If you are considering installing solar on your home, please take a moment to read this article first, as you may want to first consider a less obvious approach to conserving energy and offsetting your carbon footprint. Solar electric residential systems are a phenomenal technology and the technology is only becoming more and more accessible with the passing of each day. Simply put, solar electric or Photovoltaic (PV) systems convert the energy of the sun to usable electricity. The motive behind installing these systems on your home or property is typically to offset the usage of energy that your home demands. This desire to offset energy use is a wonderful motive, and inline with this intention, we should first consider the option of reducing the amount of energy that your home consumes, before attempting to offset it. This is where a home energy audit comes in.
Because I am a big fan of analogies, let’s use a simple analogy to demonstrate this concept. Let’s say that you have 100 heavy boxes to move, and you decide to hire a moving crew to tackle this task. The moving company charges $10/box, so their bid ends up being $1000 for this task. If you can consolidate your goods to be moved from 100 boxes to 50 boxes, you can reduce the load to be moved, and therefore, reduce the cost of the job from $1,000 to $500. Make sense?
Reducing the energy demand, or load in your home is similar. By reducing the amount of energy that your home requires to operate (through energy efficiency), you are reducing the amount of electricity/energy needed to offset that load. Every home is different, of course, but if we are to use the above scenario, improving your home efficiency could reduce the needed size of your solar electric (PV) system by 50%. This would do 3 things:
1. Save you on initial installation cost
2. Reduce the amount of energy that your home consumes
3. Improve occupant comfort, reduce maintenance needs and likely improve indoor air quality. This third point is typically more difficult to quantify, but is almost always a natural byproduct of home performance upgrades.
When you consider the above points, it naturally makes the most sense to optimize the performance of your home first, and then offset the remaining energy used by a PV system. This additional step will reduce the cost of the PV system, which typically is more costly than the energy efficiency upgrades and comes with the added benefits listed in item 3.
We at ABP are advocates of residential PV systems, but we ALWAYS recommend that anyone considering installing a PV system first has a comprehensive home energy audit conducted to identify and consider home performance upgrades that will improve energy efficiency and comfort while maximizing the performance, durability and air quality within your home.