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I was able to cut my electric bill in half by being diligent with the air conditioner.
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First thing is to vent the indoors at night when the air outside is cooler.
If morning comes and it's still warm inside you missed your chance.
It takes about 2 or 3 hours for the furniture, walls, floor and attic to let go of their excess heat.
The cost of running a fan or two is about 1/20th the cost of running an air conditioner, power-wise.
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Second thing is to run the air conditioning early before the air outside warms and the reason is:
The refrigerant is far more efficient when there is less difference in the temp of inside vs. outside.
So you can move more BTUs of heat out of the house before the air outside gets hot using the same power.
If you wait till it's 90 or higher outside, it costs perhaps twice as much to get the same cooling you could have had earlier.
It might seem counter-intuitive to turn on the air before you FEEL like it. But this helps to save money.
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Third thing is to gradually raise the thermostat setting as the day progresses.
You can set it to 72 early morning to get the inside to cool off as much as possible.
It should never be cooler outside when 8:00 am comes around.
Around 9 or 10 in the morning, raise the thermostat to 76, so the air conditioner will come on if the temp gets that high.
But don't let the air cond. run for a long time -- if it stays on for 1/2 hour, then raise the thermostat to make it shut off.
By noon or 1:00 pm, raise the thermostat again, to around 83 for moderately hot days.
If the temp outside is over 110, you'll have to raise the thermostat even higher.
The trick is always not to let the air conditioner to run nonstop for hours at a time, because that really sucks up the power.
If you stay indoors, it might seem uncomfortably warm doing this, but then take a step outside and see what real heat is.
It's not intolerable to allow some extra warmth creep in, because this is saving money.
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Fourth thing is to spray a mist of water on the condenser coils to help them cool off.
Almost nobody does this. And I don't know why. It doesn't use all that much water.
But you can tell the difference.
The air output indoors gets two to five degrees cooler when the condenser coils (outside, the hot ones) have moisture on them.
That's free cooling, basically -- you're letting the compressor operate better without using more power.
When the humidity is high outside, this misting idea doesn't accomplish much since the water can't evaporate.
For systems with a remote condenser unit, it's exposed to the rain and weather, so there is no hazard spraying it with water.
You can use a mister device like the ones that restaurants have for outdoor table seating.
Air conditioners really seem to appreciate some mist on the condenser coils.
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If you're not home to change the thermostat settings, you can get a programmable thermostat that lets you preset different settings for particular times of the day, so using that you can play around with the programs to get an optimal set of temperature settings.
Topic: How to save on your electric bill (Read 6526 times)