Last week I attended a luncheon in San Francisco with PG&E and Opower along with some of my other fellow bloggers from the Northern California area to learn more about energy consumption and the resources we can use to learn how to save money on our electricity bills.

During this #SmartMoms luncheon, I learned some stuff about saving energy that I wasn’t aware of that I want to share with you. Since I am frugal, I normally try to save energy when possible by turning of lights and other appliances when I am not using them. My husband is also pretty good at trying to turn off things we are not using, so we both try to remind the kids all to try to save some power too! What I didn’t realize is the all the other resources that are available that can help educate us on how to reduce energy and save on our power bill.

Here are a few of the resources  that PG&E customers can take advantage of that can help to save money:

1. Winter Gas Savings Program – When you are enrolled in this program, on Dec 1 through Jan 31 you can receive a bonus credit of up to 20% of your bill.
2. PG&E’s Energy Efficiency Hub – A variety of resources to help educate you on your energy use and what you can do to start saving money on your electricity bill such as applying for rebate checks, using solar panels and other fun resources for kids.
3. Energy Alerts – Get alerts to in an email, text message or phone call when you are moving into higher-priced electricity tiers.

Many of you, like me receive a home energy report that gives us some very useful information regarding our energy usage. These reports are sent to PG& Customers as well as customers of over 70 different utility companies to help to encourage us to save energy and save money!

For those of you that get the Home Energy reports from Opower, I want to encourage you to use the information in these reports to help you to save money on your future bills. When I first got one of these reports, it said that I was using 99% more energy than the rest of the neighbors in my area. Reading that encouraged me to find out what was causing me to use more energy and I have since got my energy usage down since I started receiving those reports.

This is just some of the valuable information that I learned while I was at the luncheon. I also learned about decoupling for the first time and also learned that California (my state) is one of the states that conserves the most energy. This news was a little encouraging and has me wanting to try to conserve even more.

“I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of PG&E and Opower. I attended an informational luncheon and received a promotional item to thank me for my participation.”

We also learned a fun fact also that I want to share for all of you with an iPhone5.

To find out more about PG&E and how you can save on your energy bill, visit: https://www.pge.com.

Disclosure – “I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of PG&E and Opower. I attended an informational luncheon and received a promotional item to thank me for my participation.”