The heat of a Pasadena summer is so awful -- it's been getting hotter and hotter these last few years. Our house faces west, so my kids' upstairs rooms are full sun all afternoon. They are baking at night, even with air conditioning. Sometimes it is 80 - 90 degrees in their rooms. So, this year we have re-vamped our AC so that their rooms are on a separate thermostat, also improved the duct work so that cool air wasn't leaking away in the basement. Then, I got ceiling fans for each bedroom, which apparently helps with the whole house thermostat driven cooling (and heating) process. I also got them blackout curtains. We'll see how it goes. We really need some insulation in our attic, but I haven't tackled that yet.

I can say for sure that when we use our big portable room fans (like a window fan) going the energy cost is higher than when we just run the AC.