Last week's power outage from blown transformers in downtown Chicago led a chorus of doomsayers chanting about the end of electrical power as we know it.

Indeed, the nation's generating capacity with increasingly old and unreliable power plants can barely keep up with the demand, especially during peak periods this year as record heat waves shimmer across the nation.

It's doubtful, however, that you'll have to mothball your electronic life and return to the caves anytime soon. When demand drains the capacity to generate power, utility companies routinely turn back the supply for scheduled "brown outs". The forced conservation technique avoids full-fledged black outs.

Power hungry residents, mainlining the juice for everything from air conditioners to wall furnaces, can use household conservation techniques to help the utilities keep everyone out of the dark.

The benefits can be surprising.

Little known energy-efficient mortgages can help you finance energy conservation home improvements, help increase your home buying power and help stretch your debt-to-income qualifying ratios on loans for existing energy efficient homes.

Energy-efficient mortgage lenders will qualify you for more home or adjust your qualifying ratios because, they say, you've got more money to spend on a mortgage if you aren't strapped with a big utility bill.

Whether you are vying for a mortgage or budgeting for an affordable utility bill, your first line of defense is an energy audit.

Your local power company likely offers an audit for free or some nominal fee to check the efficiency of your heating, cooling and hot water appliances as well as the condition of storm or thermal windows, doors, caulking, weather-stripping and insulation. The audit also acquaints you with routine maintenance techniques for your heating and cooling equipment. It also provides you with information about thermostat controls, hot water temperatures, empty-home conservation techniques, plugging air flow leaks, and more.

You don't have to wait for an energy-efficient mortgage or an energy audit to keep your cool, conserve power and save money.

Here are some summer power conservation techniques utility experts advise:

Published: August 19, 1999

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