Portable room air conditioners – the little boxes that look like R2D2 from Star Wars – generally use between 900 and 1,400 watts.  That means they cost about 8 cents an hour to run at the lowest-in-the-country rates offered by my employer, Seattle City Light.  Use them for 12 hours a day for a month and that will add up to about $34 per month. Central air conditioning uses much more electricity.  A unit that uses 3,500 watts will cost about $100 per month at 12 hours per day.

If you can keep the house cool enough to get by with a window fan, you can significantly reduce your costs. A window fan costs about $1.40 a month to run for the same amount of time.

How then, do you beat the heat without the A/C?

For starters, try to avoid building a box of hot air inside your house. Eat cool meals like sandwiches, salads and fruit instead of cooking with the stove. If you really want a hot meal, grill outside. And wait until evening to run the washing machine, dryer or dishwasher.

Next, use shading and ventilation.

Keep interior shades closed on the windows with direct sunlight. Exterior shades offer even more relief. I installed one on the west side of my house to cover the sliding glass door and have another for the picture window.

Open windows and doors to create cross ventilation then turn on a fan or two. You don’t want to spin hot air around inside your home. You want to move it outside and replace it with cooler air, even if cooler means 80 degrees.

Another idea is to take advantage of the insulation provided by the ground. If you’ve got a basement like I do, you learn fast that it’s typically the coolest room in the house during the summer. Spend more time there when it’s hot outside.

If you’ve got air conditioning, don’t sweat it. I understand the comfort of a climate controlled room and excessive temperatures can create health problems, including heat stress and heat exhaustion.

But even if you turn to air conditioning for some extra relief, these tips will help you conserve electricity because your A/C unit won’t have to work as hard to bring the temperature down.

So this week’s ONE THING you can do to conserve electricity and keep a little more money in your bank account is to try to keep cool without the air conditioning, or at least use the A/C a little less.