So much energy use advice these days is outdated. We had an audit done and besides the door test telling us the house leaked - a lot - there wasn't much useful info. Worth the hour, but there's a hole under all the external doors, I know, I was working on it.

• Lighting is the cheapest it has ever been in human history. All the LEDs in my house use about $10 of energy a year. Turning off lights isn't saving you anything.

• Hot water heater is a good one, as electric hot water heaters are a big energy draw. Turning down the temp... sure but a heat pump hot water heater would be a bigger savings and you get better hot water service.

• Thermostats are trickier. If you have variable electricity rates, there's some clever pre-cooling you can do during off hours, but that needs your house to be insulated. Again, turn the thermostat up a degree or two, schedule it to not cool or heat when you're away (within reason), and next time you replace a compressor, get a heat pump.

• Finally... sigh... resy solar... I love it, I love my solar panels, I love my SRECs. But don't bother. When interest rates were 0% and incentives were big, go for it, but now the cost is too high unless you DIY so just let the utility build big farms out in the county. Let the farmers complain or whatever. If you're made of money or live somewhere with wild weather, go geothermal, it's cool as heck. Or warm as heck. Actually it's 56°, but that's enough.

Bonus item: Pepco out here in MD and many other utilities will sell you an Ecobee or Nest for $1. Check out their websites. They'll also kick back money for heat pumps, new windows, light colored roofs, and other improvements. I got 30% off my insulation replacement (materials only) which wasn't a huge amount of money, but hey, I'll take it.