Computation doesn’t come naturally to me. Nor does basic physics. Yes, that’s right, I’m not a math or science person (although eons ago I did manage to successfully complete advanced calculus). But in order to do my job well, which includes tracking and analyzing household energy use to determine the impact of home performance upgrades, I needed to relearn some basic math and energy science. Now I can talk Btus/square feet with the best of them!
But what about the average homeowner who just wants to know how much she’s spending each month on energy? Does she need to know what a Btu is, or be a Microsoft Excel junkie, or actually read her utility bills (perish the thought!)? The answer is no, thanks to sophisticated online platforms that do all the work for you, and let you compare your usage against that of comparable homes. Whether you are an energy geek or an energy dummy, there is an energy tracking tool that is right for you. Here are a few I’ve found helpful.
MyEnergy is a free tool that was designed precisely with the average homeowner. To set up your account you need to enter basic information about your home, including your utility account information. MyEnergy will then retrieve your energy usage (and water if you have an online water account, which I don’t) and display it on your personal dashboard. The dashboard also automatically compares your usage to nearby homes.
Another cool feature of MyEnergy is that it allows you to form and join energy groups. There is a group for most states as well as some more local groups. If you live in Newton, MA you can join the Newton Eco-Project group, a community group working to helping Newton residents make their homes more comfortable, energy efficient and affordable. MyEnergy also provide tips to help you reduce your usage, which you may find helpful especially if you’re an energy conservation newbie.
My electricity use dashboard
Your electricity provider may also offer free tracking tools. Nstar, which is my provider, is currently offering a smart energy pilot program. Participating homes receive a counter-top display as well as access to an online dashboard. The counter-top home screen highlights daily use, comparing the current day’s usage to the previous day. The online dashboard displays monthly, weekly and daily use. It also compares your home’s usage against similar homes that are also part of the pilot. Nstar requires that all participating homes be subject to time-of-day pricing, which means that you are charged two different rates: a lower rate for usage during off-peak hours, and a higher rate for usage during peak hours (In the winter peak hours are weekdays from 4-9pm. In the summer peak hours are 1-5pm). Sound interesting? Click here to sign up.
Wegowise is on online platform designed for multi-family property owners, but it also works great single-family homeowners who tend more towards the geek-side of energy awareness. Similar to MyEnergy, Wegowise will retrieve your usage data directly from your utility providers and display it on a personalized dashboard. Wegowise also supports information sharing, but it does so a little bit differently than MyEnergy: the sharing is done one-to-one between account holders rather than in groups. In addition, Wegowise offers more sophisticated analytical tools than MyEnergy does. For example, it can calculate your energy use/square foot as well as your energy use/bedroom. The growing geek in me loves Wegowise because it allows me to drill down into the nuances of energy usage. It isn’t for everyone, though, in part because it costs $5/month if you want to share your data and/or if you want to track more than one property.
Are you using one of these tools? Is there another tool you are using? Please share your experience!
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Two years ago I reported dramatic reductions in my home energy use on this blog. Between 2007 and 2009 I cut my gas usage by 34% and my electric usage by 55%. Needless to say I was pretty pleased with myself for this achievement and none too shy about spreading the news. I was also happy to share because I believed that my experience could serve as a model for others seeking to lower their energy bills and that my savings were replicable.
My message? That behavior change had incredible power to drive down energy usage. This wasn’t what I anticipated when I first began to work at reducing our home’s energy use: I had expected that efficiency upgrades (insulation, air sealing and better equipment) would have a much bigger impact on our energy use than conservation (things like turning lights off, adjusting thermostat settings, or washing our clothes in cold water). Of course, I was practicing and preaching the virtues of making sustainable choices all along, but I didn’t really think these would have a big impact. Boy was I surprised when I began to evaluate our savings in light of the actions we had taken!
By way of illustration, consider our summertime electricity use. Between June-September of 2006 we consumed just over 1200 KWH each month. Between June-September of 2011 we used 600 KWH each month: half of what we consumed 5 years prior.
