TLDR: what dictates the amount of power consumed by heating/cooling utilities?
We all grew up knowing that touching the thermo was a no no. And that just slightly adjusting it away from a nominal temperature would raise the bill significantly. But why is this?
In my head I think of it like this. If a house is 80 degrees F, and you turn the ac down to 70. Then obviously a lot of power will be used to get the initial temp to 70. And it would make sense that if you kept turning the ac off and letting your house go back up to 80 and then turning it on again, then you would use considerably more power. Due to the large difference being displaced each time.
But let’s say the temp of the house was 71, you turn the temp to 70. It’s only gotta cool 1 degree. No big deal right?
Okay well if you keep your ac/heat set to a certain temp – then your ac kicks on every time the temp increases/ decreases past the set temp. Let say for conversation it kicks on after 1 degree difference.
If that’s the case then why is it so much harder to keep a house cool at 65 vs 75 in the summer, or 75 vs 65 in the winter. If the temp only moved 1 degree before kicking on then like what’s the difference?
In: Other
The main thing you have to understand is that heat loss or heat gain is dependant on temperature difference.
If the house is 80 without any heating or cooling, and if you want to cool it down to 70, then it will slowly rise in temperature up to 80 again, the closer you are to the rest temperature, the slower the heat gain is and thus the less you need to cool down.
So if you house has a resting temperature of 80f, then it’s going to be more expensive to cool it to 60 than 70. But if you constantly recool down to 70 and let it heat up, then you the average temperature is roughly 75, and it will cost energy as if you were just cooling it to 75(roughly, it’s a bit more complicated than that).
So why is it harder to keep the house cool in the summer? Because the resting temperature of the house is much higher, which means the house heats up more over time, meaning the AC needs to turn on more often to keep the temperature down.
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