[Marilyn]

We have a fairly large home with two electric central air and heat units. Hot water and cooking are gas. Our peek summer electric bills were running $500 to $600/month. Our home is only 5 years old and was built with very energy efficient features, double insulated tinted windows, high efficiency appliances and HVAC. Our power was $0.16/kwh. Our daughters moved away, so we closed off the second floor and shutdown the AC and Heat on that floor, switched to a COOP power company at $0.12/kwh, changed our most used light bulbs to florescent, and our highest bill since has been around $310. for one month. Big improvement. I also started shutting down computers at night and reduced the time that televisions are on. I've heard that the new HDTV's are energy hogs.

Wish we had bills like some of you.

Hubby and I are planning to move to the Austin/San Antonio area in the next few years and when we do are seriously considering building a home with super insulation, solar panels, wind generators and a water furnace HVAC system which is a heat pump using a water well as a heat sink (some people refer to it as a geothermal system).