Can you guess how we did it? Yes, we insulated our attic, which allowed or air handler to run more efficiently (just think how much 
harder an air handler has to work if it’s located in a 100 degree attic, as opposed to a 78 degree home). But, no, we didn’t install a more efficient HVAC system. And, no, we didn’t even seal our ductwork. Mostly we just turned the AC off and ran fans instead (except on the hottest days; even I’m not crazy enough to suffer through several days of 90+ degree heat without using central AC). So… we cut our summertime electric bill in half simply by flicking a switch–oh, and “investing” in fans, like this ceiling fan we put in our bedroom.
Pretty simple, right? Well, yes and no. Take another look at that chart. Do you notice that the trend line started to edge back up slightly after bottoming out in 2009? Although we used slightly less electricity in the summer of 2011 than in the summer of 2010, in both years we used more electricity that in the summer of 2009. At the same time, we’ve also been backsliding a little on gas usage, and our total energy use (in BTUs) was slightly higher in 2011 than in 2010.
What happened between 2009 and now? Not much, other than our two new entertainment systems. While these systems use more electricity than our old-school TV did, we don’t use them all that much and power them down completely when we aren’t using them (we keep vampire power to a minimum in our house). So they don’t account for much of the uptick.
I suspect that this uptick is mostly due to a loss of focus. We just aren’t paying as close attention to our energy consumption now that we’ve achieved such marked reductions. And we’re slipping back into some bad habits: we’re leaving lights on more; we’re more likely to bump up the thermostat when we’re chilly; we’re using our clothes dryer more.
So what does this mean? First, that the power of behavior cuts both ways. Just as behavior change can result in dramatic reductions in energy use, backsliding can easily erode those savings. It reminds me of lifestyle changes: who among us hasn’t achieved weight loss or exercise goals only to watch them slip away as bad habits return to roost?
Which leads right to my second point: behavior change sounds simple. After all, most of us know what’s required in order to lose weight, be stronger, or cut our energy bills. We may even be successful at achieving these goals in the short-term. Yet as time goes on, many of us fail to sustain our achievements and end up back where we started. In short, behavior change is much harder in practice than it is in theory.
Which leads to my third point: behavior change alone won’t get us where we need to go. We can’t just tell people to conserve and expect them to do so. We can’t even teach them how to conserve and expect them to do so. We need to do a lot of other things too like:
- design and engineer our infrastructure to facilitate conservation
- sett goals, create support systems (Weight Watchers for energy use?), provide rewards for success, and perhaps even penalize people for failure.
- reevaluate and aggressively realign our political and economic systems to prioritize the public good over corporate profits, and the welfare of future generations over short-term and myopic fixes to immediate problems.
Lacking a holistic vision, policy and strategy, behavior change is likely to fail in the long-term. We may succeed in the short-term but soon enough we’ll be back to consuming calories and carbon-based fuels we can no longer afford.
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What a terrific time I had at Build Boston this year! I attended several extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking presentations and met some of the pioneers in green building and energy efficiency.
Who knew that Massachusetts’ progressive energy policies would make building net-zero homes (homes that produce as much energy as they consume) so affordable? Carter Scott of Transformations, Inc. did! His experience has shown that the simple payback for a photovoltaic system on a home with decent solar orientation is as little as 6-7 years.
Who would have thought occupant choices could have such a large impact on overall energy consumption? Through his thoughtful retrofit of his own home, Marc Rosenbaum of South Mountain Company has shown that small decisions–such as thermostat set points–make a big difference in energy use.
Who would have thought that a simple spreadsheet could do a better job predicting household energy use than a complex modeling program? Michael Blasnick’s work indicates that detailed energy modeling does not have a good track record projecting actual energy consumption, particularly in older homes.
I was also honored to give a talk entitled Green That Means Something with Jonathan Kantar of Sage Builders, LLP. If you weren’t able to attend the talk, you can view our slideshow on slideshare. Of course the slides (of which “A Historic Opportunity” is one example) only tell a small part of the story, so here’s the main gist:
Jonathan and I set an ambitious–and somewhat audacious–agenda for our talk: to provide a set of sustainability goals for single-family homes and a road map for achieving those goals. This agenda grew out of our experiences trying to build and remodel homes that are part of the solution to environmental challenges–challenges such as climate change, water scarcity and indoor pollution.
