The service is aimed at users from the United States as Microsoft asks for a US zip code to provide the user with data from that area in the United States. There are for example information about the average annual energy costs in the area or the energy costs breakdown.

Users who signed up for the service can start by completing their home profile which basically asks them to fill out detailed information about their home. This ranges from entering the year the home was build to its square footage, heating system and year the water heater was installed. The information are further divided into categories like doors and windows, lighting, appliances or pumps and pools all with about 5-10 questions that need to be answered. This can take some time depending mostly if the information are available next to the user or not.

The data is then linked to energy providers in the region once the information have been filled out (with the possibility to leave answers blank or use don’t know as an answer). This is a great way of comparing energy costs. Probably the most important part of the site are recommendations based on the home profile that has been created during setup.

These recommendations list improvements that can be made to the home to save energy and money. They can be filtered by name, cost or annual savings with the option to plan the improvements, set them to done and to write notes and the actual costs.

The average annual energy costs can be recalculated whenever the situation changes. Microsoft Hohm is an interesting online service for home users from the United States who want to cut their energy bills.

The test compared the on, off and idle states of the devices if applicable listing the weekly, monthly and yearly energy consumption and costs in a table. The Playstation 3 is by far the most energy hungry device in the test followed by a 42″ Plasma TV and the Xbox 360 while the Nintendo Wii consumes only a tenth of the energy the Playstation 3 needs.

I could go on but the essence, the real important information can be found when comparing the idle energy consumption with the one when the device is turned off. Lots of money can be saved by turning the devices off instead of leaving them in idle mode. The Playstation 3 for instance consumes 1655.20 Kwh per year in idle mode but only 15.53 Kwh when turned off.

It does not make much sense to turn off the gaming console the whole year to save energy but it makes perfectly sense to turn it off when no one is playing. If you want to cut all costs you simply disconnect the power supply from the device.

Someone with a Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 would pay more than $420 per year for both devices even if they would be in idle mode most of the time. Please note that you have to check the local costs of 1 Kwh and calculate the expenses this way. It could very well be that you would be paying more or less depending on the energy costs in your country.

I usually cut the power supply that powers my LCD TV, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 2 and Xbox whenever I’m not using those devices to save energy. I do not cut the power supply on my computer though, mainly because it does not make a huge difference.

Are you saving energy, if so how ?