Energy Loan Update

If you are routed here from NewsOK.com... welcome, welcome! And if you are not, you can read my interview and the story on the Energy Efficiency Loan here.

I wrote about receiving our loan last July (here), with a run-through of the process and all the work we had done, and a nice little comment about throwing a happy dance party when I got my electric bill. Now that the summer is nearly over, I've had a chance to put together some data on the energy use in our home. 

Here you can see our actual billed energy use compared to the average monthly temperatures.

In this graph, I tried to normalize the data for temperature so that the trends show ONLY electric use, independent on what the temperature would have been. It's basically the same, except the electric use in hot months is adjusted to be slightly less, and colder months shows as slightly more, of course adjusted based upon actual temperatures. I was just curious to see if any differences would stand out if I looked at it this way, so I could consider my energy use without wondering if changes in data came from the weather.

The major points here are:

• Our home loan! The installation of our new HVAC system and attic insulation is obvious on the chart; this work was done in May and immediately caused a 20-35% decrease for the next few months.
• In June I finished most of the weatherization, which I learned how to do as a by-product of getting the loan. This appears to have knocked off another few percentage points.
• In August, we began some very minor remodeling in the kitchen - painting and pulling up trim - which exposed a few holes in the wall. We have not covered them yet. I assume that this month shows more energy use due to these seemingly small leaks having a more significant affect than I expected.
• June-September of 2010 is much higher than 2009 largely in part due to a bathroom remodel/repair that required us to tear out and rebuild walls and floors.
• In November 2009, I installed a new Energy Star dishwasher. I don't have enough back data to be sure, but this seems to have made no noticeable impact.