677. The Hidden Mechanics of Rising Energy Costs | Deep Dive into Derek Cole's Article

All right, I want you to picture something. And I'm pretty sure every single person listening has been through this. It's a specific kind of dread.

Oh, yeah.

You walk out to the mailbox, it's a nice day. You grab the mail, flip through the junk, and then you see it. The envelope from the power company.

The moment of truth, right?

And you open it expecting the usual number. I mean, it fluctuates a little bit, right? A few bucks here or there, but then you see the total, and it is way higher than you expected. I'm talking a jump that makes you stop in your tracks, and immediately your brain just starts this interrogation. Who did what, exactly? Who left the lights on? Did we run the dryer empty? Did I accidentally start, I don't know, a crypto mining operation in the basement?

It feels personal. It feels like you made a mistake somewhere.

It does. You retrace your steps for the last month, and you realize, you know, you didn't change the thermostat. You didn't leave the windows open. You lived your life exactly the same way. So?

So the bill feels like a mistake. It feels like a glitch in this.

System, but it's almost never a glitch. That's the hard part, isn't it?

It really is.

And that is exactly why we're here today. We are doing a deep dive into this really fascinating article by Derek Cole. It's called why your power bill keeps going up even when nothing changed.

Right.

And I have to say, this was not what I expected. I thought we were going to talk about, you know, unplugging your toaster or switching to LED bulbs, but Derek Cole goes way deeper.

Well, you have to consider the source.

Yeah.

I mean, Derek isn't just a blogger. He's the general manager of Simmons One Hour Heating and Air.

Okay?

He's been in the H Vac industry for over 20 years. When you have that kind of experience, you know, seeing thousands of systems and thousands of homes, you stop looking at the surface level stuff and you start seeing.

You start seeing the physics of the house.

The physics of the house. See, that's the phrase that stops with me reading this. Yeah, because usually when the bill goes up, I just blame the utility company or my kids.

We all. But Derek argues that there are these silent, invisible killers of efficiency happening inside our walls, inside the machines, that we completely ignore.

We ignore them because they're slow. I mean, think about it. Humans are great at noticing sudden changes. A loud bang, a spark, a flood.

Right?

We are terrible at noticing Slow degradation. And that's what this deep dive is really about. It's about the slow, expensive decay of efficiency.

So let's get into it. The first culprit Derek identifies, and honestly, this one made me feel a little naive. He calls it the aging machine. I think I've always operated under this assumption that my air conditioner is binary. It's either working, meaning it's blowing cold air, or it's broken, meaning it's silent and I'm sweating.

That is how most people see it. Yeah. If the house is 72 degrees, the machine is fine. But that's just not true.

Okay, so explain this, because if my thermostat says 72 and the room feels like 72, hasn't the machine done its job? How can it be failing if I'm comfortable?

Think about it in terms of effort. Derek talks about the components inside the unit, specifically the motor and the bearings. When that system is brand new, right out of the box, everything's lubricated, it's balanced, there's almost no friction. It takes very little electrical energy, very few amps to get that motor moving.

So it's efficient. It's barely trying.

Exactly. But fast forward 10 years, or even just five, those darings. The lubricant starts to dry out a bit. Tiny bits of dust and grit get in there. Now there is resistance.

It's so sticky.

Essentially, it's friction. And to overcome that friction, the motor has to draw more electricity. It has to pull more amps from the grid just to spin at the same speed it used to.

Wow. So, going back to my thermostat, I set it to 72. The machine turns on. It struggles a little, it groans, maybe silently sucks down way more power than it should, but it gets there. It gets there and eventually cools the room to 72.

And then it shuts off. And you're sitting there none the wiser. You got your comfort, but you paid a premium for it. You paid for the cooling. Plus, you could call a friction tax.

A friction tax. I like that. Or I hate that, actually. It's like, okay, imagine you're a runner. Ten years ago, you could run a 10 minute mile and barely break a sweat. Today, you can still run that 10 minute mile. So the result is the same, right? But to do it, your heart rate is 180, you're panting, your knees hurt, and you need a massive meal afterwards to recover.

That is the perfect analogy. The output, the mile time, the room temperature, it's identical. The input, the energy required has skyrocketed.

And Derek also mentions that electrical parts degrade, too, right? It's not just the moving stuff.

Oh, yeah. Capacitors get weak, contactors get pitted. The electricity just doesn't flow as cleanly. It's all part of that aging process.

