching energy use to solar power, there are a few great options available. You can select a home solar system, in which solar panels are installed on the roof of your home or ground-mount them somewhere on your property. Or you may be able to choose to subscribe to a community solar garden, which is a collection of solar arrays located in a sunny area in your county or a neighboring county that allows contract-holders to receive utility bill credit for energy generated.

The return on investment on a new solar system will depend on:

• The size of the system and the layout of your site,
• Your current energy consumption and costs,
• And how you decide to finance your solar system.

Home solar typically refers to privately owned and stationed solar panels on your rooftop or hosted on your property. Community solar gardens (CSGs) are a way to “rent” available solar as a member of a community.

State governments are encouraging the installation of renewable solar energy by offering enticing incentives—often working collaboratively to ensure painless installation. 

If you’re interested in reducing your consumption of electricity, a great place to start is by identifying the amount of energy consumed by “energy vampires.” That’s a term that refers to always-on devices that are contributing to your idle load, usually without your even realizing it.

Energy vampires and zombies are appliances in your home that use electricity even when turned “off” or in standby mode. These culprits syphon off more energy than you're probably aware of, cost your wallet heftily over time.

You may have heard or read about energy vampires, those always-on devices that can increase your consumption of energy without your ever realizing it. These devices and appliances contribute to what’s called “idle load,” which is as wasteful as it is sneaky. The worst offenders are those with a high standby load, or those that are continuously active.

If you’re on the hunt for “energy vampires,” it might be helpful for you to start by clarifying a few terms. You may hear or see terms such as baseload consumption, home idle loads, phantom loads or parasitic loads to describe how these devices consume energy, even when not in use, and contribute to your electrical bill.

Thanks to lots of handy new gadgets that are now on the market, killing an energy vampire is much, much easier. The “energy vampires” in your home are those always-on appliances and other electrical devices that use a shocking amount of energy, even when you’ve turned them off. How to reduce their electrical consumption? Here are our favorite tools:

You do your best to be a responsible energy consumer, but even though you turn off lights as you leave the room and dutifully turn off other appliances and devices when you’re not using them, many of those items, even when not turned on, still require a shocking amount of energy.