The Cost of Staying Cool This Summer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- With summer just around the corner, Sense, the innovator in smart home energy monitoring, delved into electricity data for nearly 1600 real homes across the U.S. to analyze the cost of staying cool this summer. Key insights include:

• Residents along the country's South coast from Texas to Florida and in Arizona pay twice as much to stay cool in the summer as the average U.S. resident and nearly triple the cost of residents in Northern states like Maine and Montana.
• Arizona, New Jersey and Texas are the most expensive states to stay cool in summer.
• The biggest homes cost a lot more to cool. A 4000-foot home costs $114 more over the summer than a 2500-foot home on average—a 71% increase.  Larger homes also have a wider range of cooling costs, suggesting that there are more ways to waste energy with bigger HVAC systems (see tips below).

Summer cooling analysis
The analysis drew on real-time and historical electricity usage data for the Sense homes, combined with survey responses, during the summer months of June to August, and it examined cost by state, by climate zone and by home size. The state comparison reflects data for states that had 10 or more Sense homes.

The most expensive places to stay cool in summer
The analysis found that residents of the country's south coast from Texas to Florida and in Southern Arizona pay nearly twice as much as most U.S. residents and three times as much as residents in northern regions of the country. Their median cost to stay cool in summer 2018 was $292.90, compared to $147.82 across most of the U.S., and $95 along the Canadian border.

The 10 most expensive states this summer
Hot, sunny Arizona leads the country in the high cost of cooling at $477, followed by Texas, Florida and Georgia. Surprisingly, New Jersey is the second most expensive place to stay cool ($327), due to a combination of higher-than-average AC usage and high utility costs, and Maryland ($208) was also among the top 10 most expensive states. The top 10 list also includes Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island, all of which have warm summers and among the highest utility rates in the country. Kansas, known for its hot summer weather in Tornado Alley, was the only Plains state to make the top 10 list.

Looking for an inexpensive place to stay cool this summer? Colorado, Oregon, and Washington are among the least expensive places to stay cool in the summer.

Home size matters—a lot!
Bigger homes cost a lot more to cool in the summer. A 2500 square foot home (which is close to the U.S. median house size of 2,436 square feet) costs $133 to cool over the summer months, on average. Homes larger than 4000 square feet jump to $227 in median cooling costs over the summer, a 71% increase, and the top 25% of those 4000+ homes pay an average of $463 on cooling for the summer. An important insight for those large homeowners: there are more ways to go wrong with cooling a big home.

HVAC Gotchas
Sense's data points to an issue for owners of larger homes: bigger homes can waste energy more ways than smaller ones in the summer, depending on the efficiency of the HVAC system and the residents' habits (see chart of cooling cost by house size).

Even average size homes can have a wide variability in cooling costs. To illustrate the potential range, Sense compared two 1500 square foot homes, one in Virginia and the other in Massachusetts, which are in similar summer climate zones. The Virginia home had a 240V central AC system that ran all day without cycling down and cost the homeowner $898 over the course of the summer. The Massachusetts home had 120V window air conditioning units that cycled down periodically and cost $138.

Homeowners in both large and smaller homes need to watch out for the following potential issues:

• Oversized HVAC systems that use a lot of power getting to the desired temperature quickly, which drives up energy costs unnecessarily. If you have a new system that is oversized, contact the installer to ask for a replacement. If the system is older, consider replacing with a right-sized system that will save you money in the long run.
• An undersized HVAC system that runs continuously to get to the desired temperature, driving up costs. If your HVAC system is running continuously, it needs adjustment. Contact your installer or repair person.
• A right-sized system that runs continuously. The system may need maintenance, the home may be leaking cool air or the temperature may be set too low.
• Thermostat set to very low temperatures. Try setting your HVAC a degree higher each day to figure out what's comfortable.
• Cooling your entire home to the same temperature. Take advantage of HVAC zones to save money in seldom-occupied areas of the home.
• Setting and forgetting your HVAC. Use smart thermostats to set the temperature higher when you are away from home or in unoccupied rooms.

About Sense
Sense is the first company to give consumers engaging, real-time analytics on energy consumption in their homes right on their mobile devices.  Its mission is to make all homes intelligent through its "fitness tracker for the home," helping consumers save money and live safer with more energy-efficient households. Founded in 2013 by pioneers in speech recognition, Sense uses machine learning technology to provide real-time insights on device behavior, even for those devices that are not "smart." Customers rely on Sense for a wide range of uses including monitoring their home appliances, determining whether they left appliances running and identifying major energy drains in their home so they can substantially reduce their energy costs. Sense is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. To make sense of your energy, visit: https://sense.com.

SOURCE Sense Labs

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