Anyone interested in logging gas and electric use?

cepheus

I thought it may be useful to log gas and electric use in a systematic way. This might allow us to compare total energy use between different levels of insulation, fuel types and other factors. Would anyone be interested in contributing to it?

I have listed all the principal factors which might influence energy use for heating, without getting into too much detail. Is there anything I have missed out of this spreadsheet?

I have started two lines, line 13 is complete and includes data prior to upgrading insulation.

It is open to everyone so please save it if you enter any figures, and check my calculations. It outputs average power or rate of energy use for both electric and gas based on gas and electric readings. All the other figures will just be for comparison.

At present it only includes electric and natural gas, not fuel oil and wood-chip burners although if enough people are interested it may be possible to include these.

The big difficulty will be adjusting for different periods in the year or different years if some are colder, but it may be possible to do this using some stats if enough people contribute or information is forthcoming from energy companies.

cepheus

Sorry I forgot to make the spreadsheet available to everoe, tell me if it is open access now.

jamesingram

cepheus , have you used/seen this
http://www.imeasure.org.uk/
"Your energy data will be contributing to leading building research being done by the Lower Carbon Futures (LCF) in the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. This much needed energy data will be used anonymously for research that will help inform energy policy, investment and programmes to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions."

been logging our energy use on it for several years , they used to have a 'carbon club' system that allowed you to compare each other use. unfortunately a recent upgrade removed this facility.

Your's is a good idea , but I'm happy with imeasure as this data can then be used in discussion.
i believe a good general figure for building energy use, to allow you compare with differnet building types is kWh/m2/year.

check out for various example effects of refurbishment results
low energy building data base
http://retrofitforthefuture.org/projectbrowser.php

cepheus

Yes I should have checked if anyone hadn't attempted to undetake the same analysis. I've nly had a glance yet, but do they allow you to input insulation, solar gai estimatesn, and heating efficiency? For example with the latter one academic source was quoting a far lower energy figure for heated air circulation, than with radiators with the same boiler, presumably because a source of hot air near windows is inefficient.

HappyMJ

cepheus wrote: »

Yes I should have checked if anyone hadn't attempted to undetake the same analysis. I've nly had a glance yet, but do they allow you to input insulation, solar gai estimatesn, and heating efficiency? For example with the latter one academic source was quoting a far lower energy figure for heated air circulation, than with radiators with the same boiler, presumably because a source of hot air near windows is inefficient.

No and that is a known limitation of it.

You should put a column for units used rather than ft3 and then another column if a multiplier is required to make the figures the same. Let's say a Y in the new column for a ft3 meter would then enable the multiplier and an N would be a cubic metre meter. Then anyone can use it no matter what meter they have.