Even at times when the nigttime temperature is so high that we still need to aircondition at night-or when it's so cold in the day that we're heating in the day-that " averaging " effect of the concrete means that ( because of Newton's law of cooling ) we never see the high peaks in consumption due to that " energy loss is proportional to the SQUARE of the temperature difference ".
42.
Because heat loss ( per Newton's law of cooling ) is proportional to the SQUARE of the temperature difference, if it's 60 degrees outside and you turn your thermostat down from 62 to 61, you'll knock 75 % off your heating bill-but since the heater was probably hardly ever on in the first place, who cares ? on the other hand, if it was zero degrees outside and you reduced from 62 to 61, the percentage saving would be 1-( 61 2 / 62 2 ) which is only 3 % of your bill-but since you need about a thousand times as much heat energy to keep your house warm when it's zero degrees outside than it is when it's 60 degrees outside ( for a 62 degree thermostat setting ), that 3 % represents 30 times as much money saved.
