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Home Energy Audit Continues…

By Solar energy | October 28, 2008

Energy Audit on My Heating and Air Conditioning Unit

As you know, going solar remains our goal. Solar energy is good for the earth, that is, clean, abundant, and efficient.

But if I need any other incentive for going solar, it would be the energy audit on my heating and air conditioning system.

According to our auditor, the average monthly kilowatt usage in our area approximately equals the square footage of the conditioned area. That means if my 1700 square foot home uses 1700-kilowatt hours per month, they think I am doing well.

That’s 55 kilowatt hours per day. The more conservative among the energy conscious say more than 20 kilowatt hours per day is wasteful. Maybe they don’t live in Texas.

In my part of the planet, south Texas, heating and air conditioning account for 50% of our energy bill. Although I use air conditioning more months of the year than heating, heating with electricity costs twice as much as cooling! Those dandy little heat-strips pull a lot of electricity!

The good news from our auditor is that our system is the right size for our home. I want to add a sunroom on the south side of the house to capture the lovely solar-thermal energy. Done correctly, we could heat a large portion of our living area with passive solar heat gain in winter.

The down side is that if I want to cool that space in the summer, I will need a larger air conditioning system.

Hmmm…there’s more to going solar than we think.

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Topics: Home Energy Use, Solar Thermal, home energy audit, home energy bills | No Comments »

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