Developing a Comprehensive Monitoring Program for Community-wide Energy Efficiency Upgrades
Maine is the most heating-oil dependent state in the country, with 58% of homes using fuel oil as the primary source of heat (EIA). Maine does not have any fossil fuel reserves or extraction. In recent years, we have spent more than $4 billion annually on fossil fuels, resulting in more than 6% of the gross state product leaving the state each year for energy imports. In the last two years, heating oil and kerosene prices doubled from $2-$3/gallon (January 2015-January 2022) to $5-6/gallon, and stayed above $4/gallon for the entire year from March 2022 to March 2023. At the same time, Maine’s electric prices increased significantly, causing already high household energy burdens to nearly double in the last two years.
Maine has some of the oldest houses in the nation. 24% of homes were built before 1939, 32% were built from 1940 to 1979. Unfortunately, most homes built since 1980 are not well insulated either. As Maine has enacted a statewide Climate Action Plan, we have encountered significant workforce shortages, particularly in the energy efficiency and weatherization sector. The state has identified doubling the energy efficiency workforce as a priority for reaching clean energy goals.
Thanks to a Buildings Upgrade Prize award from the U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Office (BTO), College of the Atlantic’s energy team will be supporting energy efficiency building upgrades on the year-round inhabited islands of Great Cranberry Island and Islesford. The island communities have a combination of residential, small commercial, and non-profit facilities that could be upgraded. In summer 2024, the energy team will conduct a comprehensive needs assessment (building envelope, lighting, heating and cooling, hot water, appliances and solar potential) and coordinate contractors to complete retrofit measures for bundles of 10+ buildings at a time, creating scale and reducing costs. The focus of the energy team will be identifying the common measures needed across multiple buildings, with emphasis on air sealing, insulation, and electrification of heating and hot water loads.
The data science team working on this project will support COA’s energy team to compile and visualize important baseline energy use for consenting households. As part of the project, the team will work with the Cranberry Isles communities to develop a reporting scheme to compare energy use per square foot per heating degree day before and after upgrades. The team will also plan and develop a pilot monitoring program for air quality, heating energy loads and comparison of outside and inside temperatures to more accurately estimate heating load. This will involve researching energy monitoring devices for a pilot monitoring program. As part of the project the team will also look at similar data for COA’s residential properties to estimate energy usage before and after energy upgrades as a prototype for the energy monitoring we will carry out.
What skills you can expect to learn and employ:
- Research energy devices and develop a pilot monitoring program to estimate the efficiency of energy upgrades.
- Develop a tracking system for energy upgrades
- Data wrangling and visualization.
- Creation of automated reports in Quarto.
References:
- EIA. https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=ME#ConsumptionExpenditures. Accessed on Feb 6, 2024.
Resources:
- https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KMECRANB6 Details of two weather monitoring stations on Great Cranberry.
- In panel monitoring system that might be useful for heat pumps: https://shop.emporiaenergy.com/collections/in-panel-energy-monitors
Data
Data will be distributed to the team during class.
