I decided to try to save energy this summer and also save on my electric bill by not running the air conditioner in the whole house during the day.

I’d just keep it on in my den, which is where I spend most of my time during the day, and then turn it on downstairs when I go there for breakfast or lunch or to watch television or whatever. Also, I would only turn it on in the bedroom a bit before bedtime.

Peco sends me an email message every week with a day by day breakdown of how much usage I had each day, so as an experiment, I left the AC on in the whole house one Saturday to see what the difference would be.

To my great surprise, the difference was only pennies. Well, ok, nickels. And given that Saturday was laundry day, it could very well be that most of the difference was from running the washer and dryer.

So what gives?

I have two ideas.

One, probably the big expense with the AC is running the compressor, and it might not matter too much whether it’s feeding one, two, or three units inside the house.

Or perhaps, once a room heats up, it takes just as much energy to cool it off as it would to keep it cool the whole time.

Or maybe it’s a combination of the two.

In any case, it seems that I wasn’t really saving anything by turning the AC off and on in individual rooms. May as well keep it on and stay comfortable as I wander from one area to another.

Right?