These days, saving energy is everybody’s business. That’s why Dominion created this blog. It gives everyone a chance to share ideas about how to save energy, save money and help the environment.
Our team of energy experts, Bob, Alison and Tom, will write weekly posts about the latest energy conservation news, tips and innovations. They'll answer your questions and share ways they’ve found to lower electricity use and their bills. We look forward to exploring this topic and hearing your viewpoints.
We make environmental concerns an integral part of our planning and decision making process. We're excited to see our customers exhibiting greater interest in environmental issues every day. Lately we've received lots of inquiries about how consumers can save energy.
We're excited to debut this blog and explore new ways to conserve. When it comes to our environment, we believe every little bit helps.
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4 comments:
A friend of mine, just went on vacation for a week and wanted to whether to leave her AC on, while she was away. What are your thoughts?
Prepping your house for vacation is a great way to save energy. One way to do this is to set back or turn off the AC unit. It is a common misconception that a air conditioning unit works harder than normal to cool or heat a space back to a comfortable temperature. Actually, the energy required to cool a building to a comfortable temperature is roughly equal to the energy saved as the building drops to the lower temperature. When the setforward period is over and the cooling equipment begins the cool-down period, the equipment will have to run slightly longer to restore the space to occupied setpoint temperature, but it will have been off more during the setback period, resulting in less overall energy use. The same case can be made for heating in the winter.
It will depend on whether or not you have animals living in the house. If anything, just turn the AC up to above 80. Since you aren't there, there is no reason to keep the AC on low.
You can also turn the water heater down as well since they wont be needing any hot water while they are away.
If you turn the AC off or just raise the temperature while you are away, remember to bring it on again slowly. If you have the AC off but then turn it on at 76 degrees, the AC will work as hard as it can to get the house cool quickly, causing a peak in energy use. Try to lower the AC two degrees at a time. This will keep the AC from over working.
In response to anonymous. In the summer moving the thermostat 2 degrees at a time should not matter. It does matter in the Winter with an electric heat pump with electric resistant heat as back-up. The point of moving the thermostat by a few degrees is to keep the back-up electrical resistance heating elements from coming on and using the more efficient heat pump as the source. It will take longer to heat the space but it does save money.
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