Home Energy Savings For Energy Watchers

I found a great online service from BizEE Software, Degree Days, that quickly and easily helps you look up the heating degree days (HDD) and cooling degree days (CDD) for your particular location. The data available from the Weather Service is a little more general than what Degree Days gives you — there's only a few government weather stations in each state but Degree Days taps into the weather station network run by Weather Underground.


This is important information — this lets you compare apples to apples when you are tracking your home energy usage. Only by tracking degree days at your location can you understand just what the weather was like over the time covered by your utility bill. As Degree Days explains:

Degree days are essentially a simplified representation of outside air-temperature data. They are widely used in the energy industry for calculations relating to the effect of outside air temperature on building energy consumption.

"Heating degree days", or "HDD", are a measure of how much (in degrees), and for how long (in days), outside air temperature was lower than a specific "base temperature" (or "balance point"). They are used for calculations relating to the energy consumption required to heat buildings.

"Cooling degree days", or "CDD", are a measure of how much (in degrees), and for how long (in days), outside air temperature was higher than a specific base temperature. They are used for calculations relating to the energy consumption required to cool buildings.