The state  of Texas created a website called the powertosavetexas.org.  The idea of the website is for one to pass along energy-saving tips to Texas residents. On the website, there is a section called energy saving tips for homes and another section called energy saving tips for businesses.  What they talk about in these energy-saving tip sections are pretty fundamental and rudimentary ideas nevertheless they may be rudimentary to someone like me, but maybe not to others. They have a quick savings for home tips section that talks about air-conditioning savings that I found interesting and wanted to share with you.

They say you can save up to 16% if you simply turn up your air-conditioning by 1 to 2° and when you use a programmable thermostat.  They say that you can save up to 8% on your utility bill for every degree above 78°. They do make a valid point for those that don’t understand how air-conditioning works, they make it clear that setting your air-conditioning to a low temperature does not cool down your house faster, what it does instead is waste energy, thus use more electricity.  This tips section also says that when you are away from your home, when you are going to be gone for more than four hours, to reduce your temperature by 5°.  This tips section highly recommend that you use a programmable thermostat  to control all of these settings. They say that after 7 PM in the evening is a time that you should set your air-conditioning to cool down. This tips section suggests that you run your fans all the time as they say it will make your room feel 4 to 6° cooler.  Let me give a tip of my own, for those that don’t know this,  by setting your thermostat to a certain temperature, that does not mean that that is the temperature that is going to be coming out of  your air-conditioning unit.  The temperature that comes out of your air-conditioning unit is typically about 10° cooler  than what the inside of your house is.  The air-conditioning unit is taking the air from inside your house and it is cooling that air off by around 10°.  So what is coming out of your rooms air vents is about 10° less than what it is being taken in through your air conditioning system’s intake vent.  How an air conditioner works is that it will run this away until the thermostat reaches the desired temperature in the room that the thermostat is located.  That is how a  house gets cooled off.  For that matter that is how a vehicle gets cooled off as well.