Last week, our Green Rater told me about a “pre-approved” Innovation and Design point for LEED for Homes regarding monitoring our electric, gas and water usage over time. All we have to do is sign up for the Building Performance Partnership through Earth Aid, connect to our utilities providers, and we get another point! Overall, this is a great website for staying on top of your home’s energy and water usage. It does require a little upfront time to connect to your utilities online, if you haven’t already set up an online account with them. But there are really just three (or two, for some people) providers for us: Xcel for electricity, Centerpoint Energy for gas, and the City of Minneapolis for water.
I signed up this morning in less than 20 minutes, which seems like an easy LEED point to me — and it didn’t cost me anything (except, once again, my time)! (Currently Earth Aid is not yet “compatible” with those utilities, so I have no energy data yet. Of course, I monitor our monthly usage by looking at our monthly bills and typing them into my Xcel spreadsheet.)
My very first post about LEED for Homes was on March 8, 2010. I have spent about 200 hours blogging on each of the 18 prerequisites and 67 credits, plus additional comments on the rating system and the process. And so, while I’ll continue to write about LEED for Homes topics, this should be my LAST and FINAL blog post on getting another point!
Thank you for directing us to such a great resource. We have an electricity monitor in our home, and seeing it has dramatically influenced how often we run which appliances. I can see dramatic utility in having a compilation service like Earth Aid to track all/most of our utilities to be able to see an overall household utility expenditure more quickly. Thank you for bringing this to my attention!