Quantifying household energy performance using annual community baselines

Purpose – This paper seeks to describe a protocol to estimate annual community energy consumption baselines for single‐family detached homes in the Gainesville Regional Utility service area of Alachua County, Florida, USA. Further, it details methods using these baselines to make direct comparisons of individual households' energy consumption and evaluate the energy impacts of three prescriptive demand side management (DSM) programs. Design/methodology/approach – To improve estimates of energy savings, the paper proposes using a “micro” scale multivariate regression methodology based on a census of utility and property appraiser household data. Findings – Results suggest that traditional analysis approaches are likely to overestimate savings significantly and that the annual community baseline technique provides more consistent estimates of energy savings than most commonly used methods. Practical implications – This type of analysis could provide a tool that utilities can use to more accurately and cost effectively measure DSM savings. This could result in reduced energy demand related to streamlined program setup and management. Originality/value – The proposed methodology is unique in that it defines a new household‐level energy consumption baseline measure that we think is a more appropriate performance measure, uses a census of publicly available data for the population of interest, merging metered utility data with property appraiser data, and works upward to construct a simple model for evaluating household‐level energy consumption. The critical element that distinguishes our proposed energy performance measures is that they are calculated and interpreted using annual, population‐level, comparison‐group baselines that effectively normalize for community energy consumption patterns in any given year.