Prius effect on Home Electricity Consumption

What improvements gave you the best "bang for the buck"?

 

There is a large crew trying to follow in your footsteps. However, you have also done a lot of (sensible) shifting to different energy sources away from electricity. That makes your graph a little more impressive to someone that might be unaware of that aspect.

 

For us, here are the changes that made the most significant difference in our home electricity consumption (in no particular order):

1. LED and CFL bulbs
2. Renovating house from single pane to dual pane windows
3. Watching less TV
4. Move from desktop computers to smartphone / tablet
5. Using electric fans as much as possible rather than air conditioning in summer months

 

Sagebrush. When you answer ElectronFlux's question could you also point out what changes in lifestyle changes occurred as well as consumption changes?

 

Wow, that really puts me to shame, looks like I haven't even been trying.

I'm tracking annual consumption, not monthly (or bimonthly, the billing cycle here). I'm now down 38% from a base period of 1996-2005. While some conservation began earlier, serious conservation started in 2006, three years before acquiring a Prius.


Note that my home is all-electric, so this includes heat, hot water, and cooking. An auxiliary wood stove is kept for power outages and ambiance, but its use is also down sharply (the most enticing times to use it are usually accompanied by burn bans from the local air quality authority), and hasn't been used in over two years.

 

Just as a side note, everyone should look at their fridge. Fridges in the last 30 years have leapt forward in energy conservtion. A fridge ten years old will cost about twice as much to run. Also, consider downsizing to a more reasonable sized fridge. I see little need for these gigantic " two car garage" sized fridges I see! A new fridge will use as little as 1/2 kwh/day, or about $.07.

Then, when you get a new fridge, avoid (at all costs!) the temptation to turn your old one into a beer fridge! (consider the costs of running your beer fridge 24/7, just to keep a few beer cold, and then consider getting rid of any you are currently using!).

Icarus

 

I'm even thinking about accelerating the trend, and now have a mental roadmap to drive it to zero. Or 'net zero'.

Getting down to 6000 kWh/year should now be fairly easy. Preparations are already in place, so now I'm just waiting for the next great heat pump water heater sale.

Beyond that, continuing the trend will take greater investment. When the roof replacement is done, hopefully in the next month, I want to add a 1kW PV starter system to start getting real production data with the site tree impairments. If that goes well enough, it can start expanding next year, budget permitting. A crude guesstimated target is to find another 1000 kWh/year of conservation beyond the HPWH, and build up the PV towards that, eventually to 'net zero'.

If I can reach this goal with the house, it will be the energy equivalent to taking all our pre-hybrid motor vehicles completely off the road. And this is separate from the savings of changing the primary car to a hybrid.

Saturday is the Northwest Green Home Tour 2013. I'm looking to review what several of the tour homes have done on several specific fronts. The spouse has marked some other items that interest her. We may have to go separately to cover all the desired items.

 

I'm ordering standing seam metal, though there is still time for changes. This should let me stay here forever without having to re-roof again, and without having to fix anything underneath a PV system.

The south pitch is being upgraded a gauge step for the mounting load. The 4:12 pitch is not ideal for PV, but is close enough that the panels can be put flat against the roof without extra tilt.

Remodels and retrofits too.

 

The new roof went up last week, the final item completed today. I stumbled into a (temporary) good deal on PV panels a couple weeks ago, getting 1.6kW before the deal (or may a website error) vanished. That put the PV project on the fast DIY track. The electric work is more than half done. All mounting hardware was picked up yesterday (except panel-to-rail clips, due next week), and the rails are already mounted on the roof. This thing should be producing in a week or two, rain and electrical inspection permitting. (The new roof is not safely walkable when wet, at least with the shoes I have.)

Today was my first ever home energy audit. This was mostly to explore building envelope issues, as the appliances were already taken care of, except for the soon-to-be-done water heater. The blower door test came in at a surprisingly low 0.15 ACH, below the recommended 0.35. But the auditor was quite happy that I already had a bathroom fan timer (installed over the winter) programmed for forced house ventilation throughout the day, which had to be shut down during the blower test. He detected no problems from the current low air exchange rate, but indicated that if the household had four people instead of two, I'd probably need to program it for more on-time.

While I've sealed numerous air leaks over the past several years, today's test didn't represent the condition of the house during the most recent winter. Problems with all the kitchen and bathroom exhaust vents were remedied during the roofing project last week. Both tubular skylights were replaced, primarily to get new roof flashings and domes to go with the new lifetime roof. But the lower elements were also swapped to get updated EnergyStar components, significantly more airtight. The bathroom upgrade found a significant air leak around plumbing, now sealed. The audit found more, and I do need to close some significant leaks from the crawl space, getting replacement air from fresher outdoor sources.

A floor insulation upgrade from R19 to R30, two thirds done over the winter but paused until the other projects are completed, can now get finished. We could also upgrade the attic, from an average R33 with a couple bare spots, to R49 (current code) or R60 (leading homes). Otherwise, there is little more to do.

The auditor also asked if I'd ever considered getting this home LEED certified. No, the thought never crossed my mind, but he thinks it is within reach, and would add resale value. Has anyone here done this with an existing house?