In June of 2010 I moved to a place in Montana with only electric heat. By myself. In the past few winters I had conducted experiments in cutting the amount of energy I needed to stay warm, with a focus on heating myself instead of heating the whole house.

I had a lot of motivators here, but the primary motivator was that the greenwashing being done around fluorescent light bulbs. My power company sent me literature telling me that I should replace all of my incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent light bulbs to save energy and money. Based on my lighting usage, the most I could possibly save is $5 per year. Yet, with changing my heating habits, I think I have proven that I can save $500 per year. I therefore call "shenanigans" on the power company, the government and the fluorescent light bulb industry.

Here is the general idea. Most folks heat the whole house:

My earliest efforts were to turn the house thermostat down to 50 (F) and use a personal electric heater:

That saved a lot, but it left my legs too hot and the rest of me too cold.

So then I focused on personal electric heaters that would focus on warming me. I got this down to about 235 watts.:

And then I optimized the system where I added a sweater and focused the electric heaters on the areas featuring exposed skin or seemed to get cold:

I got this down to 82.5 watts.