Setting your thermostat is like taking a trip in your car. When you set the thermostat, you set a destination for your heating system and it must use a certain amount of fuel to get there. When it is extremely cold, it's like you've extended your trip to a more distant destination, and it takes more gas to get there. The biggest difference with this analogy is that with utilities, you reach your destination first, then pay for the fuel later!
If you set your thermostat at 68 degrees, like we recommend, and it is 50 degrees outside, your heater must work to make up the 18 degree difference. If it is 30 degrees out, the difference is 38 degrees. If it's 9 degrees out (like they are predicting for tonight!), it's a difference of 59 degrees.
The colder it gets, the more energy you need to bridge the gap.
Make sense?
image courtesy of The Daily Green
2 comments:
Taking a trip in your car you prepay for the gas. I wonder if prepaying for utilities would also make people become more efficient when they know they are running low on "gas"? It seems like this would have a huge effect on what temperature people keep their thermostat and result in huge energy savings.
I know it's been discussed before but we have not moved in that direction. There are probably other utilities out there that do this.
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