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How to Save Money on Your Puget Sound Energy Bill

How to Save Money on Your Puget Sound Energy Bill

Puget Sound Energy offers a number of options that can help renters and homeowners save money. If you’re a PSE customer, you don’t want to miss this!

When we bought our first house, our power bill was significantly higher than expected. Puget Sound Energy helped us make payment arrangements for our bill and arranged for a contractor to visit our home to offer specific cost-saving advice.

Help with Your Puget Sound Energy Bill

Local community action agencies can help you with your Puget Sound Energy bill! You may qualify for assistance through PSE HELP, LIHEAP, and the Weatherization Assistance Program if you’re low income!

LIHEAP

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) can pay a set amount toward your energy costs every year. This government program is designed to help make your energy bill more affordable for your family so you can receive and maintain dependable energy and utility services in your home when you need it.

This program will also help you with the weatherization of your home if you can’t afford to participate in the rebate program PSE offers. 

Weatherization Assistance Program

The Weatherization Assistance Program does not pay any portion of your current energy costs, but it does help reduce your ongoing energy bills by providing free, energy-efficient upgrades to your home.

When you qualify, an energy adviser will visit your home and identify the most efficient upgrades, such as insulation installation, air leak sealing, washing machine replacements, even window replacements! You could receive FREE improvements worth several thousand dollars!

PSE HELP

Puget Sound Energy Home Energy Lifeline Program (PSE HELP) can pay up to an additional $1,000 toward your Puget Sound Energy gas or electric bill per year. The amount you receive will depend on your household size, monthly income, and your energy costs. 

To apply, you should first see if your income qualifies and fill out the documents, like you Photo ID and Proof of Income, on the site. It is best to find your local agency before you start the process just in case you have questions. Once you are ready to apply, you can do so on your PSE account.

The income limits for PSE HELP are a bit higher than those for LIHEAP. If you qualify for LIHEAP, you can get both. But, even if you don’t qualify for LIHEAP, you may still be able to get PSE HELP!

The Salvation Army Warm Home Fund

This is a contribution based program that is run by the Salvation army. Charitable customers, employees, and even investors pay into this program to help people who may need it. 

This is a temporary program for families with a financial hardship. You can find your local agency to get help if you are having trouble paying your bill. 

The Salvation Army Warm Home Fund

This is a contribution based program that is run by the Salvation army. Charitable customers, employees, and even investors pay into this program to help people who may need it. 

This is a temporary program for families with a financial hardship. You can find your local agency to get help if you are having trouble paying your bill. 

Make a Payment Arrangement

If you make too much money to qualify for assistance with your bill, you may still be able to get help through a payment arrangement to avoid disconnection. Instead of having to pay you large bill all at one time, PSE will work with you to lower you payments to a manageable level to help you get caught up. 

You can stretch the payments to a span on 18 months if you need to make the payments low enough to handle. You can split your payments into weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly payments; whatever works best for you.

Try Budget Billing

We opted to enroll in Budget Billing after we saw how drastically our bills changed every season. With Budget Billing, Puget Sound Energy averages your annual power usage into equal payments. During the last month of the year, you’ll have a settlement month where you’ll have to pay any differences between your actual usage and what you’ve paid.

Budget Billing sounded like a great idea to us, so we enrolled. It ended up being a total DISASTER. We ended up with a $3,000+ settlement bill because Puget Sound Energy had so drastically miscalculated our bill. In fact, one supervisor I spoke to called it “the worst case of budget billing mismanagement (they) had ever seen.” Fortunately, we were able to get several local agencies to pledge $2,300 toward that high bill!

I still believe that Budget Billing can be a very good choice, especially since they have made some changes to the program. They now monitor your account often and adjust your bill to reduce the chances of a large charge at the end of your Budget Payment Plan year, which is in June. 

They now review your actual energy usage and monthly payment in the months of March, June, and November. Depending how you use your energy, your monthly payments could increase, decrease, or remain the same as it was. Just make sure you do NOT enroll until you’ve lived at your current address for at least 12 months, to help avoid a problem as the one we had!

The good news is, if you are careful with your energy usage and Puget Sound Energy determines that you have over-paid on your bill, you can get a refund for the amount paid or a credit to your account.

To be eligible to apply for the Budget Payment Plan, you must be in good standing with no outstanding balances on your bill. You can’t pick either gas or electric if you have both at your house. The program will be for both of them. It is important to note that they will remove you from the program if you miss 2 consecutive bills.

Free PSE Services that Lower Your Bill

Puget Sound Energy has numerous energy efficiency rebates and discounts that you can use to make you home more efficient. From energy efficient lighting to energy assessments, you can take advantage any and all of the following programs that Puget Sound Energy offers.

