My Home Energy Project: Step 1 – Measure the energy you currently use.

The past year has been an exciting journey for me – after buying my first place (A older {1985} brick, 850 sqft condo, in a walkable part of Ottawa) I went to work renovating it to both my aesthetic tastes as well as sustainable passions. I finally feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to do – create a home that has its own story, which has been so uniquely woven into mine.

I was surprised when my Grandfather, after being over for a family dinner, sent me an IKEA gift card in the mail as well as an offer to explore the store together this Saturday. It was such a sweet and kind gesture, and I was thrilled at the thought of getting some time just me and him.  I immediately knew what I would get, I had heard co-workers mention that IKEA now stalked LED lighting, and I had been drooling over the idea of doing a complete lighting swap for quite some time – but hadn’t had the budget. Now I finally could.

I plan to take on a new project: tackle my energy use. I’ll take it slowly, manageably. I want to focus on one small step at a time.  I’ve heard it said that you can’t manage what you don’t measure – so here we go…

STEP ONE: Measure what energy you currently use

Last year seemed like the most reasonable benchmark for this exercise. My energy use for 2012 is as follows: 6327.74 kWh (Shocker!). I’ll embarrassingly share my monthly usage, and cringe while I admit this is the first time I have looked at this in great detail:

I have compared this to 2013 year-to-date, and have had energy use higher than last year for 5 of the 8 past months. YIKES!! My energy use for 2013 is as follows:

Taking an average of the overlapping months, I have come up with the following energy use baseline:

January – 1,100 KWh
February – 870 KWh
March – 590 KWh
April – 430 KWh
May – 300 KWh
June – 300 KWh
July – 390 KWh
August – 300 KWh
September – 240 KWh
October – 340 KWh
November – 500 KWh
December – 1080 KWh

Overall, my place comes in just over half the average household energy consumption (which is ~12,000 KWh, depending on location). There are a few things that are working in my favor already:

• Size  – less space to heat/cool
• Connection – four faces of my unit are linked to other conditioned spaces (rather than exposed to exterior conditions)
• Updated windows – lucky me, the condo recently replaced my balcony windows with double glazing.
• No AC – The eye-sore window unit was removed immediately when I moved in!

Baseline measured – check.

Dare: Take a look at your energy usage, determine monthly baseline, and confess your usage data in the comments below.

Step 2 – Heating (HVAC)… 

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