Electricity gets expensive. In April 2021, New Yorkers paid an average of 19.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. With Massachusetts at 21.3 cents, Connecticut at 21.6, and Hawaii at an eye-popping 32.8, 145 percent of the national average is practically a bargain. Through most of the year, we simply set our utility bills to auto-pay and pay them no mind, but as our air conditioners kick into service for the summer months and both usage and rates go up, we start to take closer looks at our bank statements and wonder where our money’s going.
It’s going, in fact, into an HVAC system that probably isn’t working at peak efficiency. Unnecessary usage patterns, poor filtration, and excessive heat from other sources can make your system work too hard, and that drives up your bills. Even worse, poor maintenance can lead to a failed AC unit and even higher costs. Start considering these ways to lower your cooling costs this summer, and then think about how you can spend that money instead.
Cut Out Extra Heat
Forget “if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen”—how about a kitchen with less heat? The oven and dishwasher can both generate a lot of heat when you open their doors and let the warm air out. This makes your air conditioner work harder to compensate. Food needs cooking, and dishes need washing, so try to time your usage patterns so that they don’t conflict with your AC cycles.
Put Your Fans into Rotation
Sometimes, the temperature is a bit of an illusion—we’ve all heard the phrase, “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity,” and let out a bit of a groan. This deception works both ways, as the wind can make temperatures feel lower than the mercury indicates. This is how supplementing air circulation on a room-by-room basis works. Your ceiling fans won’t drop the temperature, but they’ll make rooms feel several degrees cooler. If you trade a few degrees on your thermostat for the whirr of your ceiling fans, you can reduce electricity consumption by 10 to 15 percent without sacrificing comfort. Assuming nine hours of usage per day at the national average of $0.13/kWh, this plan shaves $13 to $18 off your monthly electric bills in summer. In more delicious terms, that’s about 20 half-gallons of ice cream.
Don’t Forget Filter Changes
An air filter that has caught everything it has room to catch greatly restricts the flow of air throughout your ducts. If you thought breathing with a facemask was inconvenient, imagine how your HVAC system feels with a filter full of dust, lint, and microscopic bugs blocking fresh air. One of the best ways to lower your cooling costs this summer is to make sure your change your filter regularly. Even with your furnace taking the summer off, you need to switch out your so-called “furnace filter” at least every 30 days, if not sooner. This keeps your AC from overworking itself and making you pay too much. For the filters you need, Remember the Filter offers air conditioning filters online for virtually all HVAC systems across a spectrum of MERV ratings.