Home Energy Assessment

Before you start to change things about your home, it is always best to get a home energy assessment. With this free, online assessment you can figure out what can be making you energy bill so high. 

After taking the assessment, which is a 5 to 7 minute questionnaire about your home and the energy usage within, you will get a review that lists suggestions and gives you insight on how you can improve your energy usage and lower your bill. 

To take the assessment, you have to be a Puget Sound Energy member so you can sign in to your account.

Weatherization Assistance

The Home Weatherization Assistance program is a partnership between PSE, federal, and state funding resources to get low income family homes weatherized with free upgrades to make your home more efficient and lower you monthly bill.

We were able to use this service to get thousands of dollars in improvements on our home, which drastically reduced our Puget Sound Energy bill every month. I cannot recommend this service highly enough.

Efficiency Boost

This program is for moderate income customers who do not qualify for the Home Weatherization Assistance program. Efficiency Boost can help you make you home more energy efficient. 

To apply for this program, you should contact the Energy Advisor either through the online message page, by email, or by calling (1-800-562-1482).

To receive the insulation rebate for upgrades on your home, you must use a PSE Recommended Energy Professional (REP) contractor or a contractor authorized by PSE to do the install. Your REP contractor determines and provides the instant rebate when you make the purchase.

Other Services from PSE

Smart Thermostat Rebate

If you have never have a smart thermostat, it is awesome. You can control and monator your heat and AC from your phone even when you are not at home. You can set it to turn on or shut up according to your comfort needs. 

This program allows you to get a $75 rebate when you purchase a smart thermostat at a participating retail, or online retail, store, including the PSE Online Marketplace where you can get an instant $75 rebate at checkout if you are eligible. 

Appliance Rebates

You would be surprised how many people still use old washers and dryers that can cost them hundreds, if not thousands, per year in energy costs. So, an appliance rebate could be really helpful. 

In the past, Puget Sound Energy has also offered rebates for purchasing an Energy Start certified front loader washing machine and other appliances.

Lighting Rebates

When you think about saving energy, you may not think about your light bulbs, but some light bulbs can truly burn through your energy usage and your pockets. 

PSE will pay you to get rid of your old light bulbs and install Energy Star qualified LED light bulbs and fixtures from participating retailers. They will even take your old bulbs for you. 

Insulation Rebates

If you have a house that was built before 1990, you could qualify for an insulation rebate. We don’t realize how much warm air we lose in the winter (and cool air in the summer) through leaks and cracks in our home. Fixing this issue can be a cost-effective way to lower your energy bill and save you money. 

Windows Rebates

Customers with old, energy-efficient windows can get money off replacement windows for their homes. You can get either $50 per window for a total of $750 or $100 per window with a total rebate of $1,500, depending on the U-Factor of the windows you get. 

Because the lower the U-Factor, the better the window’s insulation, this program will give you more money for installing a window with a lower U-Factor. 

  • $50 per window for a U-Factor of 0.23 to 0.30. 
  • $100 per window for a U-Factor of 0.22 or below

Heating Rebates

Puget Sound Energy will provide a rebate for either your electric or gas heating system to help make your purchase easier and more affordable. This rebate is for customers with single-family homes (new construction, multi-family, and commercial accounts are not eligible for these rebate programs). They have several different types of rebates for both electric and gas heating systems.

Manufactured Home Rebates

If you have or are buying a manufactured home, you may be able to get rebates for upgrading to more energy-efficient items. They may be able to offset the cost of upgrades to your lighting, smart thermostats, washers, windows, weatherization, heating, water heating and more.

New High-Performance Homes Incentives

You can get money back if you build a home that is even more efficient than the state code calls for. With this incentive plan, you can build up to 3 attached units (like townhouses), but the home must use PSE electricity and/or natural gas. 

You can only apply to this program while your home, or project, is in the construction phase. During the process of building your home, you state in communication with a rater who can help guide you through the process. They will help you make your home to a higher standard than Washington State’s energy code.

The rater will evaluate your home, and then you can apply for the program. They want you to fill out the application and email it back with a W-9 for the person who got the incentive check.  

Check the site to learn more about other guidelines. 

Get More Help in WA

Now that we’ve helped you save money with your Puget Sound Energy bill, there are other ways you can get help in Washington State!

Nicole is the founder and lead researcher of Low Income Relief. After a personal experience with poverty and homelessness following her husband's sudden medical discharge from the U.S. Army, Nicole discovered the life-changing impact of community resources. This experience ignited her passion for empowering others to navigate similar crises. Nicole launched her writing career at age 16, working for various newspapers and publications. Her commitment to in-depth research and accessible content has been recognized by Google for Publishers and other industry leaders. For over 20 years, she has applied her investigative skills to uncover the most helpful, up-to-date information on benefits programs and community resources, ensuring Low Income Relief maintains the most extensive resource databases available.