Energy Coach - September
We’ve survived another winter! Now, it's time to shake off the winter blues and start getting ready for the warmer months ahead.
Pre-cool your home overnight before a hot day, and you can save energy and wear & tear on your air conditioning system
If you have air-conditioning, you are one of the lucky ones through those hot summer days — at least until the electricity bill arrives.
Don't let your summer energy bills get you down. Supercooling is a strategy that could help you keep your home cool and your bills low during the hottest summer days.
Most people have their cooling system set to run during the hot part of the day and then turn off or go to a lower setting during the cooler hours of the night. This means the AC system switches on when the house is already warm, so it has to work hard (and will use a lot of expensive energy) to cool things down.
Supercooling or pre-cooling flips this approach on its head, by cooling your house before the hot day begins.
This strategy is suitable only for houses under time-of-use electricity tariffs. It's most viable in hot, dry climates and works best for homes with good thermal efficiency.
Next time a hot day is forecast, try cranking up your air-conditioner overnight to get your house down as low as about 15 degrees. As temperatures rise the next day, your house will start off nice and cold — and can stay that way for a long time, so you can get away with running your air conditioning at low power during the hot parts of the day, and maybe you won't need to use it at all.
Supercooling has two key potential advantages:
It may sound far-fetched, but the evidence is that it really can work both to save you money and to spare your equipment.
Supercooling works best for homes that have good thermal efficiency — so the cool can last well into the day — but even then, you need to adopt some simple best practices to maximise the benefit:
Supercooling requires discipline and planning, but it has the potential to lower your electric bill while keeping your house at a comfortable temperature all day.
Your mileage may vary depending on your home’s characteristics (and your tolerance for freezing at night), but if your energy bills are shocking, it’s worth a try.
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