Why Bother Collecting Data? Experiences of the Household Energy End-Use Project

Nigel Isaacs, Michael Camilleri, and Lisa French, BRANZ Ltd.

Keywords

Abstract

Collecting real energy use data is expensive, time-consuming and subject to error. Why not just use the regular utility bills coupled with sophisticated statistical analysis, or even just stick with the mathematics of thermal modeling?

The Household Energy End-use Project (HEEP) involved detailed energy and temperature monitoring, occupant surveys and energy audits of 398 houses. This paper explores some of the lessons of importance to policy development as well as to other researchers. It concludes that market surveys and thermal models based on ‘conventional knowledge’ are no substitute for monitored data.

Previous official statistics suggested wood and coal accounted for 5% of residential energy use, but this has now been increased to 14% based on HEEP analysis. Monitoring has also found that houses heated with solid fuel burners are warmer than those heated by open fires or portable electric heaters. The implications of this new knowledge on the air quality based policies to encourage a shift away from solid fuel burners have yet to be explored.

An additional set of monitoring rules are proposed for understanding energy use in houses: (1) no matter how bizarre the behaviour, somewhere, someone is doing it; (2) there is no practical maximum to the number of appliances of a particular type in a house; (3) any imaginable (or unimaginable) electrical appliance can be found in houses; and (4) there is no practical maximum or minimum energy consumption.