How much money would you save by installing insulation in your attic? Where can you find the best products and a good contractor to do the job? Homeowners now have access to a wonderful web tool on the Home Energy Saver Internet site which quickly identifies what to do save the most energy and money.
Developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the “HES” tool allows homeowners to answer questions previously only available through advanced building simulation software. Until now, DOE-2, considered the most accurate and powerful among professional engineers and architects for building energy simulation, required extensive training and fast computers.
Just put in your zipcode and up pops the “Energy Adviser” which shows you the energy use, bills, and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions for your areas’ typical house, and a comparable energy-efficient house. You are prompted to answer a set of basic questions about your house: its floor area, number of occupants, type of heating and air conditioning equipment, and fuel prices, to get a custom-tailored energy bill breakdown. Then, Energy Adviser provides a custom set of energy-saving improvements for your house covering all major energy-using systems: space heating and cooling, water heating, lighting, major appliances, and a host of ‘miscellaneous’ appliances that are an increasingly important factor in residential energy bills. It’s great!
The “Making It Happen” section provides links to hundreds of Internet sites with practical, detailed information about energy-efficient homes, products, service providers, utility programs, and on-line reading materials. There’s even email access to energy experts.
Another similar tool, Solar-5, is also freely available on the Web from the University of California/Los Angeles. Designed for people who love architecture but are leery of computers, it encourages fast, on-the-spot revisions and gives sophisticated graphic plots of hourly loads, HVAC system outputs, indoor air temperatures, and costs. It also calculates greenhouse gas emissions, daylighting controls and economizer cooling.
Allan Chen: a_chen@lbl.gov
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Solar-5: [sorry this link is no longer available]
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