How to keep cozy during Southwest Florida's cold front with costs down

CAPE CORAL, Fla. —

Southwest Florida residents are bundling up this week as temperatures dip into the 40s, and with the chill comes a common question: how do you stay warm without blowing your power bill?

Just weeks after Florida Power and Light raised rates for 2024, some Southwest Floridians are thinking twice before reaching for the thermostat.

“It did surprise me that it’s lasted this long,” said Harvey Comrie, who spends half the year in Southeast Cape Coral and the other half in Michigan. “I thought it was a couple days and it warms up.”

Comrie and Jan Schumacher, who also lives in Southeast Cape Coral, came to Florida for sunshine and bike rides ... not pool covers and layers. But this week’s cold snap has them adjusting their habits to stay comfortable and keep costs down.

“I’m still conscious of the money,” Comrie said. “So I don’t heat the pool. I leave the solar heater on and put a solar blanket on the pool, and we usually don’t turn the heater down here unless it gets 67, 68 in the house.”

Lee County Electric Cooperative, the utility provider for much of Southwest Florida, says heating your home is the number one reason bills spike during cold snaps. Their advice? Keep your thermostat no higher than 68 degrees. For every degree above that, your heating costs can jump by 9%.

“If you have a cover over your pool, that helps,” said Karen Ryan with LCEC. “But this really isn’t a good time to use that heater because the temperatures are so low. The heat just escapes.”

Other energy-saving tips include using space heaters to warm individual rooms instead of the whole house, taking shorter showers to cut down on water heating, and opening blinds during the day to let sunlight naturally warm your home.

"Cleaning your air filters can also save you money," said Ryan. "When you have dirty air filters, it just causes your unit to work harder, and it's not as efficient. So that will drive your costs up."

Ryan added if you are an LCEC user, you can track your usage in real time with LCEC’s SmartHub app.

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