• Energy is needed to keep homes warm when a Alaska gets cold.glacier bay, alaska image by Alan James from Fotolia.com
  
  Those living in Alaska rely on energy to live comfortably during the cold winters and the increasingly hot summers. This can become expensive over the course of the year, so there are a number of tips and devices that can be used to save energy and money living in your Alaska home.
  
  

Proper Insulation

• Insulating your home properly in Alaska is absolutely essential to living comfortably year-round, as well as saving money on energy expenditures. Thick pieces of fiberglass insulation should be installed in all of the walls of the house, keeping warm air in during the winter and cold air in over the course of the summer. This means you will have to effectively run your heater and air conditioner less during the extremes of the year. Areas like crawl spaces, attics and basements are also incredibly important to insulate, as they often are the areas of the house that leak the most warm or cool air from inside.
  
  

Summer Solar Panels

• Since Alaska has so much natural sunlight in the summer, putting up solar panels on the room of the house or in the yard for a small amount of time can be a great way to collect and save energy. Over the summer, the sun rarely sets on the state, so a large amount of solar energy can be collected and stored, allowing you to use only solar energy all summer and spend hardly any money. The proper solar panels may be initially expensive but the money you will save in electricity may save you money in the latter months of the year. Also make sure you can easily remove these solar panels in the winter and reinstall them in the summer.
  
  

Seal Off Windows

• A good amount of hot and cold air in a home escapes through the windows. All windows should be double-paned so that hot and cool air escapes through them less easily. Weather seal should also be applied around their edges, effectively sealing them off like a wall in the house. Big, heavy curtains can also be hung in front of these windows, to keep more air inside the house itself and cut down on airflow between the inside and the outside part of the house. Large windows have much more surface area and will allow a lot of hot and cold air in and out, so the smaller the windows, the more it will be to keep the house warmer and cooler without using as much energy.