>>But even with your stats above there's a simple hole - "energy" is not the same as electricity.
>>
>>Someone who heats with gas or oil or wood (or solar or geo-thermal) and doesn't own an air conditioner in the first place might well have half or more of their electricity consumed by lighting.
>
>Which is almost exactly my parents' case. Gas heat, no central air, just two window units (in a 5-bedroom house, yet). When it gets really hot, they pretty much live in their bedroom and the dining room/kitchen combo.
>

It was like that when I lived in Chicago. It was an older house without AC (other than two window units). It didn't even have the ductwork to put AC in. So we basically sweated through the heat waves. If we were lucky the downstairs window AC would keep the temperature under 80. That was downstairs -- upstairs, where the bedrooms are, was much hotter. Now I live in a relatively new house with central air and like that a lot. I don't overdo it, setting the cooling thermostat to 76, but that makes a big difference.