Efficiency First

Late last week, Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Scott Brown (R-MA) introduced S. 1029, the “Electric Consumer Right to Know Act” or “E-Know”.  Efficiency First applauds the legislation as an important step to ensure that a home owner, or a third party they designate, will have easy access to their electricity usage information.

The effort to “true-up” and calibrate modeling software to an individual home by using the last year’s utility bills has become common-place among many home performance manufacturers. Unfortunately, contractors currently must undertake tedious inputs of 12-months of paper utility bills and expect delays and trouble in receiving them. Easy access to this data will help a contractor not only quickly explain the home performance upgrade to their customer, but it will give them valuable information about the homes energy use that will make the upgrade more cost-effective.

While supporting the legislation as a key step toward energy data access, Efficiency First recommends members of Congress consider expanding this, or subsequent legislation, to include access to natural gas data.

To read the full press release, click here.