Temperatures Affect Energy Bills

Most WFEC member-owners’ bills are typically lower in the spring and fall and higher in the summer and winter. These bill fluctuations are driven by changes in the outside temperature. During the winter months, the colder it is, the more a heat pump will run and the higher a member’s usage will be. To understand more about this, you must first understand how a heat pump works.

How a Heat Pump Works

Imagine that you took a window air conditioner and flipped it around so that the hot coils were on the inside and the cold coils were on the outside. Then you would have a heater. It turns out that this heater works extremely well. Rather than burning a fuel, what it is doing is "moving heat."

A heat pump is an air conditioner that contains a valve that lets it switch between "air conditioner" and "heater." When the valve is switched one way, the heat pump acts like an air conditioner, and when it is switched the other way it reverses the flow of Freon and acts like a heater.

Heat pumps can be extremely efficient in their use of energy. They are three-times more efficient when operating in heat pump-mode than any other heating source used in your home. For every kilowatt of electricity used by a heat pump, three Btus of heat are generated. Typical heating sources like wood only generate one Btu of heat. Heat pumps also feature back-up heat strips that are used when the temperature drops below a certain degree.

There are many things you can do to lower your usage and therefore, your energy costs. Some of these things were covered in last month’s article and still other solutions can be found on our Web site, www.westflorida.coop.

To give you a better idea about the costs of an average WFEC member, we have used our Billing Insights program to illustrate how energy costs fluctuate throughout the year.

The following information represents a 1,700 square foot home with three occupants, one refrigerator, one chest freezer, 1 electric dryer and thermostat settings of 78 degrees in the winter months and 74 degrees in the summer months.

You will notice that the customer’s estimated baseline costs – appliances, lighting, water heating and refrigeration typically do not exceed 900 kWh per month and stay relatively the same. Heating and cooling costs, however, are where you see the highest usage amounts/costs and are typically two times as much as the estimated baseline usage/costs.