It also grew out of our awareness that conventional design and building practices often exacerbate these challenges, or at the very least do little to help solve them. Far too many residential building projects miss the boat on durability, energy efficiency, water conservation, and indoor health.
Now, before you protest, try this little thought experiment. How often do you…
- Build an addition only after determining that it isn’t possible to meet functional needs within the existing footprint?
- Factor watering needs into site and landscaping plans?
- Evaluate building materials for potential off-gassing?
- Assess operational energy needs during the design phase of a project?
My guess is that for homeowners and residential building professionals alike, all too often the answer is NEVER. Jonathan and I set out to change this. We were also fortunate to have an engaged audience. I’ve posted several of their questions below along with our responses:
In your opinion are there any materials that are currently being widely used in homes that, in the future, are going to shown to expose occupants to unacceptable health risks?
Rachel: The short answer is yes. The building industry has a long history of relying on materials that, over time, turn out to pose unacceptable health risks to occupants and are eventually abandoned. I think that this problem is trending downward for a couple of reasons. First, the value of ensuring good indoor air quality is gaining broader acceptance. Second, materials are subject to increasingly rigorous emissions standards and testing by both government and third party organizations, and that information is more readily available and accessible than ever. This trend is increasing as market demand for safe products and transparency increases.
Why are you recommending that over the next 20-30 years we transition to using high efficiency air-source heat pumps to meet space conditioning needs?
Jonathan: The technology involved with air-source heat pumps has changed drastically over the past 5-10 years. There are now some units that truly produce three (3) times more energy (heat) than they consume. And several of these units can operate efficiently in temperatures approaching 0 deg. (F). Since these units are powered by electricity, the 3 to 1 ratio of produced to consumed energy is important. This efficiency rate, known as the coefficient of power (COP), represents the minimum amount necessary to offset the amount of energy that is lost in the production and transmission of the electricity to your house. As the COP drops below 3, then there are other heating sources that become more attractive. Of course if you have lots of solar electric power, than there is not much of a “penalty” for using electricity to handle your HVAC needs.
The case studies you shared show pretty impressive reductions in modeled energy use. Have you been able to verify these reductions with actual energy use data?
Rachel: I presented my experience at my house. While this is not always the case, my family has been able to use less energy than our energy model predicted we would. Marc Rosenbaum has also presented data on several similar homes that his company built indicating that actual energy use can differ from projections either way and that occupant behavior can significantly affect results.
As you can see, we got some great questions. And we’d love to continue the conversation! So check out our presentation and post your thoughts. And if you attended the conference: How are you building on Build Boston?
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Halloween has come and gone. Costumes have been put away. Decorations put back in storage. But the phantoms live on. Long after even the candy has been consumed–and that process is endless enough–our homes will still be haunted by what is known as phantom loads, or vampire power.
Vampire power or phantom loads refer to the energy that electronics consume when they are switched off but continue to draw power. Sometimes an LED display clues you in to the presence of a phantom. Sometimes you can tell because a device remains warm even when it isn’t being used. Everything from your microwave to your mobile phone charger draws vampire power when it is plugged in but not being used. Indeed, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a typical American home has forty devices plugged in that constantly draw power. And it turns out that these loads account for a huge proportion of household electricity consumption–almost 10%!
At my house, we’ve done a pretty good job of exorcising our phantoms: we unplug our chargers; we turn off our computers and peripherals at night; we even unplug our coffee maker and toaster when we aren’t using them. But there is one phantom that had proved very difficult to eliminate: the one that haunts our home entertainment system.
