14 Summer Electric Bill Mistakes Draining Virginia Wallets Right Now

Your Dominion bill landed, and you did a double take.

The number climbed again, and you’re frustrated.

While inflation plays a significant role in Virginia’s electric bills, your habits do, too.

Fix a handful of these habits, and you’ll keep more money in your pocket before Labor Day.

Cranking the Thermostat Too Low

It feels logical. Your house is hot, so you punch the thermostat down to 68 and wait for relief.

But AC doesn’t work that way. It cools at one speed, so setting it lower won’t cool the house any faster. It just runs longer and bills you for the privilege.

The Energy Department’s rule of thumb is simple. The bigger the gap between your indoor temperature and the swampy Virginia air outside, the more you pay.

Set your thermostat as high as you can stand.

Every degree you give back is money.

Cooling an Empty House

Nobody’s home from nine to five, but the AC is still cranking away at 72 for the cat.

That’s money blowing straight out the vents.

Bump the thermostat up while you’re out and let the house coast. A programmable or smart thermostat does it for you, no memory required.

The Energy Department says nudging it back seven to ten degrees for eight hours a day can trim around 10 percent off your cooling and heating costs.

Set it, forget it, and quit paying to cool an empty living room.

Closing the Vents in Spare Rooms

Here’s one your handy neighbor swears by. Shut the vents in the guest room and force all that cold air where you want it.

It backfires.

The installer sized your system for the whole house, so closing vents builds up pressure and strains the blower instead of saving a dime. You can spring duct leaks and burn more power, not less.

Leave the vents open.

If a room runs hot, that’s a job for a tune-up, not a closed register.

Leaving the Fan Switch on “On”

Walk to your thermostat and find the little switch marked ON and AUTO.

If it’s sitting on ON, your blower fan runs around the clock, even when the system isn’t cooling a thing.

That’s a motor spinning all day on your dime, and it can push humid air back through the house between cooling cycles.

Flip it to AUTO. Now the fan runs only when the AC does.

One switch. Free. Plenty of folks never touch it.

Running Ceiling Fans in Empty Rooms

A ceiling fan feels like free cooling, so you leave every one in the house spinning all day.

Trouble is, a fan doesn’t cool a room. It cools people by moving air across your skin, like a breeze off the Bay.

An empty room doesn’t care about the breeze. The fan is just running up the meter and adding a little motor heat for good measure.

Turn fans off when you leave the room.

While you’re up there, set the blades to spin counterclockwise so they push the cool air down.

Ignoring a Filthy Air Filter

That filter behind your return vent has one job, and a summer of dust and dog hair shuts it down.

A clogged filter chokes the airflow, so your AC strains harder and runs longer to push cool air through a gray felt blanket.

Harder and longer means a fatter bill, and eventually a repair call you didn’t want.

Check it monthly during cooling season.

Swap it when it looks dirty.

A three-dollar filter is the cheapest insurance your air conditioner will ever get.

Skipping the Yearly AC Tune-Up

Your car gets an oil change. Your teeth get a cleaning. Your air conditioner gets ignored until the day it quits in a heat wave.

A unit with dirty coils or low refrigerant burns extra power all summer to do the same job.

The Energy Department puts seasonal cooling maintenance near the top of its summer list for a reason.

Book a spring tune-up before the Virginia heat sets in.

A tech catches the small stuff before it becomes a July emergency at holiday rates.

Baking in the Afternoon Heat

There’s a reason your grandmother canned tomatoes in the cool of the morning.

Running the oven on a 95-degree July afternoon dumps heat into the house, and your AC fights every degree of it.

The same goes for the dryer and a long hot shower.

They load the air conditioner right when rates and temperatures peak.

Push the heavy cooking to the grill or the early morning. Run the dryer after dark.

Your kitchen stays cooler, and the AC gets a break when it needs one.

Clinging to Old Light Bulbs

If you’ve still got a drawer of incandescent bulbs, summer is the worst time to burn them.

An old bulb throws off 90 percent of its energy as heat, so every lamp is a tiny furnace working against your AC.

LEDs use around 75 percent less power and barely warm up. The Energy Department figures the swap saves the average home a couple of hundred dollars a year.

Trade them out room by room.

Your cooling bill and your light bill both thank you.

Paying for Phantom Power

Flip everything off, and your house is still drinking electricity.

The cable box, the coffee maker clock, the TV waiting on the remote, and the phone charger left in the wall all sip power around the clock.

The Energy Department calls it standby power, and it can eat up to ten percent of what your home uses.

Put the worst offenders on a power strip and click it off at night.

It’s found money for the price of a smart strip from the hardware store.

Leaving the Blinds Wide Open

That sunny picture window feels cheerful until you do the math.

Direct sun pouring through glass turns your living room into a greenhouse, and the AC pays the bill.

The Energy Department says window coverings are one of the simplest ways to block summer heat gain.

Close the blinds or curtains on the south and west sides during the hottest part of the day.

The old folks drew the shades by noon for a reason, and their power bill thanked them.

Running the Water Heater Too Hot

Water heating is one of the biggest line items on your bill, right behind cooling.

Many tanks ship set to 140 degrees, hot enough to scald and hot enough to waste power holding all that heat.

Both the Energy Department and safety experts point to 120 degrees as the sweet spot.

Drop it down, wait a day, and see if anyone notices. They won’t.

You’ll burn less power and skip the risk of a scalding tap, all from one dial in the garage.

Letting Cool Air Leak Out

You wouldn’t run the AC with a window open, but a leaky house does that all day.

Gaps around doors, drafty windows, and a thin layer of attic insulation let your cool air drift out and the Virginia heat seep in.

You paid to chill that air. Watch it escape and you’re cooling the back yard.

Run your hand along door frames on a hot day. Feel a draft, add weatherstripping or a bead of caulk.

Cheap fixes, and they pay you back every single month.

Skipping Your Utility’s Free Money

Your utility is handing out help, and plenty of folks never claim a dime of it.

Dominion’s EnergyShare offers up to 600 dollars a year toward heating and 300 toward cooling, and it isn’t income-based, so plenty of households qualify.

Budget billing smooths your payments into one steady number instead of a summer spike. A free home energy assessment hunts down the leaks for you.