And this isn't something I'd hear.

Probably not. Not unless a bearing is just screaming. It's a silent thief. It's just showing up as numbers on that power bill.

That is terrifying. Okay, so that's internal wear and tear. But then Derek moves on to a second culprit that is arguably worse because it's completely preventable. And I have a feeling I'm about to get scold it here.

We're talking about dirt.

We are talking about dirt. Now, look, I know I'm supposed to change the air filters. It's like the number one piece of homeowner advice. Change your filter.

It's like floss your teeth.

It is. I know I should, but if I skip a few months, is it really that big of a deal? I mean, come on. It's just a little dust.

It is a very, very big deal. And not just for air quality. It all comes back to physics. Derek has this great line. He says airflow is everything.

Airflow is everything.

An HEAC system is designed to move a very specific volume of air. It's measured in cubic feet per minute. When you let a filter get clogged, you are effectively choking the machine.

Choking it how? Like like breathing through a straw?

Exactly. Like breathing through a straw. But imagine you're trying to run a marathon breathing through a straw. Your lungs, or in this case, the blower motor, have to work exponentially harder to pull air through.

And that raises the bill.

That raises the bill. But there's a second layer to the dirt problem that's even more insidious. It has to do with the coils.

The coils? Those are the metal fins inside the unit, Right?

The evaporator coils. Their entire job is heat transfer. They absorb the heat from your house. Now, what happens if you coat those fins in a layer of gray fuzz and dust?

I'm guessing they get insulated.

Precisely. Dust is an insulator. Think of it like putting a wool blanket over a radiator. The system is trying to absorb heat, but it can't get to it because there's a sweater made of dust in the way.

Okay, that visual is disgusting, but it makes perfect sense. So the system is running, the air is moving, but the air isn't getting cold fast enough.

Correct. And because it's not cooling efficiently. What does the thermostat do?

It just keeps the machine running.

It keeps it running longer cycles. If it used to take 15 minutes to cool your living room, now it takes 30. That's double the runtime, double the electricity just because of a millimeter of dust.

So when Derek says the system compensates, that's it. It compensates with time. It just grinds away for longer to get the same result.

And you sitting on the couch, you just think, man, it's hot outside today. The AC is running a lot. You don't realize it's running a lot because it's wearing a dust sweater.

A dust sweater is going to haunt my nightmares. Chuckles it should, but it drives home the point. Clean equals cheap. Okay, so we've got the machine getting old and stiff. We've got it choking on dust. But then Derek zooms out for the third point. He stops looking at the metal box and starts looking in the house itself.

Mm, the leaking envelope.

Leaking envelope.

This is a concept that usually blows people's minds. We tend to think of our homes as these like solid static castles. You build a wall, it stays a wall. Yeah, a house is actually degrading system. It is constantly settling, shifting and drying out.

Derek specifically mentions insulation settling. I just pictured the pink fluffy stuff in my attic kind of deflating.

That's literally what happens. Gravity works on everything. Over 10 or 15 years, blown in insulation can compress. If it settles even a few inches, you lose that thermal protection.

The blanket over the house gets thinner.

Yes, but the even bigger issue is the seals. Think about every place where two different materials meet in your house. Window frames, door jambs, the vents where.

They meet, the drywall or those recessed lights in the ceiling. I swear I can feel a draft from those sometimes huge sorts of leaks.

The caulk, the weather stripping, it all dries out and cracks over time. DARE calls this the exchange.

The exchange sounds ominous.

It's a horror movie for your wallet. I mean, you pay good money to condition the air to make it 72 degrees. That expensive air that then leaks out through all these tiny invisible cracks and.

What comes in to replace it?

The hot, swampy air from outside sucked right into your living room.

I read this analogy once, that if you took all the tiny cracks in an average home and added them all up, it's like leaving a window wide open 24 7. Is that. Is that real?

It's a very common and pretty accurate analogy. It's often like leaving a medium sized window wide open all year. Round. And think about it.

It's.

You would never try to cool your house with the window open.

No, of course not.

But structurally, that's what's happening as the house ages. And that brings us right back to the poor H vac system. The system doesn't know you have a hole in the house. It just knows the temperature keeps creeping up so it turns on again and again.

Fighting a losing battle.

It's what Derek writes from the system's perspective. It's fighting a harder battle every day. It's trying to fill a bucket that has a hole in the bottom.

Man, that's incredibly depressing. Okay, I need a win here because so far we have friction dust, sweaters and a house that's full of holes.