Two years ago I caved to pressure from the sports watchers and video gamers in our family (you know who you are…) and gave my OK to a relatively fancy AV system. Up until then we had an old-school television with a simple cable box and dvd player. The biggest energy user in this system was the cable box, which we knew drew vampire power because it remained warm after we turned it off. We expelled the vampire from our old system by plugging all the components into a smart strip. The smart strip automatically and completely shut down the cable box when we turned the television off. There was a functional trade-off to this solution, however: we had to wait roughly 15 minutes after powering the system back on for the channel guide to show up.
But then, in 2010 we replaced our old system with this. Now for some of you this looks like a pretty simple system, but to us, it was loaded: a wii, an HD cable box, Apple TV, blu ray, and surround sound speakers. Oh, and the 54″ flat screen TV. You can guess what happened to our vampire, right? It returned!
Fortunately, with some nagging I was able to get the av company to install a single switch that would allow us to power the system down completely. Of course, in order for this solution to work we have to remember to flip the switch. Mostly we do remember and we live with the delayed reboot time. But sometimes we don’t and then the vampire returns with a vengeance, especially if we go a few days without using the system.
According to a recent study published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, vampires in av systems have become increasingly common and increasingly bloodthirsty, with set top boxes (i.e., cable boxes and dvrs) consuming 2/3 of their power when they are off. That’s right, 2/3 when they are turned off. In fact, the typical set draws more electricity than the typical refrigerator (446 v. 415 kwh annually).
Now, these results were startling even to me, and I was already familiar with the problem of phantom loads! The question is: are they enough to convince people to live with the functional compromise of completely powering down their systems? I’d say they would for some people. But for many others they won’t. And even people, like me, who are willing to power their systems down won’t always remember to.
Which is why we need the cable companies to provide products that offer functionality and energy efficiency. Fortunately the Energy Star program is currently phasing in stricter performance standards for Energy Star certified set top boxes, as well as incentives for manufacturers to add a deep sleep mode in which the device would draw less than or equal to 15% of power it uses in on mode. But in the meantime, here’s another very simple, very cost-effective solution you could try: an electronic timer! This is a picture of the one Jonathan Kantar of Sage Builders set one up in his home. It cost $20. Assuming you are going from a system that is always on to one that is on 6 hours a day, I’d estimate that this investment would pay for itself in less than half a year.
Which isn’t a bad deal to make, even if it is with a vampire.
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I’m going to be giving a talk at Build Boston next month with Jonathan Kantar of Sage Builders on Green That Means Something. Yes–the implied subtext is that there’s a whole lot of “green” out there that doesn’t mean all that much. But if you read this blog regularly, you already knew that.
Anyway… one of the problems that we will be addressing is missed opportunities in green building. Homeowners typically get only a small handful of chances to dramatically improve the performance of their homes–say, when we put on a new roof or upgrade mechanicals or finish a basement. But very few of us have the foresight to take full advantage of these, no matter how green-minded we may be. In fact, some of us, present company included, have been known to squander an opportunity and even make it harder to improve performance in the future.
Back in 2003–before I had drunk the sustainability kool-aid–my husband and I were living in an 1800 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home:
Originally built in 1895, the home had been added onto in the 1980s (the addition is visible on the right hand side of the photo) and the basement had been partially finished. We had lived in the home a couple of years, had our first child, were beginning to feel that we needed “more space” to accommodate our changing needs. Where would the grandparents stay when they came to visit? Where would we put all the toys? Where would we eat every day, since the dining room was “too nice” for young kids?
Without giving it much thought, we decided to add on (it never occurred to us that we could do otherwise):
We added on a bathroom, mudroom (with laundry), an office/guest bedroom, and a kitchen, bringing our total square footage up to 2400. We turned our old kitchen in a family room and opened it up to the kitchen to create a combined cooking, eating, playing and casual gathering space:
As much as we have enjoyed our new space, from a sustainability perspective, the addition was not a good move. This is largely because of the energy penalty of those additional 600 square feet–space that would need to be heated, cooled and electrified for the rest of the home’s lifespan.
Could we have mitigated the damage somewhat if we had upgraded our insulation at the same time? Perhaps. But the effectiveness of any “damage control” would have been undermined by the design, which took a home with some complicated geometry and made it that much more so. A bump-out here, dormers there, varied roof lines–all these architecturally interesting forms make it harder and more expensive to air seal and insulate properly.
