It may be fall, but before you know it, winter will be here. Now might be a good time to prepare your home for the cold weather and snow, according to Potomac Edison.

"This is the time of the year when you're going probably to be able feel the drafts around your doors and around your windows," says spokesman Todd Meyers. "You can take care of those things with caulks, storm doors and hanging double-pane windows."

But there's another area of the home which needs attentions, Meyers says. "The real problems often occur in places you can't see: holes in the attic and holes down in the crawlspaces. That's where you let a lot of air in," he says. "So the most important thing that anyone can do is to add attic insulation to their home." Meyers suggests insulation be an additional six to ten inches, and the rating be R-19 to R-30.

During the winter, a fireplace can be a very inviting place, especially with logs burning on the fire. But Meyers says they can take out a lot of warm air from the home. "Warm air is being sucked out of that fireplace if you don't have glass doors across the fireplace," says Meyers. "So you want to shut the damper, but you also want to address having the proper glass door across the fireplace. If you have a screen or an opening, that just sucks the air out of the home, the warm air."

"If you are able to plug those leaks, you can get away cutting about 10% off your annual energy bills. And it makes the house feel more comfortable on top of that," he says.

Potomac Edison also suggests you move furniture and curtains around so as not to block the air regulators. "As all that hot air is getting trapped either underneath the furniture or behind the furniture, and you're still cold, and you go turn it {the thermostat} up a few more degrees, and you just continue to blow hot air in all the wrong places," says Meyers.

And when the winter gets here, Meyers recommends you keep the thermostat in the home at 68-degrees, if possible. It may need to be adjusted if you have older people or young children in the house. But if you and your family are away from the home  for along periods of time at work and school, he says you need to make adjustments the thermostat in order to save money. "Take that thermostat down 10% to 15% for those hours that you're gone, and then gradually  warm it back up when you get home, and you'll be able to save energy that way," he says.

If winterizing your home is a bit costly, you can get some help in the form of cash of up to $2,000 through the Empower Maryland Program. The money comes from a surcharge on customers' bills.