Just like the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, there’ll be complaining of power bills in Texas when it gets hot. I found this among the “Dog Lost/Found” and female validation posts on NextDoor:
A real “No Shit” moment. One that I had when I first moved here almost 26 years ago. We had a bigger house than we had in Virginia, and it sported three HVAC zones. Each had a 2-ton AC unit, which was probably too small. So I set the temp at what I was used to in Virginia and promptly got a $600 electric bill.
That’s when I figured things out. First thing is that it’s semi-arid down here. So you need a far bigger unit or units to deal with that down here. My first house in Virginia was 2000 ft2, and we upped it to 3.5 tons when we replaced the unit. You could hang meat in the basement for peanuts. My first house here was 3200 ft2, with three 2 ton units. My second house in Plano was 1900 ft2 or so. It had a 5 ton unit. More tons of cooling, more money. So that big house down here with those big units feeding multiple zones are gonna cost.
So, let’s start with my house here in God’s Country:
So I pay $0.187 a kilowatt hour. This is the price for 2000 Kilowatt Hours (kwh) of power per month.
So I pay a bit more, $0.19 I think, for under 1000 kwh. I won’t make 2000, even though it’s been warm this month. I keep the place at 78 degrees. It’s comfortable, especially when it’s over 100 outside. I’m guessing this complaint was for August. But that’s with my plan. There are all sorts of plans that ‘save’ money, but I picked a flat rate. You can do average billing, paying less for three months in the summer and more the rest of the year. You also have plans that have lower or higher monthly limits. Get a good plan. Other than a flat rate, the rest is a crapshoot, far as I’m concerned. BTW, in my Plano house, my rate was like $.10/kwh.
So here’s the lesson:
Start with the weather. We’ve had the 5th hottest summer on record. No rain. 40 days straight of 100+ temperatures. For a few weeks here it was 105-110. Super hot. You are going to get boned in the summers here if you aren’t careful.
Next, the house. Mine is maybe 1300 square feet. It’s small. When you have a 3000 or 4000 sq ft house, you pay to cool the whole thing. Keep in mind, a house in the 3000-4000 sq ft region has a lot of area that gets pounded by the sun all day. Each house has a set point – a temperature setting where it’s comfortable and the AC doesn’t run 24×7. Last three houses I’ve lived, if the temperatures are above 100, that point is 78 degrees. I’d call that peak efficiency. During a power failure, I found that on a hundred degree day, worst my house got was 85. Last three houses all had some sort of shade. I’m sure that helped. You don’t get that with a multi-story house down here.
My friends in AC said that the temperature differential is typically 20 degrees. On a hundred degree day, that’s 80 degrees. How far you go below that depends on that houses set point, or how efficient it is. This house I live in now has no problem maintaining 78 degrees. I can turn it down this week, since it’s cooler. So I may turn it to 74 at night. I’ve had programmable thermostats. I don’t know how much they save.
You simply can’t set the thermostat at 68 degrees in a typical DFW house in the hottest months and not expect to pay out the nose. I think I figured every 3 degrees cost me $50 a month, back in the day. I don’t think transplants understand this. You also can’t run the temp up during the day, and then crash it to a low temp for when you come home. Guaranteed that the system will try and play catch-up all night.
Also, all these newer houses have the units in the attic, where it’s 150+ degrees on a hot day. I’ve never been in one house that didn’t seem like it was built by apes on the take. When the new unit was installed in my Plano house, they attached to a return that was screwed up before. So it was sucking attic air mixed with return air so it made it seem like my new unit wasn’t cooling all that well. Could be insulation, could be a leak making your units less efficient.
In all likelihood, these are transplants that got a sub-optimal plan, and then set the AC way too low for the unit to handle. It’s simply a question of money. It’s not some conspiracy to hoover your bank account out. We go through the same thing when we have an arctic blast. The unprepared hop on NextDoor to whine.
Welcome to Texas!
