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Home Energy Audit Software
If saving energy is your goal, there are many useful software programs to help evaluate and track progress.
Some like the Energy Star Yardstick take benchmark measurements of a home from utility bills and basic square feet of your home. Many utilities offer such online assessments.
Others like the Department of Energy’s Home Energy Saver take a more comprehensive approach and combine utility bill energy use, local weather data, along with a home’s existing energy efficiency characteristics (assets).
You'll also benefit from specific suggestions for improving your home’s efficiency. This is the most important part of the Home Energy Saver's program – the actual upgrades you’ll need to undertake in your home. These are provided in a summary page and detailed recommendations page. The summary page includes your estimated yearly savings, estimated cost and payback should you undertake all the recommended upgrades.
The recommendations link will lead you to a complete breakdown of your potential energy savings. Here you the homeowner can do some what-ifs or look at some of the more operational aspects of your energy use or explore the changes that look most interesting to you.
While all the self-administered home energy rating software programs are useful for pointing out homes that could benefit from having further work done and can be incredibly accurate and insightful, they are limited by the number of assumptions they have to make and can not tell things like the tightness of the home’s thermal envelope - only an in-home energy assessment can tell you that.
There are dozens of software tools that professional energy auditors use, including some also supported by the Department of Energy like the Home Energy Saver Pro and the newer Home Energy Score, which can be included as part of a comprehensive energy audit.
Tip from the field - home energy audit software
Even the most sophisticated software programs used by professional auditors that have hundreds of inputs are still 1) only going to be as good as the rater who makes the inputs 2) going to miss things, often big things, that only an in-home energy audit can catch. For example, let’s say the space above your kitchen cabinets contains some insulation, but it is not properly aligned with the air barrier and the winter winds are blowing through. The space may b e small, but if it feeds directly to the outside, its effects may be dramatic. This is something an experienced auditor will most likely find using a blower door test and other diagnostic equipment, but the software, in all its wisdom, has no method for ascertaining. It would just assume that the area was properly insulated, since it has some insulation. For this reason, nothing can take the place of in-home energy assessment from a certified home energy professional!