Special Users of The Home Energy Saver

About 1,000,000 people visit the Home Energy Saver every year.

  • 86% are homeowners
  • 6% are renters
  • 2% are educators
  • 1% are contractors
  • 1% are product manufacturers/retailers
  • 1% are utilities
  • 1% are from government
  • 2% are "other" (responses based on survey responses from 3500 users)

Here are some examples of how non-household users have utilized the site:

US Air Force

  • The US Air Force has used the Home Energy Saver to develop energy use allowances for its housing.

The National Association of Renewable Energy Cooperatives - Touchstone Energy

  • NRECA/Touchstone are offering the Home Energy Saver to their rural co-op constituents, who are able in turn to make it available (at no cost) to their customers.

Educators

  • The Hewlett Foundation, has added the Home Energy Saver's Energized Learning module to a clearinghouse of open-educational resources for instructors, students, and self-learners at both K-12 and Higher Ed levels.
  • A teacher at the Harvard Extension School Environmental Management Program designed a class assignment that used the HES site.
  • A non-profit environmental education center in Indiana used HES as an assignment for its "stewardship workshop" on energy efficiency.

Media

  • Various media articles and stories have used HES to generate estimates of savings from typical energy-efficiency actions, for inclusion in the article.

Researchers

  • USDOE's Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasters have used HES to develop input data for the residential module of the NEMS model (estimating reduction in thermal loads due to shell upgrades).
  • NREL researchers used HES as a template for their BeOPT simulation model used in the Building America program.
  • Researchers at Carnegie Mellon used HES as a template for, and also used HES to help "benchmark" the results from, a web tool to help homeowners understand how their heating and cooling bills might change in the future with global warming. This activity was done as part of the Consortium for Atlantic Regional Assessment.
  • HES has been used for several DOE-sponsored research projects at LBNL that needed to estimate energy savings from housing upgrades. One project looked at savings potential in about 20 actual, case-study homes around the U.S. Another analyzed potential upgrades to Coast Guard housing in the Bay Area (funded by FEMP).