Finally we missed an opportunity to fix our basement space, which we were already using as living space but wasn’t insulated, sealed and ventilated properly. If we had not done an addition, we could have conditioned our basement properly and used this space to meet our changing needs (if done right a basement can be comfortable, beautiful and have excellent indoor air quality).
But we didn’t do this. We did the addition, increased our energy footprint, and made it much harder to reduce this footprint in the future. No matter how “green” the choices are that we’ve made since then–from installing a high efficiency boiler to changing out light bulbs to using fans for summertime cooling as much as possible–they won’t be able to make up for this missed opportunity.
Which isn’t to say that we haven’t tried or won’t keep trying. In fact, we have made good progress towards reducing our energy use since 2004. But we were starting much further back than we would have been if we’d made different choices back in 2003.
One good thing that has come out of this is my commitment to help others avoid the mistakes I made. At my Build Boston talk, I’ll be using my own home as an example of green that means something and green that, well, doesn’t mean a whole lot; and my own remodeling experiences (including but not limited to the infamous addition) as a template for how to and how not to advance along the path to a sustainable future. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes. They’ve become the basis for the standards, goals and tools I’m developing to help others–homeowners, architects and contractors alike–make sure that their projects truly are part of the solution to our environmental challenges.
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Ask almost any building performance expert what the first step is that you should take to cut your utility bills and improve the energy efficiency of your home, and the answer will inevitably be to weatherize. And that’s as it should be. Most of our homes are rife with air leaks. According to the US Department of Energy (pdf), in the average American home 30 cents of every dollar spent on heating and cooling is lost to air leaks and insufficient insulation. That’s a lot of money to let slip–literally–through the cracks!
If you live in a drafty, underinsulated house you should no doubt focus first on weatherization. But, as important as they are, air sealing and weatherization may not be enough to ensure an environmentally and financially sustainable level of energy use. There are other increasingly important drivers of residential energy consumption that can’t be addressed by air sealing and insulating.
Since the 1970s the amount of energy that Americans use for space conditioning (heating and cooling) has fallen rather dramatically, from about 70% annually to just less than 50%. This is largely due to improvements in the efficiency of our mechanical systems as well as tighter, better insulated building envelopes.
And yet total residential consumption has remained flat over the same time period. Any guesses as to why this is? Here’s a hint: just think about all the electronic devices you have in your home now that you didn’t have 30 years ago. In the space of a generation the amount of energy we use to run our home entertainment systems, refrigerators (yup, an increasing number of us have more than 1), and other electronic gadgets has nearly doubled from 1.77 to 3.25 quadrillion Btus annually.
Now consider how much bigger the home you live in now is than the one you grew up in. It’s bigger, right? In 1950, the average US home was 1,100 square feet and the average household size was 3.4 people. Flash forward to 2009: the average new home is 2438 square feet and the average household has 2.6 people. In just two generations home size has increased by 120% and average household occupancy has dropped by 24%. Square footage per household member has tripled from 324 to 938 square feet.
Efficiency gains are just barely keeping pace with increases in consumption. Which means that for most homeowners, air sealing and insulation are simply not enough to keep energy costs in check over the long term.
We also need to pay much closer attention to plug loads, making sure that our electronics and appliances are as efficient as they can be, and asking ourselves hard questions about what we really need. Do we really need that second refrigerator? Two game systems? Fifteen recessed lights in our kitchen? When building or renovating, this would include asking hard questions about home size as well. Do we need a formal living and an informal family room? An eat-in-kitchen and a formal dining room?
Of course conservation on its own is not a realistic strategy for improving home energy performance. But, then again, neither is weatherization.
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Four plumes of smoke from Texas wildfires are visible in the lower left quadrant of this NASA satellite image
When someone says green building what’s the first word or phrase that comes to mind? Perhaps its energy efficiency or natural materials or indoor air quality. Whatever you think of, it probably isn’t bad weather. What on earth does weather have to do with green building?
