I do hard physical labor out in the sun and I like to be cool in my house. Lately the highs have been topping 100 and at a mile above sea level the sun is vicious. Below are some ideas on staying cool cheaper, feel free to add your energy saving tricks in the comments.
Buy a few large cheap thermometers and use them. Put one outside where you can see it from inside, be sure to put it in the shade and away from heat absorbing stuff.
Put another one in the place you spend all the time.
Put another one in the upstairs if you have one.
Often night time temps sink into the 60s here, even 50s. As soon as I see the temp outside is cooler than inside I open all the windows to let the cool air in. I put the fans upstairs pointed out so the natural chimney affect draws cool air in downstairs and pushes the hot out upstairs. All night long the inside of the house is cooling and everything in the house is losing heat.
In the morning when the sun comes up I pull the shades and close the windows on the side of the house catching the sun. As soon as outside temps approach inside ones I close all the windows and pull all the shades and close all the curtains. My objective is to keep it as cool inside for as long as I can. Often we can go until mid afternoon before the temps in our main room exceed 75. Upstairs is hotter, we close all the rooms to decrease air flow to the hot rooms.
When the inside air is in the 70s we turn on the swamp cooler (evaporative cooler) which works great in dry climates. Out here in the dry west they are great, no need for the AC, and our summer electric bill isn't any different from our winter. I crack a window upstairs to allow the air to exit. The evaporative cooler is pushing a lot of volume, the slight opening in the window upstairs allows the cooler to push more air in as it allows a place for the air to go out.
We used to have a new house with central AC, we used similar strategies but our bills were obviously higher. The house was tighter and often we could go without using the AC until late afternoon. The trick is to have thermometers and fans, and to use them. If the air is cooler inside than out, do not open that window. Use shades.
Around 300 KWH a month.
Didn't know what kind of tags to use.
Update:
Below is the type of cooler we use. The small part goes inside the window, the large part is outside in the hot sun. Along the vented 3 outside walls are pads of excelsior that water drips into, inside is a large fan pulling the dry outside air through the excelsior which evaporates and cools. Presto, the 100 degree outside air enters at 65. Beware of the swamp coolers that recycle inside air. The air inside quickly becomes wet and the cooling affects of evaporation are lost. Figured I should do something to earn the rescue tag.