Energy usage poll

[eagl]

My wife lives alone in a 1500ish sq ft house in Dallas and her elec bill last month was $270.  She prefers warmer temps so she's keeping the house near 80 most of the time, and still had an elec bill way over $200.

The only way to bring it down is to aggressively insulate the house and get a high efficiency AC unit, but of course you can easily spend $15,000 on home upgrades that will only save you $50 or so per month.  If you're going to keep the house for a long time, I'd say go nuts and get the double paned insulated windows, insulate the walls/ceiling/roof, etc.  But if you're only going to keep the house a couple of years, then you're better off just fiddling with your thermostat to find a balance between home temp and cost.

[storch]

ya the spike in mine was the fuel surcharge.

[Halo]

B.  Leaving it set at a specific temperature and only turning the thermostat up at night and such.

Up at night?  We set our AC at 78 during the day and turn it down to about 75 at night for more comfortable sleeping.  And often run the fan for air circulation and white noise.

I used to work for the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute.  Generally our advice was to set the air-conditioning thermostat at something like 78 and let the system do its work.  It's particularly important to have the right-sized system so it will not cycle on and off too often and therefore not control the humidity as it should.