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Can We Save The World ?
Reduce residential air conditioning energy use
Residential air conditioning uses 16% in total of US residential electricity
(the furnace fan uses 1%).
Click for a larger image
Residential air conditioning costs can be greatly reduced with little effort. The first step is to
reduce the amount of the sun’s heat getting into your home.
In most of the US there are far less expensive ways to cool your home, typically
whole house fans use just 1/12 the energy used by the air
conditioning system, generally these should be used at night to draw the cool outside air through
your home.
What can I do to reduce residential air conditioning energy use:
- Where possible use cool outside night time air,
and a whole house fan.
- Insulate your attic floor to prevent hot attic air warming your home - insulation should be at
least 12 inches thick.
- Fill any air gaps around window frames, baseboards, and outside doors. If you have HVAC ducts
in an unfinished basement area or an attic space ensure the duct joints are sealed using a mastic
filler or duct tape. Much energy can be wasted cooling unoccupied areas with cool air from duct
leaks.
- Increase the temperature setting of your thermostat by a few degrees - each degree increase in
temperature could reduce cooling costs by up to 10%.
- Use a table, floor mounted or ceiling fan in occupied areas, the flow of air over your body will
cool you down. Remember to turn fans off when you leave the room.
- Only use the residential air conditioning unit as a last resort.
- Add light colored outside awnings over sunny windows.
- Close all external doors and windows, and internal closet doors, when the AC is on.
- Fit inexpensive light externally colored roller blinds or shades to windows on sunny sides of
your home, close them when the sun shines.
- Turn off appliances and lights when they are not being used. Replace incandescent light bulbs
with low energy types. Incandescent lamps convert 85 to 90% of their energy to heat and only 10
to 15% to light.
- In hot periods use only a portion of your home, partially cover the registers in mostly unoccupied
rooms. It’s even better to have a number of separately controlled heating zones in your home permitting
you to cool only frequently occupied areas.
- Fit a programmable timer thermostat. For more information visit:
espenergy.com/programmable_thermostats.htm.
- Check the AC filter regularly, if it’s dirty replace it, dirty filters limit air flow and reduce system efficiency.
- Ensure your AC is working efficiently, get it serviced. A 10% undercharge of freon can increase
operating costs by almost 20%. A dirty evaporator, condenser or blower could increase air conditioning
or heat pump electrical usage by 50%.
- When you are away from home for periods of more than a few hours turn the AC off.
- Plant deciduous trees nearby to reduce summer sunlight on your home and to shade your ac unit.
- Dry your clothes on an outside
clothes line or have your clothes drier in an un-cooled area. Vent your clothes drier to the
outside in summer and check the outside dryer exhaust vent periodically. If it doesn't fully close
replace it to stop hot outside air leaking in.
- Use bathroom and cooker extractor fans vented to the outside during hot periods to remove excess heat.
- If the humidity is high get a de-humidifier and do not rely on the ‘expensive to operate’ AC unit
to dry the air.
- Replace pilot lights on natural gas appliances with electrical igniters, or in summer turn off pilot
lights.
- If your AC unit is old replace it with a modern Energy Star rated unit, modern unit efficiencies
could be twice those of units made in the early 1990’s.
- Close fireplace dampers when not using internal fireplaces, always remember to open them before
using the fireplace.
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