Many of us don't put much attention on our energy bills other than to complain a bit, but we begrudgingly go online or write the check and send off our payment.
Before becoming a trained energy auditor I "begrudgingly" gave $700 of my hard earned money every month to the power company. I didn't have any real solutions for a fix other than to run the cooling/heating system (both were electric) in short intervals - I would run the air conditioner until the house was tolerable and then turn it off until it became intolerable - this saved me about $50 per month but it was a nuisance and I wasn't comfortable living in my own home!
After having done energy audits on lots of homes I realized I was not the only one with high energy bills and living in uncomfortable conditions.
According to the Department of Energy the average house size in America is 1,500 square feet and the average monthly energy bill is close to $200 ($0.1333 per square foot). From our findings (doing energy audits) we found that the majority of homes that we inspected (95%) could easily cut that bill in half. 90% of that savings was obtained through construction retrofits and equipment upgrades and 10% through installing better controls and changing energy usage habits.
From this we made a chart to serve as a guideline to act as a target to achieve one of my primary goals - reduce the residential use of energy in North America by 50% - on each home we audited. The following chart now sets my monthly benchmarks for achieving this.
This accomplishes another very important goal - to reduce carbon emissions by an average of 9 tons per year per home. I don't subscribe to the global warming theory but I do know that excessive amounts of CO2 in our atmosphere is not healthy!
This where I really get to rub it in - How Good Can It Get?
The house shown below is situated in Mississippi. It has 3,700 square feet of living area, 2 -stories and was built approximately three years ago. This home was constructed by an energy conscious builder (there are very few of them around).
The message I wish to get across here is that in all likelihood you are paying too much for energy and that something can be done about it.
With 1,700 sq ft of heated area my electricity is running $326 (September usage) Gas $13
ReplyDeleteI would be interested in how to reduce my costs because according to your chart I am paying enough for 3 houses!
I appreciate this information being available.
I can't wait to learn more....and save more!