Effectiveness of air sealing measures and other energy retrofit measures in Lafayette Energy Improvement Program
Abstract
From September 2011 to March 2013, the City of Lafayette, IN implemented Lafayette Improvement Program. The goal of this project was to "increase energy efficiency of existing homes through retrofitting, thereby lowering the costs of home ownership within the Vinton and Glen Acres Neighborhood Target Area (The City of Lafayette, 2011)." Energy audit companies carried out before blower door test and after blower door test to identify air tightness of subjects. This paper finds out there was an improvement in air tightness in the population of 85 houses and the degree of improvement was between 16.85% and 17.85%. Change point analysis is used to assess the effectiveness of other energy retrofit measures. Change point analysis utilizes CUSUM (cumulative sum of error) technique and bootstrapping technique to identify threshold of energy consumption amount, and therefore validates the efficiency of energy retrofit measures. Vectren Natural Gas provided natural gas consumption results of 85 houses, and Duke Energy was unable to release electricity consumption amount. The research uses MATLAB® software to calculate CUSUM and confidence level of each subject. After quantitative analysis, the research concludes that the data obtained from Vectren failed to provide evidence that 50% of the houses has experienced change points.
Degree
M.S.
Advisors
Shaurette, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Environmental engineering|Energy
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