How Energy Efficient is Your Home?
Kind of Efficient? About Average? An Energy Hog?
Find out and lower your utility bills!
If you’re like most people, your utility bills are probably too high. But by how much? How much can they really be lowered?
The Energy Checkup Tool compares your home to another home of equal size within your same zip code area.
It will tell you how much energy you use annually and what percentage it is above or below the average in your area for a home of the same size.
Based On The Information YOU Give Us We’ll Create A Tailor-Made
List Of Workable Solutions To Help Save Energy
In Your Home And Lower Your Utility Bills
Use Wood to Heat Your Home? No Problem
Our tool allows you to input your monthly electricity usage plus one other fuel. This can include natural gas; heating oil (#2 or #6); propane (in gallons or pounds); kerosene; hardwood (by the cord); and wood pellets (by the ton).
Of course, you won’t know exactly how much you’re using of many of these fuel sources each month, or even maybe how much you use each year, but as long as the total is about right, you’ll be good to go.
What’s more, by simply providing us with a year’s worth of your fuel bills, we will have enough data to tell you how much of that energy is going towards heating and cooling, and how much is going towards what are called your baseloads. Baseloads are the kinds of energy loads that you use regardless of the season: your water heater, your range, your TV, lights, computers, dishwashers, etc…
Knowing how much of your energy is going to baseloads helps your figure how much of an improvement you can make by targeting baseload reduction strategies.
Based on these results, we will tailor for you 4-5 pages of recommendations that will help you take control of your utility bills once and for all.
You will not be asked for any private data except for your name and email address, and we promise we will not rent or sell your name or email address to anyone else.
Use the link on the right to check out the input page. There is no commitment until you press the SUBMIT AND PAY button.
It Couldn't Be Easier To Use
All About The Energy Checkup Tool
Add a few details about your home and how much you’re currently paying for the utilities you use and we’ll create a customised report that compares your home to local averages and make a list of recommendations for lowering your bills and making it more energy efficient.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:
(1) I use propane to heat my home, to cook and to heat my water. Last year, we went through about 1200 gallons of propane. How can I figure how many gallons I used every month?
Firstly, understand that if you don’t care to separate it out by month, you can just put your annual total usage in a single month, and leave the rest blank. This will affect the accuracy of your baseload calculation but all other calculations will be unaffected.
The truth is, you’ll never know exactly how much propane you used every month, but there are ways of estimating it pretty reasonably. Remember that all that really matters is that you get the total annual gallons right. The rest is just to help figure out how much of that propane is going strictly for heating. As a rule of thumb, you can figure you use 300 gallons a year for your water heater, 50-60 gallons per year for your gas range, and 50-60 gallons per year for a gas clothes dryer (if you have one).
Taking the upper estimates, that makes 420 gallons. Divide that by 12 months, and that gives us about 35 gallons per month. That leaves 780 gallons per year for heating, which you can divide as 156 gallons per month over the five months of winter (November to March).
Don’t forget to add in the 35 per month for those winter months, making it 191 gallons each winter month. So (in this example) what you’ll input into the tool is: 35 gallons into each of April, May, June, July, August, September, October; and 191 gallons into each of November, December, January, February, March.
(2) How do I use the Green Button?
Not all utility companies offer this option yet, but many do. You’ll have to get into your online account at your utility company’s website. Once there, look for something about your usage and if they offer it, there should be an invitation to download your Green Button data. Here’s a link that lists all the utilities currently offering the Green Button option, as well as those that have committed to doing so in the near future. http://www.greenbuttondata.org/organizations/
(3) My utility company doesn’t do the Green Button option. Where do I find the information?
Most companies now make it pretty easy. Whether you’re using a paper statement or going to your account online, they usually give you your current month’s usage as well as all the previous 11 months (for a total of 12 months). If not, you’ll have to find all your statements for the last 12 months and do it the long way.