As a Licensed Dallas Electrician, I’ve learned (and shown you) that it’s easy to save money on your electric bill if you think ahead and put some consideration into the choices you make.  But saving money sometimes means making a trade-off. Far too often, that trade-off has been the environment.  More coal and gas power plants produce more electricity when we want it, but the price is pollution. It’s not a price we always have to pay ourselves, so we tend to ignore it. But our children aren’t going to have that luxury.  Thankfully, people are starting to really think about the effects our choices will have on our descendants. That being said, a lot of “green” initiatives are really expensive, and with the economy like it is, people are stretched too thin to really make an impact.  But what if there were ways to not only help save the environment, but save money too?

That’s the best news of all: there are ways to do exactly that. Solar PV and Wind Power have been around a very long time, but they’ve always been impractical and difficult to apply for your own use. For instance, wind farms may generate a lot of electricity, but they’re expensive, huge and mostly benefit electric companies.  Most people don’t have millions of dollars to spend on a huge windmill, after all.  But technology has improved rapidly over the last year or so, and renewable energy sources are not only finally available to individual consumers, but are quite affordable and efficient.  Anyone can now buy a solar panel or a small wind turbine with Power Storage to help power their home or office.  These power sources provide freedom from the power grid. No more outages when the rest of your neighborhood goes dark or spikes in your power bill.

Wind turbines are much better designed than they used to be.  Unlike the old models, which had motors designed to turn them into the wind, these turbines spin no matter which way the wind blows, which means they’re much more efficient and less prone to motor failures. They don’t have to be powered exclusively by natural wind either; turbines can be powered by wind coming from man-made objects. In fact, in the future you might well drive down the highway past a long line of wind turbines, spinning with the wind your car makes as you pass!

Of course, there are still a few limitations to Solar PV and Wind Power.  Despite the great advances in technology, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Of course, at times like these there are other options.  The energy produced by your solar panel or wind turbine can be stored in an indoor generator Power Storage unit. A quality indoor generator can help you not only be free you from outages, but can even generate extra electricity – electricity the electric company will pay YOU for!  A wide variety of these generators are available to meet your needs, but any of them can help you save money, help provide better power options for you, and leave behind a better, cleaner planet for future generations.

You use it every day, but do you really understand electricity? It’s important, because, without understanding electricity, it’s hard to maintain electrical safety in your home. In order to understand electricity, you basically need to grasp five key concepts; we like to call them the five hidden mysteries of electricity.

If you’re tired of shelling out a crazy amount to the energy company each and every month, then maybe it’s time to look at how your household is consuming power and improve the efficiency of your usage. To help with that, our Top Rated Local® Des Moines electricians have committed to taking calls and appointments specifically for improved energy efficiency.

If your energy bill is high, then there is a really great chance that your break-even point will be very low. In case you’re not one of the many financial experts that call Des Moines home, a break-even point is essentially just an investment term that is used to calculate the potential risk of a course of action compared to its likely reward; this means that the break-even point for your investment in optimization will be achieved through reduced monthly energy costs + any local or federal subsidies the improvements qualify you for – the costs of installation or upgrading. Costs, in this case, can be both financial and temporal, meaning that your savings need to rack up quickly to account for the time and money you’ll invest up front. The good news is this: Many new homes (built in the last 5 years) can be drastically upgraded and optimized, and just about all below that line (older than 5 years) will see an even more dramatic improvement.

When power reaches your home, it inevitably is routed to and through an electrical panel; this panel determines much of your home’s energy efficiency before anything is even turned on. From the electrical panel to the wiring and outlets themselves, the amount of upgrades and optimizations that can be done for a comparable cost to the original outdated panel that dramatically reduce energy waste are dizzying. From the smallest changes, such as installing energy-efficient lighting or new outlets, to full-scale electrical overhauls, the potential for savings are really multiplicative.

Our electricians come into the picture by offering the tools and experience necessary to quickly and effectively route out outdated and inefficient systems and find the optimal solution for improving your home’s flow of energy. In as little as a few minutes, our electricians can make pointed suggestions that can and will save you substantially on your energy bills or find nothing noteworthy enough to justify the cost based upon the break-even point. At Electrical Gurus, we believe in offering this service to optimize your systems to make them safer and save you money, not add on an unnecessary expense.

Get in touch with the master electricians at Electrical Gurus for an expert opinion on what can be done to reduce your home’s energy costs. We are proud to serve the entire Des Moines area with both residential and commercial electrician services; contact us today to put those skill to work for you!

Recessed lighting is commonly used in rooms where ceiling height is an issue. These fixtures are essentially placed flush into your ceiling and project light from a hole or an opening on an otherwise clear plane.

Often you'll find this kind of lighting in an area that utilizes dropped ceilings with removable panels. Ceilings like these are usually implemented because they are concealing pipes or wiring that is exposed beneath the original ceiling - this practice can commonly be seen in basements and industrial spaces where aesthetics weren't initially taken into consideration.

Since recessed lighting is usually exposed to the underside of sensitive wiring or pipes, there are a number of potential dangers that present themselves when these fixtures are used.

A common mistake is using recessed lighting that produces too much heat for the amount of space left between the dropped ceiling and the original. Be sure when you're installing these devices that a qualified electrician, like the kind employed by John C. Flood, verifies there is enough ventilation and room between objects that excess heat won't make the area a fire hazard.

If you notice that you have a recessed lighting fixture which is dim and periodically flickers back to full brightness, this may be a sign that the wattage of the light bulb is too powerful for the lamp. Most recessed models will have heating sensors built in that automatically dim the light to avoid flames. One solution might be to lower the strength of the bulbs that you use in these features, although the bigger problem may be that your lighting instruments themselves were installed in too close quarters.