"Ryan Morgan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi All, > > It's almost summertime, and for those of us in the Arizona desert that means > high energy bills for cooling. I am looking for a good list on how to save > energy (mainly to enquire on proper AC control.) > > If any of you can shed light on my problem, it would be much appreciated: > > I have a two story home (3,200 sqft) with two central air conditioning > units. The unit for the second story is smaller and uses less electricity > when in use. I have top-grade insulation and energy efficient windows and > doors. I have just purchased two Honeywell programmable thermostats to > control the units, and am wondering how to set them. > > My electric company offers an on-peak, off-peak plan that I am on. > Electricity costs 0.165 cents per kWh from 1:00PM to 8:00PM and 0.0369 cents > all other times. Therefore, I have set my units to run (for the most part) > before and after 1:00-8:00 PM. Basically the house will be cooled to 77 > degrees in the off peak hours and allowed to warm to 84 degrees in the > on-peak hours. Is this a good plan for efficiency? Can my upstairs unit > alone do the job of cooling the house efficiently during on-peak hours? > > Any ideas? > > TIA, > > Ryan
Try the homeenergysolutions list on Yahoo groups. Spend time on Hakan's site which he has mentioned already (energysavingnow). I'll put in a shameless plug for my website (http://www.econogics.com) which offers a signficant amount of information on saving energy in the residential sector. Todd's response was excellent and concise (I'm filing that one away myself). As Keith noted, there have been some good discussions on this topic on this list in the past. Probably worth searching the archives (see standard list trailer at the end of this note on where to find that). I have not been to the Arizona desert, however, it is my understanding that it gets cold there at night (at least lower than room temperature). If so, you may be better off using ventilating fans than the air conditioner to bring in cooler outside air to do the cooling at night than running even a small air conditioner. Look for ways to increase the thermal mass within your house, so that you will be storing more "coolth" at night, so that it will take longer for the house to heat up during the day. Thermal mass is what adobe construction is all about. -- Darryl McMahon http://www.econogics.com/ It's your planet. If you won't look after it, who will? ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70 http://us.click.yahoo.com/Z1wmxD/DREIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
