Home heating cost to rise

1) Just a few days ago, you published an article saying natural gas would NOT rise this winter -- why no cross-reference? 2) Your search engine does not find this article (and many others) unless one has an EXACT match to 1 word in the article -- very primitive. For instance, phrases like "natural gas winter" do not retrieve, and my typo of the name Gruenspect got nothing -- I was missing the h. It's far easier to search for your articles on Google than on your website, especially since there is no indicator in the print edition whether an AP or AFP etc. article is actually on your website (you ought to have at least title and URL).

Gruenspecht: "Even as oil prices are plummeting and plenty of natural gas is going into storage, people should brace for higher heating bills "across the board" no matter what fuel is used or region of the country . . ." Wrong! Six years ago, my husband and I built a new house into which we incorporated numerous solar power features. Though we live at an altitude of slightly over 6,000 feet and most winter nights are well below freezing, we estimate that our average heating costs (for the four-month period November through March of each year) have amounted to an annual total of less than $300. We have also -- to the greatest extent possible -- converted three existing houses on our property to solar energy with resultant heating cost reductions of about 40 percent for each. Though not directly related to heating costs, we have also installed four wind turbines on our property which generate most of the electricity for our houses. It is amusing to watch the electricity meters run backwards. I realize that not everyone can take advantage of free energy to the extent that we have (we are ranchers on a good-sized piece of land in an area that gets about 300 days of sunshine annually), but there are more modest measures that everyone can employ. If it can be done in cloudy Germany, it can be done most places in this country.