The spate of horrific weather we’ve had over the past couple of weeks–Hurricane Irene followed in short order by Tropical Storm Lee along with wildfires in Texas–has got me thinking a lot about this question. Of course, none of these or any other severe weather events can be directly attributed to–or blamed on–climate change. However, there is widespread agreement among climatologists that global warming already is and will continue to have a dramatic impact on global weather patterns, often with destructive consequences. As we face more and more severe weather, we will need to adapt our infrastructure, including our buildings.
It may not be widely known, but building resilience has emerged as a key tenet of the green building movement. Last year, Alex Wilson, Executive Director of Building Green, published an influential series of articles on his top green building priorities, and building resilient homes made his top ten list.
Resilience requires improving the capacity of homes not only to withstand storm damage but also to remain livable in the event of extended power outages, loss of heating fuel, and water shortages. While for some buildings, such as hospitals, active systems such as generators have a crucial role to play in maintaining livability, Wilson argues that passive systems should be the top priority for most buildings because of expense, safety risks and logistical problems associated with generators.
What would these passive systems look like? While some systems would be the same in different climates, there would also be some differences. In a cold climate like Boston, building for passive survivability could include (but isn’t limited to) features such as:
- enough insulation to keep indoor temperatures above 50-55 without additional heat
- sufficient natural ventilation and daylighting to provide fresh air and light without electricity
- solar systems that could provide hot water and electricity for at least part of each day
- onsite water storage and filtration
- composting toilets
For me, what immediately stands out about this list are two things. First, what makes a building livable during service disruptions is also what makes it energy efficient and environmentally responsible. In short, resilient buildings are green buildings and vice versa. Second, the vast majority of existing buildings–including our homes–are nowhere even close to meeting even a low threshold of passive survivability.
My limited personal experience with critical service disruptions, including loss of power during Hurricane Irene, illustrates this second point extremely well. When I lose power during the winter, my home–despite the significant investments we have made in insulation and air sealing–quickly becomes intolerably cold. When I lose power during the summer, the heat and humidity can overwhelm the ability of windows and doors to cool the house. If we were to ever lose water we would have to rely on bottled water. If we ever lost sewer, I’m not sure what we’d do.
The long and short of it is this: the livability my home–like most homes in this country–is extremely vulnerable to disruptions caused by bad weather. Which is yet another good argument for building green.
Image Credit
NASA JPL, Ed Olsen
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If you’re in the market for a new appliance, be on the lookout for this label:
I know, you thought Energy Star appliances already were the most efficient on the market. So what’s this new Most Efficient designation? And how’s it different and better than plain old Energy Star?
Energy Star, which has been around now since 1992, typically certifies products that perform 20% better than federal standards or than market average. While there is no question that the Energy Star has helped transform the appliance marketplace, it has faced criticism over the years for not raising the efficiency bar high enough or fast enough. And most recently it has been hurt by GAO testing that exposed fraudulent certifications.
I think it’s fair to say, though, that Energy Star has been working hard to rebuild its reputation: it has strengthened its testing and verification procedures and in just the last month has committed to push the efficiency envelope further with the new Most Efficient program, which certifies the most efficient appliances in seven categories: clothes washers, air-source heat pumps, central air conditioners, furnaces, geothermal heat pumps, refrigerator-freezers, and televisions.
The new Most Efficient program holds great promise to drive appliance efficiency further and faster than the existing Energy Star program. Manufacturers whose products are Energy Star rated can apply to have these products certified as Most Efficient. But not many will qualify as the bar is set pretty high: although the criteria vary by category, the program has been designed so that only the top 5% of products will qualify. In addition, the bar will continue to rise over time, driving innovation rather than rewarding the status quo.
For consumers the Most Efficient program is a welcome resource. When we’re shopping for appliances we’ll be able to quickly and easily identify the best of the best (at least in term of energy use). We won’t have to scrutinize energy score cards and make lists to know which of the products will cost the least to operate over the long haul. We can simply look for retail signage or check online to see which appliances have received the designation (as of today there were 15 dishwashers, 2 refrigerators, 18 TVs, and 43 air conditioners & heat pumps).
