Energy Consumption Forecaster

The model builds a monthly kilowatt-hour figure from three multipliers. Floor area sets a base load at 0.45 kWh per square foot per month, so a 2,000 square foot house starts near 900 kWh. Occupancy adds 8 percent for each person beyond the first, capturing hot water, laundry, cooking, and plug loads. The temperature term applies the degree-day idea: deviation from a 65 degrees F balance point, with each heating degree adding 3 percent and each cooling degree 4 percent, the asymmetry reflecting that air conditioning and resistance heat draw differently on the electric meter. The US Energy Information Administration's Residential Energy Consumption Survey puts the average American home near 10,500 kWh per year, about 875 per month, so results well above that point to a large house, electric heating, or a leaky envelope. Emissions use a national average near 0.855 pounds of CO2 per kWh. The efficiency band is a screening tool: under 3 kWh per square foot per year is strong, 4.5 to 6 is typical, and above 8 usually indicates envelope or equipment problems. Three limitations should temper the output. The model uses a single thermostat setpoint as a stand-in for local climate rather than actual weather data. It assumes every end use is electric, so homes with gas heat or gas water heating will read high. And the monthly shape factors are national averages that fit neither Phoenix nor Minneapolis well. Regional grid emission rates range from below 0.2 to above 1.5 pounds per kWh.

The degree-day method behind the temperature term dates to the 1920s and 1930s, when the American Gas Association and heating engineers needed a way to normalize fuel deliveries for weather so that consumption could be compared across seasons. The 65 degrees F base was chosen because older buildings with typical internal heat gains from occupants, lighting, and cooking needed no furnace above roughly that outdoor temperature. The National Weather Service has published heating and cooling degree days on that base ever since, and utility bill-normalization methods still rest on it. Systematic measurement of household energy in the United States began after the oil shocks of the 1970s. The Energy Information Administration was created in 1977 and ran the first Residential Energy Consumption Survey in 1978; it has been repeated roughly every four to five years and remains the reference source for per-home consumption and end-use shares. Benchmarking tools followed. The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy launched Energy Star in 1992, extending it from products to whole homes and later to Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings, while RESNET introduced the HERS Index in the mid-1990s to score new home performance on a single number. Per-kWh carbon factors come from the EPA's eGRID database, first published in the late 1990s, which is why emissions can be reported by regional grid rather than as one national average.