I like to help out my air conditioner by leaving the ceiling fan on when I leave for work each morning. I know it takes some electricity to run the fan. Is this an energy-efficient habit?

A common ceiling fan uses about $.01 of electricity every hour it’s on. A penny an hour isn’t too bad, right? But remember, if you are leaving the fan on all the time it could be costing you over $80 per year. And that’s just for one fan. Of course, in your question you said that you were leaving the ceiling fan on as a way to help out the air conditioner. If the fan is making the air conditioner more efficient, it may be well worth a quarter a day. But here’s the catch: Fans cool people, not rooms. Ceiling fans make you more comfortable by evaporating moisture from your skin and moving built-up heat. But they don’t reduce the temperature in the room. So treat your ceiling fan like a light and turn it off when you leave the room. Your air conditioner won’t notice the difference.

I’ve noticed my refrigerator motor making a loud noise when it starts up. I’m worried that it’s running inefficiently. Is it time to get a new one?

An old, inefficient refrigerator could add $16 to your monthly utility bill, while a newer, more efficient model could cost you as little as $4 per month. Depending on the cost of the refrigerator, you could potentially “pay off” a new unit in energy savings in less than 7 years.Of course this assumes that your old refrigerator is still working properly. One way to test its energy consumption is with a watt meter. A watt meter can tell you exactly how much energy your refrigerator is using over time. With this information you’ll be able to accurately calculate the cost savings of getting a newer unit. Denton Municipal Electric has watt meters which we can use to test your appliances for free. And don’t forget: it’s impossible to realize the energy savings of your new refrigerator when your old one is humming away in the garage.