The reason that people believe that their ceiling fans save energy, if because fans used to help AC’s work better.
Ceiling fans use much less energy to run than air conditioners, so it would seem like a simple conclusion that ceiling fans save energy. In most parts of the country, fans don’t provide enough cooling to replace air conditioners. You may have heard that fans don’t cool rooms, they cool people. Fans work for the same reason why wind feels cold; it’s called the windchill effect. Moving air makes you feel cooler because it assists your body’s natural cooling process through evaporation. The more air is moving, the more moisture can evaporate from your skin, making you feel cooler. A ceiling fan does not actually lower the temperature in a room. This is why you should not leave a fan on in an unoccupied room because it has no effect and would be wasting energy. Since a ceiling fans job is to cool people, it accomplishes that just fine. It’s just not a replacement for air conditioning, especially in hotter climates. But you can use them together to create better cooling conditions and possibly save energy. Since fans circulate the air, it makes the temperature more even across the room, and also adds the windchill effect. The reason that people believe that their ceiling fans save energy, if because fans used to help AC’s work better. The reason is that modern air conditioners are so much more efficient, they don’t suffer the same problems as early models. Unless your AC unit was installed before 2000, you don’t need to correct temperature variance issues with a fan. Modern ACs are designed to have proper air circulation for the space they are in.