Calculating Your Air Conditioner’s True Cost

Looking at your monthly energy bill can, over the course of the year, give you a good idea of when your air conditioning costs are highest. But how do you know which part of that bill is your A/C? There’s no way to know exactly what that cost is, but the following formula can give you a good estimate.

Air Conditioner Size

The first element of the equation is the size of your air conditioner, preferably in watts (the amount of energy the unit uses per hour). This information can be found on the unit’s label. For this example, we’ll use a 3200-watt unit. This translates to 3.2 kilowatts.

Electricity per kilowatt hour (kWh)

According to OG&E, the average residential customer pays 8 cents per kWh. This number varies for users operating on SmartHours, but for this example, we’ll use the flat average rate.

Length of running time

The final piece of the puzzle is how long your air conditioner spends running. We’ll plug in an estimate here as well, an average of 8 hours per day.

So, for our 3.2 kw unit, running 8 hours per day at 8 cents per kWh, our average daily expense is $2.05 (8 x 3.2 x 0.08=2.05). When we multiply that by the number of days in the month, we see an estimate of the total monthly cost of our air conditioning. In this case, our monthly cost is $61.50.

How can I reduce my air conditioning cost?

There are a few easy steps you can take to reduce the amount of time your air condition spends running, and lower your energy use. The first is to simply raise the temperature in your home, especially while you’re away. The Department of Energy estimates that you can save between 5 and 15% of your energy costs with this step alone.

Other tactics involve preventing your home from heating up in the first place. Planting trees and bushes, and using solar-blocking screens and light-fast curtains will keep the sun from raising the temperature of your home.

If your air conditioning unit isn’t running as efficiently as it could be, contact us to get a thorough system inspection from a qualified technician.

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This post was written by Air Conditioning Service, Inc.