Energy Audit – Energy Star Home Performance Test
Ah, September…’tis the season for the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves changing color, football on the weekends, and—to the excitement of many of us here in Atlanta—some much-needed cooler weather…which we all know can mean higher heating bills.
Are you sure your home is energy efficient, or do you think you may be overpaying on energy bills?
Are you ready to make some home repairs that will improve energy efficiency but don’t know where to start? Well, not to worry.
There are several easy steps you can take to Save Money on Energy Bills, and each week over the next five weeks, we will discuss a new technique in saving money on heating and cooling bills.
The First Step to Saving Money on Energy Bills
Home energy audits are a vital first step in making your home more energy efficient. Without knowing which rooms have the worst insulation or poor weatherstripping, you may spend more money on repairs than necessary. A preliminary energy audit can be administered by a local energy-efficiency professional or, in some areas, by your local utility provider at little or no cost. If you need help locating an energy-efficiency professional in your area, look at the Energy Rater Locator on the Energy Star website.
In Georgia, the best home energy audit test is the Energy Star Home Performance Test. The Energy Star website is an invaluable resource when it comes to information about energy efficiency and improving your home’s energy consumption. It even includes some energy audit tests that you can take online to determine what your next steps should be.
Why Should I Perform a Home Energy Audit?
After you’ve performed a physical home energy audit, you should have a pretty good idea of where you are losing energy in your home—i.e., where the most energy is escaping via poor insulation or faulty weather-stripping—or which appliances or which rooms are consuming the most energy.
Armed with this information, you can then make educated decisions on which appliances to replace, which windows to re-pane, or which rooms in your home to re-insulate. This initial test will only tell you the general areas of your home where you are losing energy.
You may need to take additional steps and perform more in-depth analysis if you want to know exactly where in your home energy is being used poorly.
There are additional home screening tests that yield more information than a preliminary or walk-through audit. If you live in Georgia, be sure to check out Georgia Power BPI or perform an Energy Star Home Test. Both look closer at where your energy costs are coming from in your home and provide detailed reporting on potential annual savings following improvements and repairs on trouble areas in the home.
Rebate for Performing Energy Star Home Performance Test
If you are a Georgia Power customer, you may qualify for a rebate on having this test completed for your home. Visit our Energy Star Home Performance page for a short video on this test and what it entails.