Home Energy AnalysisThe Home Energy Yardstick is an excellent tool offered on Energy Star's Home Improvement Toolbox Web site. If you have 5 minutes and your energy bills are handy, find out if your energy use is above average. You will need to enter some common information about your home such as age, square footage, number of occupants and energy bill totals for a consecutive 12-month period (one year). If you don't keep your bills, contact your utility (both electric and gas) for a 12-month summary.
This version of the Yardstick uses the same benchmarking methodology used in the previous version to allow homeowners in the continental U.S. to compare their energy use at home to the average (mean) energy use of U.S. households. Each households energy use is adjusted to account for house size, age, number of occupants, and climate. Households that use less energy than the average are assigned a score from 5 to 10. Households that use more energy than the average are assigned a score from 5 to 0. Even if energy costs appear to be normal, the Yardstick makes it easy for homeowners to identify if their energy use at home is above average. Scores below 5 indicate that excellent opportunities may exist to improve home energy efficiency and save money. In addition to saving money, increasing energy efficiency reduces air pollution and the need to build more power plants.
This version of the Yardstick has been updated from the previous version to add a new feature that predicts the energy bill savings and pollution reduction associated with a target score. This feature allows homeowners to see the energy bill savings and pollution reduction they could potentially achieve. In the previous version the user entered total annual electricity and heating fuel use. In this version the user will enter 12 monthly totals for energy use and cost for 12 consecutive months. This information is used to calculate average (mean) electricity and heating fuel rates used to predict energy bill savings. In addition to this new feature usability has been improved.
When you go to this page, enter your zip and look down for the words "Analyze Your Use." Select the small radio button beside the word "Home." It's right underneath. Then click on the blue arrow.What's great about this audit is it offers you two options: One is a fast analysis, the other is in-depth. Obviously the more information you get the better. But you may not have the time. Either way you'll find out a lot.
