Timeline for Why is my house energy efficient only in winter?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 11, 2022 at 23:35 | vote | accept | Fijoy Vadakkumpadan | ||
| Jan 11, 2022 at 17:43 | comment | added | Joe | @FijoyVadakkumpadan Yes, they may or may not know you have gas heat, but your electricity usage is low - I guess you don't have three refrigerators, two freezers, a gaming PC, and a fancy Christmas light set... and of course no Tesla charger. But in the summer, not all of your neighbors have HVAC - and that certainly isn't taken into account here. It's inevitable that you'll use more in the summer, unless you don't run the HVAC at all. | |
| Jan 10, 2022 at 18:07 | comment | added | Jon Custer | The gas furnace uses electricity to run the blower, but so does the AC system. | |
| Jan 10, 2022 at 15:43 | comment | added | Turbo | @FijoyVadakkumpadan This is a display of data they were collecting anyway - Power usage rates. They put it into a cool widget for customers to use, but they're not collecting useful variables like sqft or insulation. Here's a quote from the chart on my provider, which is nearly identical: //Your Home Energy Use Profile is estimated using your usage data, regional residential electricity usage averages and actual weather data.// | |
| Jan 9, 2022 at 16:36 | comment | added | crip659 | @FijoyVadakkumpadan My electric company does not know how I heat my house(free wood heat). My neighbour heats with electric heat. Guess which one is more efficient on a bill. Those graphs only consider electric use, more you use, the less efficient you are. Electric companies don't want to spend the money inspecting every house to make those graphs mean something. | |
| Jan 9, 2022 at 16:18 | comment | added | manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact | do some basic data collection in order to provide some reasonable energy-saving tips (and even free stuff to help) but I suspect in most cases they don't actually push that data (conditioned square feet, age/type of HVAC equipment, etc.) back into the system that generates pretty charts for everyone. | |
| Jan 9, 2022 at 16:17 | comment | added | manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact | I have worked on a system (commercial/government, not for single family homes, but the idea is the same) that can add up entire energy usage (electric, natural gas, even coal and oil) based on cost and/or energy (BTU) and compute usage per-square-foot. Not that hard to do. But unless your electric utility is also your natural gas utility (it is that way in some places) they're not going to do it. These charts (my local utilities provide similar charts) are based on "what can we provide the customers with minimal development cost and no additional data collection". Sometimes utilities will | |
| Jan 9, 2022 at 16:14 | comment | added | manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact | This is 100% the answer. In many (not all) places the electric utility doesn't even know whether you have natural gas or not, let alone whether you use it for heating, hot water and/or cooking. Plus you might have (as many in my neighborhood) natural gas that originally was for heating but where people have switched to heat pumps. Those houses will appear to be less efficient (electrically) in the winter, making the other houses (still using natural gas) look more efficient winter but less in the summer. The only way to truly compare is to compare "same only" or to compare total energy use. | |
| Jan 9, 2022 at 16:09 | comment | added | Fijoy Vadakkumpadan | I think the comparison is with "similar" households in the neighborhood. I'm assuming the utility company has taken the type of heating (natural gas vs. electric), area of the house, etc. into account in this graph. Meaning, this graph includes only homes with natural gas heating. I'm not positive about that, but the graph wouldn't make sense otherwise. | |
| Jan 9, 2022 at 15:31 | history | answered | statueuphemism | CC BY-SA 4.0 |