Renewable Energy

The house I did my energy audit on is a semi-detached house in a small housing estate in a peaceful town in Co Kerry. The house was built 2003 by the council. There are five people living in the house, two adults and three children. The house is 56 square meters there are four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen. The house is facing south west so is not getting the full effect of sun during the day, the house is well insulated with the attic well insulated with fiberglass and the walls are built with aggregate blocks and are well insulated. The windows are all double glazed PVC windows along with the front and back door. The house is has two ways of heating the water by a range or emersion which is never switched on so the range is used to heat the water by filling the range which is in the kitchen, when the range is on it heats the heat pump which feeds all the radiators with hot water which intern heats the house. The main fuel to heat the house is peat which is bought every summer.

The Electric Bill

The electric bill used in this house is by airtricity, there were only three electric at my disposal for this audit. The bills came in and around the ninth and fourteenth of a month every two months so I had only six months of billing. The average units used in a house are between six hundred and seven hundred units, that’s an average of three hundred to three hundred and fifty units per month used in the house. The rate being charged by airtricity for this house is 0.1340 per unit used by the household. The average cost of a bill every two months is between a hundred and a hundred and forty euro a month, which is fifty to seventy euro per month. The household could reduce this by caring a bit more about the energy there unnecessary wasting by turning of lights when they leave a room and turning of the TV, sky box, radio etc. properly instead of leaving them on standby. They would see the savings straight away but over a year or two the figure there saving would start to build up.

Wasted energy

One of the main reasons for high energy costs is wasted energy along with people ignoring to turn of lights when they leave a room. If a person owned a house that was built in the seventy’s and eighty’s than a more modern house they would have a higher electric bill, one of the main reasons for this would be that the more modern house would be better insulated according to regulations. The attic would be well insulated with fibreglass, walls would be well insulated all through the house, and also the windows and doors would have double glazed windows. More modern houses are usually built facing south to attract more sun during the day time to save heating on costs, also the houses facing south would have bigger windows facing south than they would have on the north side of the house because of loss of heat out a big window than a small window