So next time you’re out shopping for appliances: don’t just look for Energy Star; look for Energy Star Most Efficient!
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Image Credit: The Lazy Environmentalist
Have you ever looked at your energy bills and dreamed about an array of solar panels on your roof soaking up free energy from the sun? You certainly aren’t alone in your dreaming, especially given the generous income tax credit the federal government is offering for renewable installations through (30% of the costs with no upper limit). Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of that deal?
Of course, to turn this dream into reality you need a conducive building and site (orientation, roof plane, natural shading, etc.) make your home a good candidate for solar. But let’s assume that an experienced solar professional has determined that your home is a good candidate for solar. You still need to ask yourself whether the investment makes sense. Just because your home can produce a solar power, doesn’t mean it should–at least not at first.
Before I explain what I mean and why I say this, I’d like to return to a post I wrote last year about the energy savings I have been able to achieve at my home. If you read this post, you know that my family has cut our energy use by close to 50% over the last three years. It wasn’t be installing solar. Rather, we employed a combination of efficiency and conservation measures designed to reduce both our seasonal and our base energy loads.
Yes, I can “hear” your questions: Seasonal load? Base load? What are these? And what do these have to do with solar?
Seasonal energy load refers to the amount of energy used to heat and/or cool a home, depending on climate. New England is a heating climate but air conditioning has become increasingly common over the last couple of decades, meaning that many homes experience seasonal increases in their energy use in both winter and summer. At my home, we cut our seasonal load by (among other things)
Buderus Condensing Boiler
- air sealing and insulating our house,
- installing a new super efficient natural gas boiler, and
- leaving our central air conditioner turned off for most of the summer (we have found that fans work well for all but the hottest days of the summer).
Base energy load refers to those energy uses that aren’t dependent on temperature changes and that stay pretty constant throughout the year. While there can be minor seasonal fluctuations in the energy we use to run our appliances, electronics, and lighting, and to provide hot water, these fluctuations are much more modest compared to those in the energy we use to heat and cool our homes. At my home, we cut our base energy load by (among other things)
LED Lights Over My Kitchen Island
- switching over 95%+ of our lights to energy efficient bulbs and fixtures,
- turning lights & appliances off (completely off) when they aren’t in use, and
- running our clothes washer on cold.
In short, we cut our energy bills in two ways. First we changed our behavior, a lot. Second, we invested in our home’s energy systems, knowing that these would provide yearly, long-term savings on our energy bills (and improve our comfort at the same time).
Now… let’s pretend that we hadn’t done all these things and instead installed solar panels (it turns out our home isn’t a good candidate for solar, but let’s just pretend it is). Our electricity usage would have been higher–50% higher!–so we would have needed a lot more solar panels.
Even with the 30% federal income tax credit, wouldn’t you rather install $10,000 than $20,000 worth of solar? As Martin Holladay, one of my favorite green building gurus, puts it: “Spending thousands of dollars on solar hardware for a house that hasn’t been carefully air-sealed and superinsulated is putting the cart before the horse.”
My advice: put the horse before the cart. Make your home as efficient as possible. Cut what you can (you’d be surprised how comfortable you may be without air conditioning). And then look into solar.
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It’s not even officially winter and already the complaints have started: “My upstairs is freezing.” “I just can’t keep the house warm.” “My windows might as well be open, they are so leaky.” Drafty, old homes and high heating bills are a frequent conversation topic during a New England winter. When these conversations turn to the merits of various improvement measures, I try to seize the opportunity to put in a plug for energy audits.
HERS Index
Rarely do I encounter someone who even knows what a comprehensive energy audit is. Occasionally I learn about homeowners who have had MassSave do a free walk-through and suggest improvement measures. But an infrared camera assessment that “looks” behind dry wall topinpoint areas of low or missing insulation? A blower door test that “finds” air leaks invisible to the naked eye? A HERS rating that quantifies the overall energy performance of a home (click here to learn more about HERS)? Most homeowners I talk to have never even heard of these services.
