Home Heating Intensity (HHI) and Home Energy Intensity (HEI)

HEI is a benchmark of home efficiency equal to the total BTUs used in a house per square foot per heating degree day. Home Heating Index HHI is similar, but omits electricity when that is not used for space heating. Normalizing by heating degree days (HDD) makes HHI and HEI appropriate for cold climates. For hot climates, we can define Home Cooling Intensity (HCI), equal to the number of BTUs used for cooling normalized by the area of cooled space and the Cooling Degree Days (CDD). The average HEI in American houses is near 10 BTU/(sq ft deg F). The specific examples below are real-life cases, my houses, contributions from visitors, and houses with detailed public websites. Heating is computed from fuel use, including uses such as water heaters and cooking. That way the indexes can be computed from utility bills. I invite people to use the calculator to compute their own HEI. You can save your entry on my server and request that it be published. I think this table would be much more interesting if it were much larger.

Name
and URL 		Heating
Degree Days 		floor area
square feet 		electricity
KWH/year 		Generation
KWH/year 		fuel used
MBTU/year 		Home Heating
Intensity (HHI) 		Home Cooling
Intensity (HCI) 		Home Energy
Intensity (HEI)
Ghost Mine Ranch 8000 1508 182518256.87 0.56 1.07
Solar Harvest 5487 4500 9899110640<1.3 1.3
Bill's House 2407 3400 3794 1.541.45
Duane and Cathy's 6308 1100 3729 1.79
Yves in Canada 8500 6187 305001460 <1.93 2.06 1.93
Steve in Golden 6120 3275 33001350034 1.69 2.24
Avenson House 6020 1952 74956409 18 1.53 3.62
Hodges House 6776 2200 824274.4 4.99 0 6.83
Park East Square 5487 1000 1460 38.5 7.01 7.9
Vista Village 5487 858 1933 25.7 5.45 6.8

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