Home Energy Log: A Tool for Tracking Your Energy Usage

What is the Home Energy Log Tool?

The Penn State Extension Home Energy Log provides instructions and a template to track your home energy use. This log provides a step-by-step guide to measuring and logging your home electricity use. Logging your energy use can be used to better understand your usage and establish energy benchmarks to compare your daily usage trends. Establishing a history of energy use allows you to predict the future cost of operations more easily and opens opportunities to integrate new forms of energy production, like solar or wind energy into your energy system.  Understanding how and when you use energy helps to prepare you to take advantage of changing rate structures and buying opportunities. The tool is for you if you ever wondered, for example, how much electricity do I use on a hot day? Or, how much energy will I save if I unplug infrequently used appliances?

How to Use This Tool

You can download "Home Energy Log" from Penn State Extension website. After you download the spreadsheet, you'll follow three easy steps to start tracking your energy habits.

Step #1

Locate your electric meter and familiarize yourself with how it works. Using the decision tree below, note the type of meter you have and what it is measuring.

Step #2

The second step is easy but important. You need to develop and maintain a regular log schedule so that you can notice trends in your energy usage. We recommend that you record values from your electric meter at least 2 times a day.

If you need help learning how to read your meter, this informational sheet, "How to Read Electrical Meters," by Christopher Henry and Blair Strigam published by the LSU AgCenter will teach your how to do this.

Step #3

The final step is to record values in your energy log. We've provided you with an energy log template that you can use to record your energy usage.  This can be found by clicking the green button in Step #3.  This will open an Excel tab titled "Energy Log".  Edit the yellow cells with information you record from your electric meter.

Example Log

If you're not sure what to record or how to analyze your energy usage, we've included a tab, "Energy Log Example" which shows sample kWh recordings taken from an electric meter over the course of 12 days.

Here we have highlighted the yellow, input columns with a red box. These will be the only columns you will modify. The grey columns will automatically perform the calculations. You will also see that the kWh/Hour is highlighted in an orange box.  This column provides a standardized energy usage since your last recording and can be helpful to evaluating your energy usage and evaluating trends.

Log Other Energy Sources

Also, the tool provides a bonus section that allows you to log your energy usage from other sources, such as natural gas or fuel oil. To do this you will need to perform a simple conversion to compare it to your electricity usage since these fuels aren't measured or sold in units of kWh.  You can find an easy-to-use energy unit conversion table by navigating to the yellow tab, titled "Useful Energy Conversions".

You will input your energy use into the yellow "Fuel Use" column. The output will appear in the kWh Equivalent uses. These conversions may be helpful if you would like to include other types of energy within your Energy Log.

Other Information

If you would like to see an instructional video on the use of the Home Energy log, visit the "Energy Answer for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher" Youtube channel and select the video titled "How to control energy use and cost?"

Prepared by Siobhan L. Fathel, Assistant Teaching Professor, The Pennsylvania State University.

Funded by NIFA under the project title "Energy Answers for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher" award no.2018-70017-28895.

For other informational videos, visit "Energy Answers for the Beginning Farmer & Rancher"

You can watch an instructional video (How to control energy use and cost?) regarding the use of the Home Energy Log.

This tool is provided for general informational purposes only and The Pennsylvania State University shall have no liability whatsoever.

Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to employment opportunities to minorities, women, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and other protected groups.