Conservation/Environment Reduce Your Use Contest

Energy savings continue after contest ends

Contestants in Chelan PUD’s wintertime energy-savings contest continued to reduce their electrical use through the spring and summer. 

A review of electric bills at the end of September showed six of the nine contestants saw significant energy savings in spring and summer of 2011 compared to the spring-summer periods of the previous two years. The remaining three contestants showed similar use to what was experienced in previous years. 

Chelan County is a heating climate, meaning most of the electricity used by residents is to keep their homes warm in the winter. A smaller portion of overall energy use is attributed to summer air conditioning. 

The Reduce Your Use contest ran from January 1 through March 31, 2011. Nine contestants received home energy analyses and recommendations from PUD experts about how to save energy – from adding insulation and weather-stripping to adjusting their thermostats – as they competed against each other to see who could reduce their energy use by the greatest percentage. Overall savings averaged 19 percent. 

Richard and Shirley Ehrenberg of Wenatchee won the contest, dropping their wintertime energy consumption by 35 percent compared to previous years. Tony and Laura Thompson of Wenatchee cut their wintertime electrical use by 24 percent, while Nick and Jenn Brunner of Cashmere reduced their use by 23 percent.

A chart showing results for all contestants is available here. Total savings over the three months came to just under 20,000 kilowatt hours – just about enough to power a typical Chelan County home for one year.

Before the three-month contest period, each contestant received a detailed home energy analysis.Each homeowner received a report with energy-saving recommendations. It was up to individual homeowners to decide how much they would spend on energy-efficiency measures, whether to do the work themselves, or to take any recommended actions at all.

Summaries of each home's characteristics and the recommendations are available below.