Those who have often can’t afford them: an audit with an infrared camera and blower door test can cost upwards of $500, and a HERS rating can cost double. Those who can afford them often don’t realize their value. After all, what’s the point of paying someone to assess your home if you already know that you need new windows, or a new furnace, or insulation in you walls? Why do you need to document and measure your energy deficits before fixing them? Won’t any fix help, no matter what it is?
Well, no, not necessarily. You can’t really know which steps will save you the most energy in the long run, and which will provide the quickest payback, without a comprehensive assessment. While a free visual inspection, such as is offered by MassSave, is a good start, many of the problems in a home can’t be detected during a simple walk-through. Nor is it possible to know which steps offer the most savings without crunching and comparing numbers. On the contrary, it’s relatively common for homeowners to make bad investments in energy “upgrades” that don’t save them a heck of a lot. At least this is what I tell people.
I can’t say I’ve been very persuasive though. I can count on one hand the number of people I have convinced to invest in a comprehensive energy audit. The problem can’t just be insufficient powers of persuasion. After all, I seem to do a pretty good job of convincing people to make less expensive green lifestyle changes. So what is the problem? Why do so few homeowners invest in audits?
Clearly expense is a huge obstacle, and not only for those homeowners who can’t afford the service. If you had an “extra” $1000 to spend on home improvements, would you insulate? Maybe, but would you first have an audit, which would ensure the soundness of your investment? Probably not. To paraphrase Clayton Traylor, Policy Director for Leading Builders of America: When efficiency has to compete on equal footing against flooring and fixtures, cabinets and counters, it will almost always lose (click here for more). Without the right mix of regulatory and code reform, and financial incentives, most homeowners will not pay for energy assessments, let alone invest in those upgrades that will make the biggest difference in their energy use over the long term.
Which is why I was so pleased to learn about Energy Efficient Mortgages. Although they are currently underutilized, EMMs have the potential to significantly advance the energy efficiency of our housing stock. According to a Guide to Energy Efficient Mortgages put out by Mortgageloan.com, EEMs, as they are currently structured, can be used in a couple of ways. First, homeowners who want to improve the energy performance of their current home, or a new home, can take out an EMM and bundle it together with their primary mortgage to finance their upgrades. Second, buyers of energy efficient homes can use an EMM to qualify for a larger loan, based on their projected lower monthly energy costs.
Not only do EMMs enable homeowners to overcome the financial hurdles they face to investing in efficiency, they also ensure that these investments will be meaningful and cost-effective. How do they do this? By requiring applicants to have a HERS rating of their home, which quantifies the home’s current energy performance as well as potential upgrades. This last point is absolutely key: a HERS rating actually tells you which steps will have the most dramatic impact on your energy use and, thus, yield the biggest long-term savings.
As I mentioned above EMMs are currently underutilized but this could change if Congress passes the Sensible Accounting to Value Energy (SAVE) Act, which is likely to be introduced in the Senate soon (to learn more about SAVE click here and here). This legislation, which would require energy costs to be factored into appraisals and underwriting for all government-backed home loans, has the potential to radically transform the residential real estate market and the energy efficiency of our housing stock. And it makes perfect sense: after all, the average homeowner spends more on energy costs each year than s/he does on either real estate taxes or home insurance, both of which are accounted for in mortgage underwriting.
I’ll be watching for what happens with this legislation, and in the meantime, I’ll continue to evangelize for comprehensive energy audits. Maybe my knowledge of EMMs will help me make my case.
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Hi Rachael, I’ve been on this NStar pilot for almost a year now and I really like the information that portal presents. Just by getting real-time information like this has enabled us to reduce our consumption by 15%. Eric
Comment by Eric Bobby — May 14, 2012 @ 8:51 pm
Hi Eric, That’s terrific! Do you rely on the counter-top display for feedback as well, or mostly the web portal? Rachel
Comment by Rachel White — May 15, 2012 @ 9:26 pm