Solar 101
How Energy Efficient Is Your Home? A Practical Checklist
Use this home energy efficiency checklist to find easy savings on heating, lighting and daily habits, then see how solar can multiply the benefit.
Use this home energy efficiency checklist to find easy savings on heating, lighting and daily habits, then see how solar can multiply the benefit.
A growing number of Ontario homeowners want an energy efficient home, both to cut energy costs and to shrink their carbon footprint. Producing your own electricity with solar is a great way to save money, but the best place to start is by making the most of every watt that already enters your home. The checklist below covers devices, lighting and everyday habits. If you can answer yes to most of the questions, your home is already efficient, and switching to solar will stretch your savings even further.
A few simple, relatively affordable gadgets can go a long way toward cutting your heating and cooling costs.
This handy tool can help you find leaks and cold spots in your insulation, around windows and along doors without calling in a professional. Point it at walls, ceilings and window frames on a cold day and look for surfaces noticeably colder than their surroundings. Those are the places to seal, weatherstrip or insulate first.
Smart and programmable thermostats have become popular for good reason. Used properly, pre-programmed schedules lower the temperature while you are asleep or away and bring it back before you return, which reduces the energy spent heating or cooling an empty house. The savings vary with your home and habits, so treat any published figure as an estimate and check your own bills after a season of use.
Electronics left plugged in around the clock keep drawing a small amount of power even when they look switched off. Game consoles, chargers, set-top boxes and older appliances add up. A power bar you can switch off at night makes this easy to manage.
Have you switched to LED bulbs? LEDs use a fraction of the energy of traditional incandescent bulbs, run cooler and last many times longer, which is why they have largely replaced compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs. Look for Energy Star certified products. Natural Resources Canada explains how to choose efficient products on the NRCan home energy efficiency pages.
Also consider whether you can use less artificial light during the day. Skylights and tubular daylighting devices bring natural light into rooms that would otherwise need lamps switched on, and even simple changes such as lighter wall colours and clean windows help.
Beyond gadgets and bulbs, a number of household habits can lower your energy use and environmental impact. Ask yourself:
Each of these small habits trims your consumption. Together they can noticeably reduce your energy bills.
Efficiency and solar work as a pair. The less electricity your household needs, the smaller (and less costly) the solar system required to cover it, and the faster that system can pay for itself. It is usually smarter to fix drafts and swap bulbs before sizing a system than after. If you are planning trees or landscaping, keep in mind that shade on a roof reduces production; our guide to what makes a roof a good fit for solar explains how we assess shading.
After going through this checklist, how green would you rate your home? If you would like to see what going solar could do on top of those savings, request a free site assessment through our residential solar team, or review the options on our incentives page for programs that may help with efficiency upgrades and solar.
Start with LED lighting, air sealing around windows and doors, and a programmable thermostat. These low-cost steps usually have the quickest payback.
Yes, in most cases. Lower consumption means a smaller system can meet your needs, which can reduce cost and shorten payback.
