[{OF}G_Man]

I didn't mean to make it sound like turning your stat up for AC and down for Heating doesn't save you lots of money.

In summer, with a programmable stat, setting your house at say 78 or higher during the day saves lots of bucks. Even though the system runs continuously when you get home at the thermostat sets itself to 72 say trying to recover, the net savings in energy cost having the system off while you are not home is very big.

The same goes for heating, even on a heat pump system. Where you can get in trouble with a heat pumps system is on severe cold weather, if you set it back too far, it may not recover, or take a real long time and comfort becomes the issue, savings be damned. I hate being cold.

It's a pretty simple principle for energy savings. When something is turned off, you save money.

What you need to do with a heat pump system is determine where that point is for your house(during the real cold weather) where your system doesn't recover too well, or it is running on the supplemental electrical heat too long, which is more expensive because the heat pump compressor and the supplemental electrical heat strip are both running. At those outdoor temperatures is where you may want to decide not to set the temperature back so far with the programmable stat. Watch your electric bills, or even read your meter yourself, and you will be able to tune and maximize your energy savings balanced against comfort level.