Potential & Priorities For Efficiency

Priorities for Energy Efficiency

Energy retrofits employed without preliminary measurement or analysis can produce disappointing result. Therefore, energy professionals try to estimate a proposed retrofits energy savings and prioritize the retrofits in descending order of their cost-effectiveness.

Potential for Energy Conservation

The lack of insulation and inefficient heating and cooling systems, among other problems, drives typical residential buildings to use one-and-a-half to two times as much energy as necessary to achieve comfort and convenience. Nationally, this excess energy usage costs about $45 billion annually.

· Making thermal improvements to
building shells, including insulation,
weatherization and replacing outdated
windows and doors.

· Replacing older heating systems, cooling
systems, lighting, and other energy
-using devices with new and efficient
equipment.

· Repairing or adjusting existing
energy-using equipment.

· Educating building occupants about
energy-efficient practices.

Make Your House Energy Efficient With Colorado Home Energy Solutions

The Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program alone typically saves 10% to 30% of total household energy consumption, according to nationwide studies.

Residential energy conservation programs use four main strategies to achieve energy savings in residential buildings:

The energy professional’s most important challenge is to find the
sources and causes of residential energy waste. These vary depending
upon climatic conditions, building characteristics, and building
operating procedures.

Inefficiency can be divided into the following general categories:

· Heating – seasonal efficiencies for fossil-fuel-heating
systems range from 30% to 90%. Most older systems
operate at the mid-to-lower end of this scale.

· Heat losses – depending on the thermal resistance of
building shells, heat moves from indoors to outdoors
through the shell during the heating season.

· Air leakage – infiltrating air must be heated or cooled to a comfortable temperature, and heated
or cooled air is lost when air leaks out of the building.

· Water heating – energy losses in heating and storage of hot water can amount to 40% or more of
that system’s energy consumption

· Cooling – many cooling systems suffer from infrequent or improper maintenance. Simple
adjustments and cleaning can increase typically low cooling efficiencies. Due to technological
advances, newer cooling systems are much more efficient than older systems.

· Heat gains – many homes use excessive cooling energy because of inadequate shading, excessive
radiant heat gains from dark colored building materials, excessive air leakage, inadequate
insulation, and internally generated heat.

· Distribution systems – heated or cooled air leaking from ducts and uninsulated pipes in
unconditioned spaces wastes a portion of the energy consumed by furnaces, boilers, air
conditioners, and water heaters.

· Appliances and lighting – refrigerators, lights, entertainment systems, computers, and other
appliances use considerable electrical energy because of obsolete design, careless operation, or
just the sheer number of electrical devices in a home.

· Resident behavior – the awareness and conscientiousness of a building’s residents and managers
has a significant influence on how much energy the building uses.

A snapshot of a home’s energy usage in a cold climate like
Colorado’s before and after a full energy retrofit.

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Colorado Home Energy Solutions
Phone: (970)-204-9931 ~ Fax: (970)-204-9932
E-mail: info@thisefficienthouse.com
Address: 1600 Crescent Dr. ~ Fort Collins, CO 80526

We find and fix the problems that waste energy in your home or business!