Home Energy Retrofit Delivers on Cost Savings and Efficiency Improvements

Energy Efficiency (EE) is at the forefront of many sustainability initiatives and the opportunity to drive change at the individual building level and aggregate up to community, city, and regional levels is very promising.  This post gives a brief overview of a project I worked on that sought to improve the energy efficiency of a particular house while providing lessons learned and research for a larger city wide project.  It is but one example of many but initial results are very promising.

This home received an energy retrofit via the CharlestonWISE Impact Project.  The CharlestonWISE Impact Project is a partnership program between the City of Charleston and The Sustainability Institute (SI), and funded through a grant from the Sustainable Cities Institute.  The Project provided valuable support for the growth and development of the CharlestonWISE program through data collection, community outreach, market analysis and workforce development.  I helped to complete the project as one of my first responsibilities at SI.  During 2011 and 2012 the Project performed 152 home energy assessments and 17 home energy retrofits on homes throughout the City of Charleston. These assessments provided much needed information on how our homes use energy and how we can better help all Charleston residents reduce their energy use and have healthy, comfortable, energy-efficient homes.  17 out of the 152 homes that received energy assessments also were chosen to receive various levels of energy retrofits.

The homeowners first attended an educational workshop conducted by SI that taught them about basic energy efficiency concepts and how they can take steps at home to reduce their energy consumption.  Next, the homeowners received a comprehensive energy assessment on their home by a qualified energy advocate.  The advocate performed visual inspections on the hope, conducted performance testing and utilized energy modeling software to help craft a scope of work and recommended improvements to the home.  The performance testing include a whole-house blower door test to gauge building envelope air leakage and also a duct blaster test on the HVAC supply and return lines.  This assessment report was reviewed by a third-party quality assurance team before presenting back to the homeowner.  This particular house showed great potential for EE and was subsequently selected to receive an energy retrofit.  Projections showed the opportunity for a 46% energy efficiency improvement and a 47% cost savings improvement annually of $2,159 to the homeowner.

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The home received comprehensive air sealing improvements to better seal the building envelope.  New insulation was installed in the attic and a brand new HVAC system and new air ducts were ran.  Performance testing and quality assurance work was conducted after the work was completed.  The air sealing on the home improved 49% and the HVAC duct leakage went from 21% leakage to 4.5% leakage.  We will come back to this house a full year after the retrofit was completed and analyze the utility data to see where we landed in regards to the initial EE projections.  We have received some preliminary information from the homeowner that is very promising.  Not only has their comfort level inside the home greatly improved but they are seeing dramatic reductions in the energy consumption and their energy bills year over year have been cut in half!  Good stuff!

 

Update 4/29/13: More on the Impact Project here.