get tac redits and rebates for doing the right thing? What could be better? Image source: Mark_W

Top Five Federal Tax Credits (for improvements made from January 1, 2009 through December 31^st, 2010)

1.      Adding qualifying insulation to an existing home-30% of cost, up to $1,500 for all upgrades other than renewable energy systems.

2.      Energy Star-qualified metal roofs or asphalt roof replacements-30% of cost, up to $1,500 for all upgrades other than renewable energy systems.

3.      Efficient gas, oil, propane, and electric heat pump water heater replacements-30% of cost, up to $1,500 for all upgrades other than renewable energy systems.

4.      Solar water heating systems in new or existing homes-30% of cost.

5.      Photovoltaic (PV) systems in new and existing homes-30% of cost.

The feds are also giving money to the states for appliance rebates and is offering tax credits for certain window and door upgrades for new and existing homes, small wind energy systems, biomass stoves, geothermal heat pumps, fuel cells, efficient cars, and other equipment. For more detailed information about the federal tax credits, go to the California Building Performance Contactors Association.

*Top Five State Rebates (not time limited but rebates usually last until the money for rebates in each category runs out)

1. Adding qualifying insulation to an existing home-PG&E offers $0.15 per square foot in rebates.

2. Qualifying "Cool Roofs" replacement roofs-PG&E offers $0.10 or $0.20 per square foot depending on roof type.

3. Efficient gas and electric storage water heater replacements: PG&E offers $30 rebates.

4. Energy- and water-efficient clothes washers-PG&E offers $35 or $75 rebates depending on efficiency level and East Bay Municipal Utility District offers $125 rebates.

5. Irrigation systems and high-efficiency toilets-East Bay Municipal Utility District offers up to $1,000 rebate for qualifying water saving irrigation hardware and landscape material costs; up to $500 for WaterSmart replacement irrigation timers; and up to $150 for high-efficiency toilets (HET).

*This only lists rebates offered through PG&E and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, since these are the utilities that I know best. But most utilities offer similar rebates. For more detailed information about these and other California rebates for efficiency upgrades and water and energy efficient appliances, see Flex Your Power.

Before You Invest in Photovoltaics, make sure your house isn't haunted by phantom loads.

When writing about energy efficiency in California, I know that emphasizing heating systems doesn’t carry much punch. I might as well try to get Californians interested in who makes the best deep- dish pizza. (That’s Chicago, of course. Zachary’s isn’t bad though.) Cooling systems are accounting for more and more of a share of residential energy use as we continue to build out from the cities near the Bay in hot dry climates. But overall, when it comes to climate, the inside and the outside of Bay Area homes are pretty much the same for most of the year. But let’s not get soft on energy efficiency! There are other energy users in California homes that threaten to lift us in the future to the level of, say, what a Wisconsin home uses in the winter today.

Miscellaneous electric loads are electric loads other than heating and cooling, water heating, refrigerators, and lighting, and include consumer electronics, outdoor lights, and portable inside lighting fixtures. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency estimates that these “other” electric loads, along with televisions and office equipment, made up close to 30% of U.S. residential electricity consumption in 2006; this will rise to about 35% by 2020. Part of the reason for the growth in energy use of these devices as a percentage of total home energy use is that homes are heating and cooling more efficiently, with better HVAC equipment, tighter building envelopes, and more insulation.

Rich Brown and Greg Homan of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, measured electricity use in 13 new California homes in 2007 and came up with some interesting results. They metered plug-in devices in standby, off, or low-power mode. Since the homes were not yet occupied, they estimated the annual energy use by using typical use patterns and the energy use of the plug-in devices in active mode, or “on,” measured in other studies. Some of the homes were model homes and packed with appliances and electronics like TVs, and others had only the plug-in devices installed by the builders. Builder installed devices include things like garage door openers, structured wiring, and gas fireplaces. The homes were in four different subdivisions and span the range of typical new construction to super efficient homes with PhotoVoltaic (PV) systems installed.

The builder-installed devices use on average 800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year, or about $80 worth with electricity at a low $0.10 per kWh. That does not include lighting energy. That’s interesting. About half of the energy used by the builder-installed devices is used by devices that are supposed to be turned off, or are in standby mode! That’s very interesting. This is like having a 50-Watt light bulb on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, lighting nothing.

One of the model homes, the biggest energy user of the 13, used close to 2,500 kWh per year ($250) for two large televisions, a structured wiring panel that uses 20 Watts continuously to power three security cameras and an Internet router, smoke alarms, garage door openers, a washer/dryer, a very big refrigerator, and a few more devices. Add in lighting and that house is a major energy hog, even with super efficient heating and cooling systems and PV panels on the roof.

So what to do? Don’t even think of getting that PV system until you spend some time reducing your electricity load. The PV system you need to meet that load then won’t be so expensive. When it’s time to buy a new appliance, always look for the Energy Star label. Energy Star appliances use about 20% less energy than typical new appliances. Anything that uses a remote control, such as televisions and set-top boxes, or that displays the time of day all day, such as some stoves and microwave ovens, uses energy when officially off. Look for electronic devices that are really off when they say off, or that use 2 Watts or less in standby mode. For your other sleep slurping electronics, plug them into a power strip, and turn the power strip off when you aren’t using the devices. Then look into that sexy new PV system for your roof. More on that in my next blog.

Stanley Jevons first described the take back effect in 1865, so this is nothing new. Jevons observed that new efficient steam engines decreased coal consumption, which led to a drop in coal prices. But the lower prices meant that more people could afford to use coal, and so coal consumption increased.

