ComEd Offers Customers Energy-Saving Tips to Manage Energy Use During Upcoming Heat Wave

With weather forecasts predicting multiple days of temperatures exceeding 90°F, ComEd is prepared to deliver safe and reliable electric service and offers tips to help families manage energy use for the remainder of the warm-weather season.

“At ComEd, keeping energy bills affordable is just as important as delivering reliable electricity,” said Erica Borggren, vice president of customer solutions at ComEd. “While our average total monthly customer bill is among the lowest in the nation, we understand families still want help managing energy bill costs during high-use days. The ComEd Energy Efficiency Program offers services, rebates and tips for families and individuals to reduce energy use now and in the future.”

Energy-saving tips for warm-weather months

For the remaining warm-weather months of the year, the national award-winning ComEd Energy Efficiency Program offers tips to help families manage their energy use and save money on their electric bills:

• Clear area around cooling vents.
  • Furniture, carpets, and other objects can block vents and prevent air from traveling. This blockage makes your cooling system work harder and prevents rooms from cooling down quickly.
• Use your windows to keep out heat.
  • Close window coverings on the sides of your home where sunlight enters the most to prevent heat from getting in through your windows.
• Operate your thermostat efficiently.
  • During the cooling season, set your thermostat to as high a temperature as possible while still maintaining personal comfort.
  • If you're not home for more than 8 hours, consider turning up your thermostat 7 to 10 degrees.
  • Overnight, consider turning up your thermostat 3 to 4 degrees while sleeping.
• Use fans and ventilation to cool your home.
  • If you use air conditioning to cool your home, a ceiling fan allows you to raise the thermostat setting about 4°F with no reduction in comfort.
  • Turn off ceiling fans when you leave the room. Remember that fans cool people, not rooms, by creating a wind chill effect.
  • During the warmer-temperature months, set your fans counter-clockwise to push air towards the floor.

To help customers track their energy use between bills, customers who create a free online account can sign up for High-Usage Alerts, that send notifications when energy use is trending higher than usual, and Weekly Usage Reports, that summarize your daily use so you can spot trends and adjust usage before your next bill arrives.

For customers looking to take advantage of additional savings, ComEd offers free home energy assessments, which can improve the energy efficiency of a home and lower its energy costs, while enhancing the comfort of those who live within it. Each assessment features an energy advisor who collects information about a home's energy features by looking at its lighting, heating, and cooling systems, water heaters and appliances. Customers then receive free and discounted energy-saving products plus personalized recommendations for saving money and energy.

By signing up for an assessment, customers can lower their energy costs and improve energy efficiency in their homes. The average customer saves over $125 a year on utility bills because of the energy-saving products installed during or after the visual assessment.

ComEd Bill-Assistance Options

For anyone facing difficulty paying their electric bill, ComEd offers payment assistance programs to help customers avoid late notices and disconnection, including grants, deferred payment plans and energy-saving tips. For information, visit ComEd.com/PaymentAssistance or call 800-EDISON1 (800-334-7661) Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. In the first half of this year alone, ComEd has helped connect more than 158,000 eligible customers to nearly $61 million in grants and other bill assistance.

To make it easier for customers to sort through ComEd's payment assistance, as well as energy-efficiency programs that can help customers manage future energy costs, ComEd offers its Smart Assistance Manager at ComEd.com/SAM. SAM, an online self-service tool that can match customers with payment-assistance programs and energy-efficiency offerings to help them manage their electric bills now and into the future.

ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NASDAQ: EXC), a Fortune 250 energy company with approximately 10 million electricity and natural gas customers – the largest number of customers in the U.S. ComEd powers the lives of more than 4 million customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population. For more information visit ComEd.com and connect with the company on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

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