Cooling Options

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There are many factors to consider when determining whether evaporative cooling (better known as swamp cooling) or refrigerated air conditioning is right for your home or business, including:

equipment and installation costs energy costs water usage maintenance costs

emissions from power production noise comfort level

Use the chart below to compare common operating costs and water usage for traditional swamp coolers and refrigerated air conditioning units for an average month during cooling season.

Residential customers pay a higher electric rate for monthly usage that exceeds 700 kilowatt-hours. For this reason, customers using refrigerated air may have significantly higher summer electric bills than users of swamp coolers.

An average residential customer with a swamp cooler is less likely to pay this higher rate due to lower energy usage.

	Electricity used (month)	Water used directly by cooler (month)	Water used in plant to create electricity (month)	Total water used (month)	Electricity use cost (month)
Evaporative cooler	84 kwh	818 gallons	34 gallons	852 gallons	$9.41
Refrigerated air conditioning Chart current as of 5/17/2011	370 kwh	0 gallons	150 gallons	150 gallons	$44.80

The figures above are monthly averages for a typical home in Albuquerque from mid-May to mid-September. The evaporative cooler figures assume it runs 7.3 hours a day. Actual usage will vary depending on many factors, including how often you run your unit and the efficiency of the unit. The evaporative cooler in this example is single-inlet style with 8" media. PNM power-production facilities require about 0.406 gallons of water to generate 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity.

Evaporative coolers with dump pump or bleed-off valve features often can use 45 percent to 235 percent more water than an evaporative cooler without these features.

Electric costs on this chart reflect rates paid by PNM electric customers in Bernalillo, Sandoval, Santa Fe and Valencia counties and in Clayton, Deming and Las Vegas.