The "Snackwell Effect" takes it's meaning from the habit of people on diets who eat lots of low-cal snacks that add up to many times the calories of a regular snack. The example given in both articles mentioned above is a West Virginia couple that bought an energy efficient washing machine to replace their old inefficient one. Their energy bills were no different after the conversion. Turns out they were doing more loads of laundry, even washing one piece of clothing in one load, because they were lulled into complacency by their energy efficient purchase.

I asked Jim McMahon, the head of the Energy Analysis Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), about the Snackwell Effect and appliance energy use. I recently heard him speak about the great efficiency gains made between the first energy crisis brought on by the Arab oil embargo in 1973, and today. Those gains are significant; refrigerators today use about half the energy on average than they did in the 1970s. "This effect [Snackwell Effect] has been studied for a long time, [it was] formerly called the rebound or take back effect," he says. One 2001 study concluded that for every gain in energy efficiency, about 10% is taken back by an increase in energy use. Greater air conditioner efficiency, for example, may mean that people lower their thermostats, since they expect their energy bills to be lower, and this eats into the efficiency savings. "I think that there are a number of energy-using devices where consumers do not exhibit the Snackwell effect, such as refrigerators or televisions. In those cases, in my view, the usage behaviors are unrelated to the cost of energy, at least for most households in the United States," says McMahon. He does admit that more study is needed in this area. A 10% take back effect is significant, but certainly not a barrier to serious energy efficiency improvements.

Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, a sociologist, studies human behavior and energy use for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). "The relationship between energy efficiency and energy consumption is not as straightforward as it may initially appear and as some people like to portray it."

The trends show that: 1) residential energy consumption increased by roughly 57% between 1970 and 2005; and 2) residential energy consumption per capita increased by only 7%".

According to Ehrhardt-Martinez, a bigger problem than the 10% of energy lost due to the take-back effect-or the Snackwell Effect-is the proliferation of energy using, albeit more efficient, devices in American homes; lifestyle choices, such as the dramatic increase in the size of homes while families got smaller; population increase; and the "invisible" energy, such as standby power or phantom loads, that is hidden from consumers. "However," says Erhardt-Martinez "if we were able to combine efficiency improvements with better lifestyle choices (i.e. smaller, more energy efficient houses), smart purchasing behaviors, and improved information mechanisms that allowed consumer to actively manage their energy consumption, then we could have a much more dramatic impact on both household level consumption as well as state and national level consumption."

Staff at Building Solutions, a home performance
company, install PV on a roof in Oakland. Next year, the renewable
and energy efficiency business will be even better.
Credit: Kate KenkeDr. Steven Chu, Noble-prize-winning physicist, and director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was named as President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Energy. Home Energy is a nonprofit magazine, but our offices are at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the magazine was founded by Alan Meier, a lab scientist. People around here are saddened by the loss of Dr. Chu as director of the lab, but extremely excited about his nomination as Secretary of Energy. Dr. Chu believes in science and the important place of technology in helping us meet our energy goals and fight global warming—think cellulosic bio-fuels, nanotechnology, and yet undreamed of solutions to the present energy and environmental crisis.

Weatherization Works!

Word in energy efficiency circles is that the funding for Department of Energy (DOE’s) Weatherization Program will increase several-fold with President Obama’s proposed economic stimulus package. The Weatherization Program is managed state by state from money provided by DOE, and the funds pay to retrofit the homes of low-income families. Homes become healthier to live in, more energy efficient, and more comfortable for the occupants. For every one dollar the Weatherization Program spends, almost two dollars in energy savings results. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been retrofit so far, leaving about 99.5% of existing homes. Talk about green jobs potential! Many nonprofit and for profit organizations do weatherization work, and, basically, you retrofit the home of a low-income family the same way you retrofit a mansion. Lots more skilled people will be needed to do the work, and the jobs will provide a good income, benefits, and the possibility of future advancement. Community colleges, unions, professional training organizations, online trainers, and other players are gearing up to train the new green workforce.

How Many Btu Do You Do?

I promised in my last blog entry to explain the concept of heating-degree day and cooling-degree day. Sometimes you will hear that a home uses so many Btu or kWh per heating- or cooling-degree day, per square foot, per year. The degree days indicate the heating or cooling load on a building’s HVAC systems. A degree day is the rise or fall of one degree Fahrenheit for 24 hours. The rise or fall in temperature is measured from a baseline of 65F°. For example, if the average temperature tomorrow is 45F°, than the heating load on your heating system is 20 heating-degree days. If on a hot summer day the average temperature over a 24-hour period is 85F°, than the load on your air conditioner is 20 cooling-degree days. The number of heating-degree days for a winter in New York is around 5,000. Barrow, Alaska has about 20,000.

You can figure out how much energy you use to heat or cool your home by subtracting the baseline energy use. During a month when you are using neither your air conditioner or heater, such as in October or March (called the “shoulder” months), your gas and electric use represent your baseline. The baseline covers energy for lighting, appliances, hot water, and plug loads. Subtract out the baseline from your winter or summer energy use and you have the amount of energy to heat or cool your house. If you know the square footage of your home, and you have weather data for your area (go to www.degreeday.net to find out heating-degree days and cooling-degree days for your area), you are in a position to brag to your neighbors (or not) about your energy use.

At our house we used about 90 therms of natural gas from September 7 through December 7, 2008. There were about 480 heating-degree days (HDD) in our area during that time. Our baseline use of natural gas is about 10 therms per month, for heating water and cooking, leaving 60 therms for heating over the three-month period. Our house is about 1,200 square feet (ft²). Therefore, we used 60 therms/(480 HDD x 1,200 ft²), or about 0.0001 therms/HDD·ft². Since one therm of natural gas contains about 100,000 Btu of energy, that equals about 10 Btu/HDD·ft². That’s not bad, but not great either. How about you?