Home Energy Squad wraps up its fourth InterCity Challenge
Earlier this year, Center for Energy and Environment (CEE) wrapped up its fourth consecutive Intercity Home Energy Squad® Challenge. This challenge is a collaboration between CEE and over 25 Minnesota cities to challenge residents to have an energy audit through the Home Energy Squad. With an energy audit from the Home Energy Squad, homeowners can take control of and better understand how their home uses energy, creating opportunities to address potential energy efficiency upgrades and discover simple behavior changes to save energy daily.
During a Home Energy Squad visit, a crew of two energy auditors head out to homes to help homeowners instantly save energy, reduce utility bills, and consider recommendations to further improve the home’s energy efficiency. At the visit, crews install free energy-saving materials like LED lightbulbs, high-efficiency water fixtures, and smart thermostats. Crews will also check the home’s insulation levels and perform an audit on the heating and cooling systems to identify any other areas of the house that might be overusing energy. At the end of the visit, homeowners receive a customized home energy report with more information on how they can keep saving energy.
“Energy efficiency is an easy way for residents to work with the city to reach our environmental goals while increasing their own homes’ resilience and decreasing their electric bills. We are excited to see so many of our residents utilizing the Home Energy Squad to solve energy concerns in their own homes.”
Throughout the challenge, CEE tracks the number of Home Energy Squad visits and income-qualified visits, as well as the utility rebates earned for completed home energy projects in each city — the winner is declared based on which city has the most visits and rebates per capita. By tracking visits and rebates received, cities are encouraging residents to have a Home Energy Squad visit and challenging them to take it a step further by making recommended energy improvements and thinking about energy saving on a larger scale. Additionally, the Challenge emphasizes encouraging visits to income- qualified households to help make energy efficiency accessible to all.
Since the Challenge began in 2020, many cities have worked hard to promote Home Energy Squad visits. In 2023, the challenge winners were Wayzata for most Home Energy Squad visits per capita, Maplewood for most income- qualified Home Energy Squad visits per capita, and Falcon Heights for most rebates earned per capita. Throughout the history of the Challenge, the number of visits and rebates earned have steadily increased each year, and in total the participating cities had 8,132 HES visits, 1,498 of which were at income-qualified households, and 1,720 rebates earned.