Four Types of Home Energy Audit in Chicago

If you’d like to improve the energy efficiency and cost of running your home, you might be considering a home energy audit (also known as a home energy assessment). It can be confusing, however, determining exactly what you will get.

Fundamentally, there are four types of home energy audit or assessment available in the Chicago area:

1. Professional home energy audits. This audit is typically offered by firms that are experts in building efficiency but that do not actually install heating and cooling equipment or insulation. You pay for their professional advice, so they are not driven to promote particular products or services beyond the audit itself. The focus is primarily the efficiency of heating and cooling.
2. Sales-driven home energy assessments. On the web, these will sound very similar to the independent audits. However, they are usually much cheaper and typically offered by firms that install insulation or duct sealing. Can you guess what they usually recommend? The focus is primarily the efficiency of heating and cooling.
3. ComEd home energy assessments. Depending on were you live and your income, your electric or gas utility may offer some type of efficiency assessment. The details vary significantly by region. In northern Illinois, the focus of a ComEd home energy assessment is primarily easily-seen opportunities and easily-implemented fixes, such as LED lighting and programmable thermostats.
4. Home electrification readiness audits. This audit (and a resulting plan) will help you understand what would be necessary to switch all of your gas appliances to high-efficiency electric ones.  This typically includes your furnace (for a heat pump), water heater (another heat pump), dyer (another heat pump!), range or cooktop (induction), and car.

There are no official, consistent definitions of what the words “home energy assessment” or “home energy audit” mean, though. Although I’ve tried to choose words in this post that draw out meaningful distinctions, when you are doing your research you should focus on the substance of what you will be getting, not what it is called.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Professional Home Energy Audits

The primary focus of a professional home energy audit is to determine the efficiency of your heating and cooling system, including not only your furnace or boiler and air conditioner, but also of your building envelope – its insulation and sealing.

You should get a detailed report after this audit that identifies specific things you could do to improve the thermal efficiency of your home, with a focus on those things that would provide the most comfort improvement and/or bang for the buck. It should identify how much you could expect to save from each recommended improvement.  Examples of recommendations might include: air conditioning duct sealing, spray foam “encapsulation” of crawl spaces, air-sealed can lights, etc.

Your auditor will (or should):

• Ask you how big your home is (or examine blueprints / take measurements)
• Use infrared imaging to determine how effective the insulation in your walls and ceilings is
• Inspect the insulation in your attic to determine its R-value (how well it insulates)
• Measure how tightly your home is sealed with a “blower door test”
• Conduct a “Manual J” calculation to determine the appropriate size of your heating and cooling equipment
• Ask you about any problem areas (too hot / too cold)
• Provide a comprehensive report, with specific recommendations
• List at least two possible contractors for each recommended piece of work

In my experience a professional home energy audit in Chicago cost around $2,000 — perhaps a bit less if you have small home and a bit more for a large one.

This audit will be conducted by a trained professional — ideally one who is not working for an HVAC or insulation company that has a self-interest in you buying things from them. He our she could have auditor / assessor / rater credentials from ASHRAE, AEE, BPI, BSI, or RESNET.  You may also hear that someone is a HERS rater, which is what RESNET calls their certification.

The IRS offers a small tax credit (30% of cost, up to $150) for these assessments when conducted by professionals with credentials from the organizations I listed above.

Sales-Driven Home Energy Assessments

Two thousand dollars probably sounds like a lot — I know it did to me. You’ll easily find someone offers a home energy assessment for much less money. I got one of these for $250.

I had an interesting conversation with the assessor, but here’s what was different between the $250 assessment and the $2,000 audit:

• The assessor had no third-party qualification or certification indicating that he knew what he was really talking about.
• The assessor spent less than half of the time in my home as the credentialed auditor from the earlier audit. He wasn’t interested in the HVAC system at all.
• I did not get a report after the assessment. Instead, I got a quote for a bunch of work from the same company.
• The quote did not identify the ROI or expected savings from any of the work quoted. I have no idea which of the items proposed would give me the best bang for my buck.

In short, it seemed to me like the primary goal of this home energy assessment was to sell me stuff.

ComEd Home Energy Assessments

Electricity and natural gas utilities often also offer some sort of energy efficiency assessment.  For example, in the Chicago area ComEd offers a free home energy efficiency assessment to income-qualified homeowners (annual income up to $88,250 for a family of four).

I can’t speak to what you get in other states or with other utilities, but while the ComEd home energy assessment is free if you qualify, it is considerably more casual than what you’d get from a professional auditor. It also seems more (but not exclusively) focused on electricity use.

I talked with one of their program representatives. He said:

"What we do is not an audit, it is just an assessment.  For example, we look for old refrigerators that might be inefficient and tell you about that and the rebates that are available for newer ones.  We look at the insulation and get a feel for how well it works."

This program does not use certified auditors, such as HERS raters.

The utility also says it provides free LED light bulbs, programmable thermostats, and “smart” power strips as part of this program.  The assessor may may also add insulation to hot water pipes or heaters and install door sweeps.

I don’t see any harm in this program if you qualify, but set your expectations appropriately.

Home Electrification Readiness Audits

Finally, none of the above services will help you determine what you need to do if you want to electrify the major appliances in your home, plus your car. Electrifying has at least five benefits, but adding an EV charger, heat pump water heater, heat pump dryer, induction cooktop or range, and heat pump heating and cooling will definitely require new electric circuits and may require other upgrades to your electrical system.

You’ll need an electrician to assess what you already have and what you'll need to support more electrification. You’ll probably want a plan. With a plan, you'll be able to make the upgrades so that:

1. You get the improvements you need, but not ones you don't.
2. Upgrades are in place before your older appliances fail, and you won't be stuck putting in another gas appliance due to time pressure.
3. You can take maximum advantage of incentives.
4. You minimize the number of contractors or projects you have to manage.

Certasun offers this type of audit in the Chicago area. We charge $750. If you are interested, please fill out the form below.