Several nights of freezing temperatures are expected beginning tonight and continuing through Sunday night across our service area. The coldest nights will be Friday and Saturday nights when temperatures will drop into the low to mid 20s to 30s. Wind chills will be in the 20s, possibly dipping into the teens. This means your heating system will run more, causing you to use more electricity. Since heating costs account for 40-50 percent of an electricity bill, it’s important to know how to control these costs, especially during extreme weather.
- Program your thermostat to 68 degrees or lower during the day. You can set it even cooler at night while you’re sleeping.
- If you have a programmable thermostat, set it to increase the temperature 10-15 minutes before your alarm goes off to break the chill before you get up.
- Make sure return air registers are not blocked by furniture or draperies. Clean vents with a vacuum cleaner or a broom regularly.
- Open drapes or blinds during the day and let the sun help heat your home. Close drapes and blinds on the side of your house that is shaded and at night.
- Close garage doors to keep wind outside.
- Use space heaters sparingly, if at all. Make sure the unit is thermostat-controlled. Only use a space heater if you are in the room and turn it off when you leave; this is for energy efficiency and safety reasons.
- Keep the fireplace flue closed when the fireplace is not being used.
- Make sure your fireplace is designed to provide heat, so it truly keeps you and your room warm. Heated air can escape through the chimney, which means you are losing money and efficiency.
- Run your ceiling fans in the clockwise direction to pull the heated air down to where you are.
Singing River Electric has an 83-year heritage of providing safe, reliable and affordable electricity to our local communities where we call home. SRE serves more than 76,600 meters across 7,556 miles of power lines in seven counties in Mississippi (Jackson, George, Greene, Perry, Stone, Wayne and Harrison) and two counties in Alabama (Mobile and Washington). The electric distribution cooperative works with Cooperative Energy to provide its members a diverse mix of generation resources including five small-scale solar sites locally and a 540-acre solar site in Lamar County. For more information, follow our conversations on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.