By: Mitch Ross

This pie chart can help people understand their energy bill and how different equipment contributes to the overall energy use in their home. It is very helpful for people to see what the big energy users are so that they can focus their efforts on reducing energy consumption in these categories.

Heating, cooling and water heaters are always top of the list for me when I’m helping someone lower their bill. Although 46% of the bill may be heating and cooling, 14% water heating, 13% appliances, and so on, if you add it up, 95% of energy use “boils” down to one concept: heat.

The energy required to create or move heat is 95% of what’s going on with your energy bill!

How heat moves

Heating: Heat is either moved via a heat pump refrigeration cycle or created via a type of friction in electric resistance heat.

Cooling: Your air conditioner is also simply moving heat. Via a refrigerant cycle, heat is “picked up” from inside the home and transferred to the outside.

Water Heating: Heat is created via resistance or transferred via heat pump, typically to a tank of water. Refrigerators: Heat is gathered from inside and moved out through a refrigeration cycle. Appliances: From washing and drying clothes, washing dishes, cooking and so on, most of the energy consumed deals with creating or moving heat.

Other: Electronics such as lights, fans and plug-in devices typically consume more energy via heat as a byproduct than their actual intended uses.

Why dwell on this? Understanding this concept can help you adopt practices and solve problems that even an energy auditor might not pick up on in a visit to your home. For example, if you put hot food in a refrigerator, you are using energy to transfer that heat to the outside of the fridge. By simply waiting until it cools off, you would use less energy.

Also, if you use a lot of candles or candle warmers in the summer, you are paying extra on your bill to remove that created heat out of the home by way of the air conditioner. Doing these and other heat-creating activities, such as baking heavier dishes in the cooler months, will help reduce your annual energy use.

By focusing on the concept of heat, I’ve been able to find other creative ways to further lower my energy use, and my hope is that this focus can help you as well!

Mitch Ross is the energy efficiency manager for the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas.