Are Summer ConEd Bills Always This Nasty?

Hmmm…and I have a perpetual motion device to sell you.

The interior of a fridge is a sealed system (ignoring the door opens). So the mass inside takes a certain cooling energy and if it’s more (via the liquids) it will take longer to reach design temp. Now when you put a warm element in there, it will cool either 1) drawing energy from the stored liquids or 2) from the compressor. But if it does 1) the compressor will have to replenish the energy sometime. All you may have done is minimized the temperature swings as you put warm stuff or open/close the door, which *may* reduce cooling load a fraction, but I’d say it’s at the 0-5% level.

Of course, even being an engineer, I can be wrong and I’d love to see a better explanation if this works.

All of the people with DRV boxes should get a “smart strip”. These are intellegent power strips that are basically programable (I can’t spell). There’s one plug that’s always hot and another that controls the rest of the electronics. So you can have the box plugged in but the stereo, router, modem, tv all off. Then you can program it (and it is very simple stuff) to turn all of the electronics on when you turn one of them on. Although it’s the cable box that’s the real pig, you save on everything else.

After thinking about this, the original poster needs to seal the ducts on the central A/C unit. I am sure that much of the cold air is leaking into unconditioned or not habitable space where the ducts are located. There’s a company called Aeroseal that can come and do it using a fancy machine, but it’s expensive. If the ducts are accessable, you should take some spray foam or some mastic and seal them up yourself. That will result in savings; I’m sure of it – although it’s hard to say how much without knowing your home. If the ducts are located in unconditioned space, they should be insulated.

I believe that stocking the refrigerator with liquids to get savings works like this: at first the compressor has to work to cool the warm liquids, which may even be a bit of an energy penalty. But as time goes on, the liquids remain cool and provide radiative cooling to the fridge. So rather than have to run the compressor more continuously throughout the month to cool the air, the liquids allow it (via the thermostat) to remain inactive for longer periods of time. By the end of the month, the slight penalty for cooling the liquids is overcome by extended periods where the compressor doesn’t have to run. therefore, savings.

manha, unfortunately for the cable DVR, it does have to be plugged in if you are recording or have things set up to tape. the stuff already recorded shouldnt be erased tho if you do that…

some of you people are great that you can actually sweat it out. i look at AC as one of the few perks in life that are worth the money for just 2-3 months.

my biggest peeve is heating. (tho i dont pay that) but it’s sooo wasted. it sucks when heat is blasted like the beginning of october when it’s still friggin HOT out and not needed!!! it just blows out the window, total waste, and obviously someone is paying for it.

*rob*

DIBS, OP was expressing surprise, not complaining. Perhaps your own thermostat isn’t set low enough.

Ben Gazi beat me to the advice I was going to give, but I’ll use different terminology: level billing. Twelve equal bills, adjusted annually up or down based on the previous year. It’s much less painful.