Now that it's getting chilly, it's time to test a new tactic in the interest of conserving energy and keeping your bills a manageable size.

The tactic: Turn down the thermostat 10 degrees and keep it there. If you normally set it at 72 during the day and 62 at night, try 62 during the day and 52 at night.

The gas and the power companies, along with various governmental agencies, keep urging people to do all they can to make their dwellings more energy-efficient: Insulate. Get rid of drafts. Update your furnace. Wrap your hot-water pipes. And so on.

There are tax credits available for some of that, but it still costs money. The alternative is to quit heating the house as much as in previous winters and see if we can get along being less comfortable.

Here's what you may find out if you try this: The first couple of days or nights, you think it's way too cold, which can usually be fixed with an extra jacket or sweater during the day and a heavier cover at night. After that, your may become acclimated, especially if you make en effort to remain physically active.

If you can pull this off, you can reduce your wintertime heating bills quite a bit. It will also be useful from another angle: When you sit there with cold feet, remember to thank the policy makers and planners whose decisions over the years have left us without enough cheap energy for heat.

Leading a spartan existence when it comes to wintertime heating may help individuals cover their bills, but it's no substitute for a good energy policy on the part of the state and federal governments.

Both of those have been pushing for increasing shares of electricity to come from nontraditional sources. If you have an electric furnace, that is likely to have the effect of making it ever more expensive to heat your house.

So while you're getting by at 60 degrees or less this winter, start writing state and local policy makers and urge them to do better.

It makes no sense, for example, to abandon efficient coal-burning power plants if it means that shivering through the winter becomes a necessity rather than something that cost-conscious consumers want to do on their own. (hh)