Man oh man, welcome to The Cheapskate Analysis, something that may or may not become a recurring series here on Ridinkulous. Here I hope to use the power of maths to find the cheapest option where previously only anecdotes and mystery was found. And then decide whether it’s worth it to be a cheapskate. It’s all part of our mission to save money and live more awesomely.
Today, we compare FANS vs AN AIR CONDITIONER!
Cooling down our big brick house is not easy. It’s a two-story building without an attic, which means that all the heat goes to the top floor and stays there until you let it out. The problem is that our bedroom is on the second floor. So although the first floor stays relatively comfortable throughout the summer, the upstairs is always 5-10 degrees warmer.
This makes sleeping difficult or impossible. We have one air conditioner, and it’s for the bedroom. The rest of the upstairs can remain hot. It’s actually really nice during bedtime rituals to walk from a raging hot 88 degree bathroom into the cool comfort of an air-conditioned bedroom.
There’s the guy right there.
But everyone says air conditioners are expensive to operate. Surely, it’s true, right? We see our electricity bill spike during the summer months, and it must be partly due to the A/C. It’s not a big jump, but it’s noticeable.
So every year, I run into the same debate. When to put in the air conditioner? We start out by using fans to push the warm air out the windows and draw cooler air in throughout the day, and that works marginally well. And this probably saves money over the A/C. But how much more? On the hottest days, we are running a ceiling fan, a floor fan, and a pair of window fans all day long. How much more expensive is it to run just the air conditioner instead of all of these fans?
Air circulator
Let’s have a look!
We have three main fans. I searched around and tried to find the approximate wattage used by each of them:
| Ceiling Fan | 70 watts |
| Room air circulator | 65 watts |
| Dual window fans | 60 watts |
| Total | 195 watts |
To figure out the cost of running the fans, we have to figure out how many kilowatt-hours they use.
To get kilowatt-hours, you take the wattage of the device, multiply by the number of hours you use it, and divide by 1000. (Dividing by 1000 changes it from watt-hours to kilowatt-hours.)
By running all three fans, all day long, that’s 195 total watts x 24 hours = 4,680 watt hours.
Divide by 1,000, and that is 4.68 kilowatt hours (KWH) per day.
Our electricity bill has a ridiculous breakdown of the costs per kilowatt hours, down to ten-thousandth of a penny, but if I add all of them up, I get $0.1093884 per KWH.
So, using 4.68 KWH for the fans times $0.1093884 is $0.51 per day.
What’s the cost of the air conditioner?
We have an six-year old 8,000 BTU air conditioner, and going by what I see on the internet, it looks like it probably uses 1,000 watts. Hmmm…
So, 1,000 watts x 24 hours = 24,000 watt hours.
Divide by 1,000, and that is 24 KWH per day.
Multiply by the cost per KWH of $0.1093884 and you get $2.62 to run the A/C all day.
But wait! We don’t use the air conditioner all day long! We only use it during the night, while we’re asleep, and sometimes just for a nice read in bed.
So more realistically, 1,000 watts x 8 hours = 8,000 watt hours each day.
That’s 8 KWH, which is only $0.87 per day!
Or, if you prefer, 87 cents per comfortable, restful night.
So the reality of this fan vs. air conditioner fight is not what I believed. Yes, running the air conditioner all day is five times more expensive than running the fans. But realistically, by running the air conditioner for 8 hours, we would spend only 36 cents more per day over the fans.
Is it worth it? In a worst case scenario, every day of the month is roasting hot. That’d be 30 days using the A/C, or $10.80 a month more. Consider how awful a month spent sweating in bed and getting four hours of sleep would be, and I think the choice is clear. On those hot days, bring on the A/C!
Result: Cheapskate loses.
Are you a fan of fans? Or are you A/C Slater?
* Big bonus points to anyone besides Marge who gets that reference.