With summer fast approaching our thoughts will be turning to the air conditioner to keep us cool. But this can have a big impact on household budgets, and the environment, so personally, I follow a few simple rules in using my air conditioner to minimise the electricity bill. They’re pretty straightforward and at Telstra, we’ve even applied these rules to our exchanges, to help reduce our overall energy consumption.

At Telstra, we have achieved up to a 50 per cent reduction in on-site air conditioning energy use in the southern states of Australia by adopting this basic principle to help cool our network facilities. And while we have considerations that home owners do not, such as maintaining environmental conditions to protect equipment from overheating, we have still managed to achieve this reduction by simply using outside air to cool equipment particularly during the cooler months of the year.

These are simple principles to put into place in our own lives. At home, resist the temptation to turn the air conditioner on when it’s cooler outside than inside. Instead simply open doors and windows.  Natural ventilation is an excellent way to keep your home cool, and best of all it’s free!  The air conditioner should be used when the temperature outside increases, then when it cools down outside again (overnight or when the cool change arrives), switch it off, open the doors and windows and enjoy the benefits of natural ventilation again.

The NSW Government’s Save Power site has some great recommendations on other simple ways to keep your cool when it’s hot.

For example

• A window can absorb ten times the amount of heat as an insulated wall, so just closing curtains will resist heat entering the house through windows and can make a big difference to the temperature inside your house. *
• Shading external walls with trees, plants, awnings and external blinds, especially on the western side also helps. *
• When you are using air conditioning, raising the temperature by just one degree can drop your power usage by ten per cent.” *

Not only will these strategies help keep your home cooler, they will also save you money in the long run through decreased energy costs.

Like everybody, I really look forward to the summer period. So while enduring a long Melbourne winter its some consolation that at least our exchange sites are benefiting from the use of fresh air to keep our facilities cool, helping to reduce our impact on the environment.

What tips can you share that you use to reduce your impact on the environment?

* © State of New South Wales, Save Power – What can you do in your world?” (Photo right: outside air damper)