What Cooling Costs
Work out roughly what it costs to keep your place cool here, month by month — and see what the thermostat and the equipment are actually worth in dollars.
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Work out roughly what it costs to keep your place cool here, month by month — and see what the thermostat and the equipment are actually worth in dollars.
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In St. George the air conditioning is not a luxury and it is not a small line on the bill — it runs from April to October and it is most of the difference between a January bill and a July one. This works out roughly what that costs for a home your size, month by month, and shows what the thermostat and the equipment are actually worth in dollars. Everything is worked out in your browser as you change it; nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere.
The floor area you actually air-condition. If you only cool part of the house, put that part.
Drag to your usual setting. Every degree warmer is less electricity.
Each bar is one month's estimated electricity bill. The darker part is the cooling. The cooling season here runs April–October.
| Month | Cooling | Whole bill |
|---|---|---|
| January | $0 | $76 |
| February | $0 | $76 |
| March | $0.2 | $77 |
| April | $3.9 | $80 |
| May | $32 | $108 |
| June | $77 | $154 |
| July | $114 | $191 |
| August | $105 | $181 |
| September | $57 | $134 |
| October | $7.7 | $84 |
| November | $0.1 | $76 |
| December | $0 | $76 |
The other half of a St. George summer: the hours the heat and the air actually allow.
These are prefilled from the published tariff and a typical home. If your bill says something different, put your own figures in — the sums below follow whatever you enter.
The EIA's billing figures put the average home on the city utility at 982 kWh a month across 2024. Take out the cooling this model estimates for an average-sized home and about 650 kWh a month is left for everything else — fridge, lights, laundry, cooking, water heating. That is the prefill; your bill's kWh figure for a winter month is a better one.
$0.077582 per kWh
$0.10712 per kWh
These are the residential figures in the city's Master Fee Schedule adopted on 16 July 2026 for the 2027 budget year: a $26.00 monthly customer charge, 7.7582¢ for each of the first 800 kWh and 10.712¢ for every kWh after that. They cover electricity only — not the water, sewer, solid-waste or drainage lines on the same bill, and not the solar reliability charge if you have panels. The city adopts a new fee schedule most Julys, so if your bill says something different, that is the number to put in here.
Source: St. George City Energy Services — residential rate, FY2027, checked 29 July 2026 (today).
This is an estimate, not your bill
The seasons come from real weather, not a guess: the 1991–2020 monthly normals recorded at ST GEORGE, UT US, published by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. USC00427516
A cooling degree day counts one degree that a day's average temperature sat above 65°F. This town runs about 2,416 of them a year — that is the number that decides how much of the year the air conditioning is working, and which months carry the cost.
| Month | Cooling degree days | Share of the year |
|---|---|---|
| March | 2 | 0% |
| April | 31 | 1% |
| May | 207 | 9% |
| June | 466 | 19% |
| July | 676 | 28% |
| August | 623 | 26% |
| September | 351 | 15% |
| October | 61 | 3% |
| November | 0 | 0% |
One number here is an estimate rather than a measurement: how much electricity a square foot of cooled floor uses per cooling degree day. It works out to about 0.00091 kWh, and it comes straight from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey — the air-conditioning electricity, cooled floor area and long-run degree days reported by the 12.2 million air-conditioned homes in the survey's Hot-Dry climate zone, which is the zone St. George sits in. Those homes averaged 2,749 kWh of cooling a year over 1,396 cooled square feet and 2,068 degree days. The figure carries whatever equipment those homes actually had, which we treat as about SEER 13 — the federal minimum for units sold between 2006 and 2015, and a fair description of the middle of the installed stock. A useful check on the whole thing: this model puts an average-sized St. George home at roughly 330 kWh a month for cooling, and the EIA's own billing figures for the city utility show an average home using 982 kWh a month in total. The two were worked out from different data and they fit.
The city's electric utility serves homes north of the Virgin River. Homes south of the river are served by Dixie Power, a separate co-op with its own rates — the city's own budget says so plainly. If Dixie Power bills you, the shape of the year on this page still holds, but put their prices into the rate boxes. Dixie Power.
In 2024 the city utility sold 335,123 MWh to 28,436 residential customers — 982 kWh a month each, at an average of 11.4¢ per kWh once the fixed charge is spread across it. That is roughly 40% above the average American home, which is what a Mojave summer does to a bill. EIA electricity sales, revenue and price.
The station’s normals put 676 of the town’s 2,416 cooling degree days in July alone, and 2,322 of them — 96% — in May through September. Whatever you change about how you cool the house, you are mostly changing those five months. NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals.
Utah runs HEAT, a state energy-assistance programme that helps with home energy costs for households under an income limit, and a free weatherization programme that fixes the reasons a house is expensive to cool. Both are applied for through the state, not the utility. Utah Home Energy Assistance Target (HEAT).
The thermostat lever uses the published rule of thumb of about 2% less cooling electricity for each degree warmer you set it (U.S. Department of Energy). The tool compounds it degree by degree rather than adding it up. U.S. Department of Energy
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