ResPoNSe: Modeling the Wide Variability of Residential Energy Consumption

The variation in energy consumption from differences in climate and building characteristics is well-studied; however, the effect of various appliance end use and especially the variation in the behaviors of the people that use them is less understood. [...] Physical factors, such as climate, the size, age, and construction of each house, the number and age of its occupants, and the amount and types of electrical appliances, are fairly straightforward. [...] This same study found that of the contributors to the variation in energy consumption in California households, 39% were social variables, building characteristics explained 9%, and the environment attributed 17%; the rest (39%) was the result of the joint effect of all three (Lutzenhiser and Bender 2008). [...] Goldstein and Fairey (2010) state that “the unexplained variance in home energy use, when using only [weather, home size, and number of occupants], is normally greater than 40% of the mean.” As an example of the wide range of electricity consumption in households, Figure 1 below shows the energy consumption for one day of 70 households in the Sacramento, California area. [...] The year a house was constructed can indicate the type of construction (i.e., insulation levels, amount of mass), and to some extent the size of the house (i.e., square footage and ceiling height) and size and efficiency of the HVAC equipment.