It's a lot.

But surely if I fix all that, seal the windows, change the filter, my bill should be stable.

You would hope so. Yeah, but this is where Derek drops the hammer with the fourth factor. The one you can't fix with a talking gun.

Oh no, the economics.

The stacking effect.

Right?

This is just the reality of the market. Utility rates go up. It's a fact of life. Fuel costs rise, the grid needs repairs, demand increases. The price you pay per kilowatt hour just drifts upward.

This is the part that makes me the angriest. Because even if I am the perfect homeowner. Pristine filter, window seal shut. My bill can still go up just because the power company decided it would.

Correct. But Derek points out what he calls the double whammy. And this is the danger zone. Uh oh. Imagine your system is 10% less efficient because it's old. And your house is 10% leakier because it's settled. So you're already using 20% more electricity. Okay, now add a 5% rate hike on top of that.

Oh, I see it. You aren't just paying the higher rate on the normal amount of energy. You're paying the higher rate on the bloated amount of energy you're now using.

Exactly. It compounds. The bill climbs faster than you expect because both the price and the quantity are moving against you.

And then he adds the final layer. Death by a thousand cuts.

The lifestyle creep. Yeah, the small daily changes. Maybe the kids are home for summer break, so the door is opening and closing 50 times a day.

Or the gaming PC. My son built one of those. And that thing puts out heat like a space eater.

Huge energy draw. Or maybe you started working from home. Now the house needs to be 72 degrees at 2 in the afternoon on a Tuesday when it used to be set to 78 because no one was there.

It's never just one thing, is it? It's not like the motor broke. It's. The motor is old and d. The filter is dirty and the rates went up and the kids left the back door open.

It is the cumulative effect. And that is why the bill feels like a mystery. You're looking for one smoking gun. But the problem is actually a thousand tiny paper cuts.

So this is all pretty bleak. It sounds like entropy is just coming from my bank account and there's nothing I can do. But Derek pivots at the end, right? He reframes this.

He does. And I think this is the most valuable takeaway. He says a rising power bill is a warning, not a surprise.

A warning like a check engine light on a car.

Exactly like that. When your check engine light comes on, you don't just put a piece of tape over it and keep driving.

Right.

You know something is wrong, you investigate. But when our power bill goes up, we tend to just complain and pay it. Derek is saying, listen to your house. The bill is the house telling you, hey, I'm struggling here. I can't breathe, I'm leaking.

So instead of looking at the bill and getting mad, we should look at the bill and get curious.

Get curious. Go back to basics. The solution isn't magic. It's what Derek calls the old fashioned way.

Which means maintenance.

Maintenance. Let's be specific about that. Number one, airflow. Go buy a filter. Like right now. If you're listening to this and you can't remember the last time you changed it, you are paying that friction tax.

And not the super restrictive ultra HEPA1. If your system can't handle it right, consult your manual.

The goal is airflow, not a blockage. Number two, have a pro look at the machine. If a capacitor is weak, swap it out for a $20 part before it kills the thousand dollar compressor.

Fix the small thing to prevent the big catastrophic thing.

And number three, look at the envelope. On a windy day, walk around your house with a candle or even just a wet hand. Feel around the windows, the outlets. If you feel air moving, that is money leaving your pocket.

A five dollar tube of cock could.

Save you hundreds over a few years.

Yeah, it's empowering, actually. It shifts the mindset from I am a victim of the power company to I am the manager of this building.

You are the facility manager of your own home and you have to manage its degradation.

I love that facility manager. I'm going to get a badge. You should. But Seriously, viewing the house as a living, aging organism changes everything. It's not a rock. It breathes, it gets clogged arteries, Its skin gets thin over time.

And that's a provocative thought to leave on. If you treated your house like a living body, one that needs checkups, that needs to breathe, that needs protection, how would your routine change? Wow. You wouldn't ignore a clogged artery in your own body? Why? Why ignore one in your attic that hits home?

Literally. So here's the challenge for everyone listening. When you get home today, go listen to your house. Check that filter, look at the seals around your doors, be the facility manager.

And don't be afraid to call in a pro like Derek when you need one. Sometimes you need an expert to see the invisible stuff.

A huge thanks to Derek Cole for the article and for scaring us straight about dust sweaters.

It was a necessary scare.

Thanks for listening to the deep dive. Keep investigating, keep learning. And for the love of everything, go change that filter. We'll see you next time.