Massachusetts proposes law requiring home energy audits
The Boston Globe reported on 1/11/2008 about a provision that was passed by the State Senate and, if enacted, will require a standardized rating system for home energy efficiency.
As initial comments to the Globe’s articles point out, accurately measuring a home’s energy efficiency is not an easy task, because it depends on many parameters. An audit of past and current energy bills will reflect the home owner’s heating habits and more than the actual energy performance of the home, and can be misleading. Dr. Heet believes that the only way of capturing a home’s energy score with some accuracy, and enabling comparative analyses between homes of different sizes, in different locations, with different heating systems, is by capturing actual temperature series outside and inside, and by recording heating system activity over time.
This is exactly what Dr. Heet’s HEX – the Home Energy Index – is designed to do. It captures energy performance of a home over time and eliminates factors such as home owner behavior, heating system technology, location, weather, and other factors that make a comparison difficult. The data can be acquired by deploying a laptop with the VK011 device and software to a home for a period of 7 days or more during the heating period (the data cannot be acquired when the heating system is off). The measuring device does not require supervision while it acquires data and produces the desired results largely automatically with very little user manipulation, therefore such an audit can be done rather cost-effectively.
Contact Dr. Heet for more information about the VK011 Interface, the method used to calculate the HEX, and the VK011 software solution that we offer free of charge.
